The Ages of Van

Writing that last entry got me thinking about how much Van Morrison's music has 'been there' for various key stages in the Doctor's life. I think of 1990's Enlightenment album, and I think of my initial 'growing' with it; it was the first album that truly meant something to me. It remains for me one of my favourite albums, and I can still remember my young (17 year old) obsession with the song "Real Real Gone." I think of 1991's Hymns to the Silence, and I think of my first year of university residence, of coming slowly out of my self-imposed shell, of how that album helped preserve my sanity while I suffered through living with a roommate who was, suffice it to say, my diametric opposite. I think of that period in my first year of university, too, as my great education, as I ravenously bought up almost all of Van's back catalogue, and how some albums permanently cemented themselves in my imagination, particularly Astral Weeks, St. Dominic's Preview, Into the Music, and Common One.

This blog refuses to say anything about Moondance, except to say that it was the transcendent(al) album, the one that was 'always there.' Perhaps conspicuously, it is not now. I no longer own a copy of it. And I can't remember the last time I listened to the album entire. There are, sadly, two albums to which I can no longer bring myself to listen, as much as I love them, and Moondance is one of them.

When I think of No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, I always think of the young woman who taught me a lot about myself (and not in the dirty ways many of you are thinking ;-) ). I think of Days Like This, and I think of a period of my life I refuse to describe here. I think of Back On Top, and how that album became a kind of touchstone for me as my life spun entirely beyond my control, and it was all I could do keep myself alight. The piffle albums (The Skiffle Sessions, You Win Again) correspondended with periods of personal piffle and dispurpose. Down the Road corresponded to a time of trying again after a long period on the shelf, which I will leave at that. It's a lovely, nostalgic (but not corny) album; oddly, for the life of me, I can't find it anywhere in my collection.

It's amazing how much music (what you listen to, how you listen to it, what it evokes for you) says about you and to you. It's equally amazing how hearing a song again, or sometimes even thinking of it, can take you right back in time to certain places and feelings and thoughts, can disturb you from your nettle of 'the present.' It's one thing to leave the past in the past, it's another to forget it entirely; the past is part of us, part of who we are and the way we think and the way we respond; the past is us when let our guards are let down, for good or for ill; the present is who we are with them up, telling ourselves things are different this time, telling ourselves we know better than to do the things we've done before, and that we know how to handle things. Most people never wander too far from who they've been, even if it sometimes seems they do; we all remain, at least in some small part, who we have always been, we remain the self we no longer are, often tremorously so. In the words of Clough, 'in the lost childhood of Judas, / Jesus was betrayed." Food for thought.