Van Morrison and Me
Evolving Musings on the Repetitive Poetry of a Flawed Prophet
I know what you’re thinking. Pretentious title, random Celtic soul singer from the 80s no one talks about anymore—“Who on earth does this girl think she is?” And to that I will counter: Who, really, does Van Morrison think he is? He certainly isn’t the kind of sophisticated and poetic person who pours buckets of green over blank cream-canvas kinds of days. He certainly isn’t the kind of compelling speaker who lends due patience and reverence to any specific, charming vaguenesses of our lives. He can’t be. Or perhaps, he can.
The Italian language has a word, sentire, which inhabits two meanings: to hear, and to feel. I find this joining of what are, in English, two entirely separate thoughts, useful when trying to cope with and understand the way I approach and relate to my own creativity as well as in describing my relationship to the music of Van Morrison. It is the music I was raised on. The music I heard almost every day, and the music I hated, passionately, for the entirety of my first sentient decade; the confronting and colorful bohemian adventure that was my childhood. I was very blessed, and I am very grateful.
I remember sitting in the backseat of our Volvo, my feet gently kicking the back of the driver’s seat my mother sat in, fervently begging her to “Please, please, PLEASE Mama put on anything but the boring man with the guitars and all the bad singing!” For years we would drive to summer camps, fiddle lessons, children’s parks, and grocery stores, and all the while I kicked her chair and we listened to Veedon Fleece and that was how it went. Fortunately for all concerned, the hyper affection-in-all-forms-seeking preteen I was to become felt quite differently about songs recorded in 1989 featuring gratuitous string pads and titles like Have I Told You Lately (a cover, but still. It was the gateway drug. I was twelve.)
My mother always says now that the song of his that, in her view, best represents my own soul is Sweet Thing, the stream-of-consciousness epic featured on Morrison’s acclaimed album Astral Weeks, in which he says “Ohhh I will walk and talk in gardens all wet, all misty wet with rain. And I will never, ever, ever, ever grow so old again!” And while I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Van’s music is the source of my at times inexplicable musical calling, it sure helped.
The music is ridden with all the tropes that frequent my own life (perhaps even in direct result). Rain-wet gardens, shamelessness, desire for solitude, slow-moving lovers, poetic hearts that spontaneously break into song, traveling courageous on the journey to freedom and enlightenment—paradise. His lyrics and motifs—all very humanly oxymoronic—tell their stories using specificity and metaphor, utter joy and complete sadness, the indulgently complex and elegantly simple.
“You're the queen of the slipstream with eyes that shine / You have crossed many waters to be here / You have drank of the fountain of innocence / And experienced the long cold wintry years / There's a dream where the contents are visible / Where the poetic champions compose / Will you breathe not a word of this secrecy? / Will you still be my special rose?”
For decades, Van Morrison’s artistry has held a place of honor and admiration in the music industry, and over the course of his long career he has produced numerous chart-topping hits. Today however, Van is most often thought of as a crotchety old man who yells at his band, is predictably terrible live, and, most recently, writes songs that rail against Covid lockdown measures and “government overreach” surrounding the deadly pandemic. The music he has released in recent years has been, in my opinion, predictable, unimaginative, and phoned in.
Yes, Morrison is an epically flawed human and by many of the postmodern societal standards we live by today should likely be somewhat culturally left behind due to his lack of perspective. But his at times blasphemous poetics and decidedly messy presence on the world stage have, at the same time, been necessary reminders for me of the dynamic many great artists face: to be a accused of blasphemy in one form or another for making art that challenges what people think they know, the times they live in, and what they hold sacred.
Perhaps this is why this music is so integrally part of everything I do and who I am as an artist. Pervading every part of my life is a desire to make gutsy artistic leaps of faith—to do what no one has done before and shine in what I know to be the expression of my own voice and truth. But running parallel to that is always persistent self-consciousness, fear, and feeling of fraudulence, of being an imposter in my own soul and in my own heart’s work.
Van Morrison, I would say, does his best to proudly own all this. Still many find his way of thinking much too confronting for comfort, while at the same time egregiously amorphous and self-indulgent. I think in this way I have surrounded myself with many artists who embody similar dichotomies as a reminder that so many people live in between right and wrong, and that, for the world, this is a good thing. To live on the edge of huge mistakes and create incredibly timeless and soul-piercing art that touches hearts. To fully commit, make the huge mistakes and remind each other that we are only us. That only the visions we carry can be perfect.
This dynamic fascinates me, especially in our present technological age where cancel- and call-out culture, when combined with an ever-decreasing standard of personal privacy and intellectual autonomy, give people few if any second chances at morality. In this sense what Van Morrison represents to me is the importance of continuing to appreciate and look deeply at the complexity of humans, of our motivations and behavior. That realistically it is vital not to put anyone on too high a pedestal, nor completely write them off or cast them away. As Van himself says, “There is good and evil in everyone.”
And in a world full of chaos, fear and competition, amid his own problems as well as the towering expectations of others and even more menacing self-doubt all artists carry, he chose to sing about “Going out to Holywood on the bus / And walking from the end of the lines to the seaside / Stopping at Fusco’s for ice cream / In the days before rock ‘n’ roll / Hyndford Street, Abetta Parade / Orangefield, St. Donard’s Church / Sunday six-bells, and in between the silence there was conversation / And laughter, and music and singing, and shivers up the back of the neck.”
Who on earth do I think I am? Often, in my life, when this question has struck Van Morrison’s music has helped me come up with answers. At the very least, it has always comforted me. And indeed, coming to terms with the intermingling of this hyper-conscious and repetitive poetry, this ethereal and imperfect music with my life and own artistic voice has consistently been instrumental in my growth as an artist and as an individual. Indeed my own “stupid human tricks,” as my mother calls them, or in more academic terms the plague of existential questioning and angst—which are, in essence, as amorphous and self-indulgent as Morrison’s art—are what most draw me to it. When streaks of stardust and the divine can be found among his forty-one—count them—studio albums to date, one can’t help but appreciate their being possessive of themes still incredibly pertinent to the times we live in. Appreciating, too, how boldly his work has been rendered, with an honest artistic soul touched so deeply by truth, beauty, and imagination, that it will never go out of style.
