Desiring Machine

I recently purchased 10,000 Maniacs Campfire Songs. A collection of greatest hits and a wonderful album of obscure and unknown recordings. On the second cd there is an absolutely beautiful cover of the wonderfully sweet Iris Dement tune “Let the Mystery Be”. This cover features Natalie Merchant and David Byrne in an uplifting duet. This song reminds me just how great the 10,000 Maniacs was. The voices, the arrangement, words just don’t do it justice. I really enjoy the earnestness in Byrne’s voice on this live track. This track alone makes the album worth the purchase but there are also some other hidden gems including a cover of David Bowie’s Starman.

Every so often I will come across a song that I just need to replay over and over again. Sometimes it is because the song puts me in a happy mood, other times a deep contemplative mood. When I first listened to Ani Difranco’s “You Had Time” I literally listened to that song non stop for three days and nothing else. Let the Mystery Be, is another one of these kind of songs. As soon as I heard it I can’t stop listening to it. The song puts me in a great mood and I love the humility of the lyrics. There is some real honesty in this song.

Everybody’s wondering what and where they all came from
Everybody’s worrying ’bout where they’re gonna go
When the whole thing’s done
Nobody knows for certain,
And so it’s all the same to me
I think i’ll just let the mystery be

Some say once gone, you’re gone forever
Some say you’re gonna come back
Some say you rest in the arms of the savior
If in sinful ways you lack
Some say that they’re comin’ back in a garden
Bunch of carrots and little sweet peas
I think i’ll just let the mystery be

Some say they’re going to place called glory
And i ain’t sayin’ it ain’t a fact
But i’ve heard that i’m on the road to purgatory
And i don’t like the sound of that
I believe in love and i live my life accordingly
But i choose to let the mystery be

The point is very simple, it is about respecting the mysteries of life and death. You have to get on with the process of living and respect the mystery for the power of its mystery. It seems that so many people are way too eager to act on absolute certainty of the future and the hereafter. I just don’t get it I suppose. For me this notion of “letting the mystery be” seems like the only legitimate kind of religious response to the wonderful mystery of life and death. It appalls me how some people seem to revel in their apocalyptic visions of the future. Take the current war between Israel and Hezbollah. Numerous fundamentalist Christian pundits appear to be beside themselves with enthusiasm and absolutely certain that this is all a real sign of the end times. The eagerness to greet the apocalypse baffles me. Even CNN had coverage seriously entertaining the question does the war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah validate the apocalypse of revelations? This will to prohpecy has never settled well with me. Likewise the empiricist in me has never been satisfied by those that are certain about the nothingness of death. I tend to accept this nothingness as the reality but I would never feign certainty in the idea of nothingness after death. Death really is a mystery that we can’t have knowledge of. The only way you can evaluate these theories of death is in their consequences for the present. If your view of death compells you to negate the present and the future then it strikes me that the theory is not worthwhile and likely dangerously maladaptive. If you believe in some grand destruction of the planet with a post apocalyptic vision of redemption then you are lead to an eagerness to hasten the end. Consequentially, environmental or human destruction logically become inconsequential in the process. The consequence of this kind of thinking is a subversion of the present for the future. Death=redemption becomes ascendent over life=preservation. I don’t prentend to know what lies in the great beyond but I am not willing to destroy life in a haste to find out. We would be lucky if more people could just let the mystery be. I find peace in the resignation to mystery as mystery, and so this song puts me in an elated mood.