how did you find me here?

I can remember the day in 1989 that I bought the CD.

I was in Sound Warehouse and picked up How Did You Find Me Here? by David Wilcox the same afternoon I bought Steady On by Shawn Colvin. It was one of my better music buying afternoons. Ginger and I moved to Boston the following summer and both Colvin and Wilcox played outdoor concerts in Copley Square. When we went to see David, I carried a copy of Any Starlight Night, Billy Crockett’s newest CD at the time (on which I co-wrote some of the songs) because I wanted to make a connection. I was early and David was behind the stage working on his guitar. I walked up and thanked him for his record and gave him my offering and went on my way. I don’t think I even told him my name.

Over the years, we saw him perform several times, most of them outdoors, as I look back now: in the Charlestown Navy Yard, at Harborlights, and one inside gig at the Berklee Performance Center. We bought his CDs and sent copies to friends because we knew the vulnerability and intimacy in his songs would resonate with their situations. Tonight, we found him again. David came to Durham and we went with our new friends Lori and Terry to sit and listen on the lawn of the American Tobacco Campus.

Ginger and I went early because we were used to Boston days where free concerts meant get there early to get a good seat – or a seat at all. We parked the car and walked past an Airstream trailer hitched to an SUV and there was David Wilcox leaning over his guitar case. Since then, he and Billy have gotten to know each other and David performed at Blue Rock, Billy’s artist ranch and studio. I walked up and said, “You don’t know me but we share a mutual friend in Billy Crockett.”

“He’s a good man,” David said. Then he asked if we would be willing to help him carry some CDs and DVDs to the stage area. We listened to a marvelous evening of music. After the concert – a good while after the show – he was still standing around talking and we walked up to thank him for the evening. I also got to tell him I thought his song, “Show the Way” should be our national anthem. I also got to tell him how the song has been a touchstone and a life line for me during my depression. Ginger and I stood and talked to him for about ten minutes, I guess. As we got ready to leave, he hugged me and we went on our way.

I never did tell him my name.

These past couple of weeks I have struggled against the gathering storm. My depression, it seems, is working hard to suck me in. As usual, Ginger gets hit hardest because the bottom drops out when I get to the end of the day and stop moving. I think it’s harder to live with a depressed person than it is to be the depressed person. Yet, on a night when we were only two of several hundred people sitting on the lawn under the Lucky Strike tower listening to David and two of any number of folks who wanted to talk to him, he found me with his words and music and helped me stave off the darkness, at least for tonight. He doesn’t know who I am, other than the guy who knows Billy and who got choked up when he talked about “Show the Way.” He’ll remember talking to Ginger, I’m sure, long after he’s forgotten talking to me. Still, almost twenty years after that afternoon at Sound Warehouse, it’s my turn to ask, “How did you find me here?”

And to say thank you.

Now, please rise for our national anthem.

You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason
We should dream that the world would ever change
You’re saying love is foolish to believe
‘Cause there’ll always be some crazy with an Army or a knife
To wake you from your day dream, put the fear back in your life

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify
What’s stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late, he’s almost in defeat
It’s looking like the Evil side will win, so on the Edge
Of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins
It is….

Love that mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote this play…
For in this darkness love can show the way

So now the stage is set. You feel your own heart beating
In your chest. This life’s not over yet.
So we get up on our feet and do our best. We play against the Fear.
We play against the reasons not to try
We’re playing for the tears burning in the happy angel’s eyes
For its….

Love that mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote this play…
For in this darkness love can show the way

Peace,
Milton

P. S. — There’s a new recipe here.