Iris DeMent - Let the Mystery Be

SONG Let the Mystery Be

WRITTEN BY Iris DeMent

PERFORMED BY Iris DeMent

APPEARS ON Infamous Angel (1992)

I forget where I first heard Iris DeMent, but I remember my reaction to her voice: I stopped whatever it was I was doing and just listened. There is no other voice like Iris's; it's as if she were channeling the souls of rural Southern women going right back to when the first Scots-Irish settlers first found their way into the hollers of the Appalachians. It's the voice of an old, old soul, full of the sorrows and the joys of women making the best of life with the bare minimum to work with. And yet the owner of that voice is still a young woman.

Whatever the first occasion, I've been listening to Iris DeMent for a long time now. At one point she was a regular on A Prairie Home Companion; she sang harmonies on several songs with Nanci Griffith and Emmylou Harris on Nanci's Other Voices, Other Rooms (and wasn't that a vocal trio to die for!), and has also sung with John Prine and Steve Earle. That archetypal voice has been ringing in my ears for a while now.

The song "Let the Mystery Be" is classic Iris, dealing with matters of belief in a unique and decidedly unorthodox manner. She talks about where we might or might not go after death, looking at what everybody says, and figuring that nobody really knows she decides to "let the mystery be." This stereotypical Southern Baptist voice utters heresy! But she's done that often in her career, with songs like "The Way I Should" and "He Reached Down". And in doing so, she's only echoing those old souls she's channeling, because despite the hellfire-and-brimstone of the Southern preachers, the everyday men and women up in the hollers and in the backwoods were a lot less strict and much more forgiving than the preachers. The woman with that voice may have gone to church on Sunday and listened to the preacher and shouted "Amen", but in her heart of hearts she kept her own counsel. Let the men wrangle about doctrine and who's going to heaven and who to hell; she's content to "let the mystery be".

LYRICS

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Some say once you're gone you're gone forever, and some say you're gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour 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.

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Instrumental break.

Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory and I ain't saying 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.
Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly.
But I choose to let the mystery be.

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

The video I found for this on YouTube is from her 1995 transatlantic sessions with Irish, Scots, and American musicians. On this tune she has mostly Americans (Molly Mason & Jay Ungar and Russ Barenburg) with the addition of Irish musician Donal Lunny on Irish bouzouki. It's a lovely rendition. Enjoy!