Circa 1997 I saw a Fox special on the Marfa, Texas Mystery Lights. Living in northern Virginia at the time, southwestern Texas seemed like the edge of the world; a place I could never visit. But still, I resolved to see those mystery lights one day and I wrote this unlikely love song in honor of the phenomena, as if I were a native of the area.

Well, fast-forward to 2002, and, in a cross-country jaunt, I made the extreme detour to Marfa, on a dirt highway thru the lovely, please-god-don't-let-me-break-down-here desert, just spitting distance from Mexico. Killing daylight in town, I found a bookstore and looked up how to find/see the Mystery Lights. Turns out, there's a convenient little tourist parking lot/picnic area set up to accommodate viewers. I parked and waited.

Come sundown, I kept watch down the narrow alley of desert between the lights of a distant radio station to the East and the lights of a highway in the hills to the West. (Which was NOT as I remember the Fox show describing things. More like, "…Nothing but desert scrub, for the next 40 miles to Mexico…") After a while, I came to see a dancing, reddish light in the blackness, moving around out yonder. Thrilled, I doubled checked to be sure I was west of the radio station lights, but I couldn't find them now. Turns out, the lights I saw WERE the radio station lights. And I found that a funny thing happens when you look at a dot of light in the dark: it starts to dance around and slam in and out of focus.

I spent the whole night there, waking up from time to time to see if there were any Mystery Lights, but didn't see a blessed one of 'em. So, to answer the song's musical question: NO. I have NOT seen the Mystery Light. Also, since my imaginings about the desert landscape came from a TIme Life pop-up book about the Arizona desert, I didn't realize that there weren't cacti in Marfa. Nor mesas. Probably not owls or kestrels, either.

Nevertheless, it's a damn good song. I remember I finished recording the instrumental parts on Christmas Eve, and the ringing harmonics I played at the start and finish sounded very seasonal to me. I said a quiet "Merry Christmas" into the guitar mic after I finished, which got cut off in the final mix. It was a special moment, I still remember well, however.