Dark and Deep (David LaMotte)

I attended my first Folk Alliance conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1999 - it was an incredible experience of sensory overload, as there are hundreds of showcase rooms, small and large, showcasing the talents of even more hundreds of musical artists. When someone tells you what time they're performing, it's important to ask a.m. or p.m. because, yes, there are actually sanctioned acts taking place at 2:30 in the morning... not to mention the unofficial songswapping until the dawn's early light. Sleep?!? - we don't need no stinkin' sleep... :-)

All this to say that somewhere along the way I was given a CD sampler of various artists and was able to listen to it the week after I returned home - the blog-titled song immediately resonated:

I remember this friend down in Florida

She used to get lost just for fun

She'd take any turn that presented itself

Just to see where the road might run

It's amazing the places they'd take her

The people and things that she'd find

I felt as if David was singing about me - when my family moved to Puerto Rico in January 1985 because of my husband's job transfer, the kids and I were immediately thrown into many unknown situations (because R was working 12-hour days). Robby was only a few months old at the time and Sarah was 3 1/2 - I would buckle them into their car seats and we would go off in search of... the local Sears to buy a plastic wading pool... the home of someone who was selling a used dishwasher... a friend we'd met at the hotel our first week there. Invariably we'd get "turned around" somehow... and Sarah would ask, in a semi-panic, "are we lost, Mom? are we lost?" - I'd always reply, in my calm-on-the-outside, not-at-all-sure-on-the-inside voice, "no, sweetie... we're just having an adventure"... :-)

It's still an ongoing family memory - I also forged a friendship with David a few years later and had a chance to tell him this story, at which he nodded wisely... <3

P.S. If you see a connection between David's song and Frost's poem, it's not accidental - David's tune was submitted to, and accepted for, Chapter One of the Songs Inspired By Literature (SIBL) project (and he's in very good company!).

SONG: Dark and Deep by David LaMotte

BOOK: The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming by Catherine Keller

POEM: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it's queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there's some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

QUOTE: "To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions." ~ Sam Keen