Kris Delmhorst - 2006 - Strange Conversation

 

I had never heard of Kris Delmhorst until the day I saw her perform live at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. It was like a Tuesday - a weekday, anyway - and a young woman I worked with asked me and Renee if we wanted to go see Kris Delmhorst. A folk singer. At a place that didn't have a liquor license. I don't remember why I said yes.. perhaps Renee convinced me, but I went. I was fixing to endure the show and from the get-go I realized that I could enjoy this time. She was cool, funny, attractive... but then she told a story and performed a song of hers that is one of the most moving things I have ever heard and is, to this day, one of my favorite songs. She told a story about Virgil, who wrote The Aeneid way back somewhere between 29 and 19 B.C. It is one of the most influential poems/pieces of literature in history. It almost was burned by the author himself.

As Delmhort told it, Virgil had gotten ill and knew he was going to die. He was very depressed and he felt that he had failed in his efforts in life, not in his writing so much, but in his desire to be as immaculate as he could be, and in a fit of self pity, he demanded that when he died, all of his writings be burned with his body. And then as he was dying, he fell into a fever dream and when he emerged, he changed his mind because he had reconsidered his failure. He decided that to aspire to Godliness and to fail is not something to be ashamed of, but rather, felt that the rise and the fall are what thread heaven and Earth together.

And then Delmhorst played her song that she wrote about it titled "The Drop and the Dream". I was mesmerized. And after she was done, I said out loud, "Wow". And the small audience was so enraptured by the performance and the emotional impact that it had one them, that no one had spoke or clapped yet when my "wow" came out. You could see a glimmer of a smile from her, a very modest one. 

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