A Sense of Wonder

      Fuckety Fuck Fuck Fuck! Pardon my incivility, but this blog has just learned that Van Morrison is going to be playing Madison Square Gardens at the end of May. This is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Why? Because Doctor J can't freakin' go. Grrrrrr. Arrrrrgh. This just isn't fair. *sniff* Actually, it's weird to think of it: I've seen The Man in concert twice, in 1993 and in 1995, both times at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Shit, nine years. NINE YEARS. NINE FREAKIN' YEARS. Gawd, don't think of years, don't think of years, it will only make you feel even older than you already do.... Oh, damn, now I need a drink.... (Why is it that I can write with perfect ease about events from five hundred years ago, and yet to think back more than five in my own history never ceases to flabbergast me? As the old song goes, "Ain't it funny / How time slips away?")

I thought, though, I'd share the story of that first Van Morrison concert. I was in my second year of my undergrad, living in residence in Toronto, and I wasn't yet twenty. (Damn, why did I have to think of that? Oh well.) It's the third week of April. Classes are out for exams, but I didn't have an exam for another day or two. The day arrives of the concert, and it's a truly ugly day. Not only is it abnormally cold outside, but it's raining the proverbials felines and canines; we're talking about what seemed to many of us torrential rains, and all day long there were reports of vehicles, public and private, being effected by the downpour: busses and cars breaking down everywhere, or getting trapped in viaducts, or skidding off into accidents. Evening comes, and I'm getting ready to make the long trek down to the Gardens. Then, a somewhat miraculous thing happens. The skies clear. Completely. Within the scope of forty-or-so minutes, the weather turns: no longer is it cold or wet, but, in fact, warm, luxurious summer weather, T-shirt and shorts weather. It was as close to an ideal day as I've ever experienced living in the Great Grey North. It was stunning. My friend Theresia and I ventured down to the concert, and it truly seemed as if our little corner of the world had been turned upside down, and it was glorious, liberating, even inspiring. It was as if the sky had opened up for the night, as if we were suddenly in the chorus of a Dryden poem. And, oh yes, there were stars again...       Of course, Theresia and I went to the concert, and it was fantastic. Van, famously temperamental when it comes to live performance, was in perfect workman mode: no crude "Hello Torontos" or anything of the ilk, just a little modest lighting, and Van and his band. And, I should add, a man behind the scenes who weaved a minor miracle: he managed to adjust the acoustics within the notoriously cavernous Gardens into a sonic marvel. So fine was the work that when a song creeped down to an almost perfect quiet, one could hear the smallest sounds on stage; one could hear every chord, every whisper, as if you were sitting in the very front row (which, by the way, we weren't; we were students, after all, and financially condemned to the nose-bleeds). It was a magnificent concert, easily the best I've ever attended, with Van doing a lot of his hits (Van's famous for refusing to do most of his hits), and even a long, groovin' take on Ray Charles' "Lonely Avenue," which was to appear on Van's next album. Much to all our surprises, he even did "Brown-Eyed Girl," a song Van famously hates to perform. This didn't feel in the least like going to any old concert. This felt like going to church, that ideal church to which we would all belong if we could only find it, that church in which somehow meaning and experience collide into pure rhapsodic joy. One could speculate that this was just something in my own mind, a joy that comes from a young man finally getting to experience a musical idol live for the first time. But no. All of the reviewers the next day sang of the concert as I do now. Several called it the best concert of the year.

Set List: April 24 1993 I'm Not Feeling it Anymore Why Must I Always Explain? See Me Through/Soldier of Fortune Domino Whenever God Shines His Light Sweet Thing/My Lagan Love Star of the County Down Northern Muse (Solid Ground)/No Prima Donna/When Heart Is Open Wavelength Tupelo Honey A Town Called Paradise So Quiet In Here/That's Where It's At Youth of a 1000 Summers Cleaning Windows/Vanlose Stairway/Trans-Euro Train Did Ye Get Healed?/It's All In The Game/Make It Real One More Time Lonely Avenue/4 O'Clock In The Morning/You Give Me Nothing But The Blues Moondance/My Funny Valentine Brown Eyed Girl In The Garden/Since I Fell For You/Real Real Gone/Daring Night Enlightenment Gloria (With info from this site. Sometimes the Net can be a good thing.)

      The concert ended, and here were Theresia and I, filing out, me especially giddy. (God, when was the last time I was giddy???? Years, at least.) I was reminded of the title of that Wallace Stevens poem, "God Is Good. It Is A Beautiful Night." Theresia and I, deciding to savour the night a little further, headed down, of all places, to The Brunswick House, and had a few drinks there, imbibing the euphoria as much as the spirits. Eventually, though, with both of us busy the next day, we decided to head back to the residence, which meant getting on the subway and then a bus afterwards. In a sense, I guess this was a coming-down from the high, but it didn't feel like it; it felt more like a continued coasting on air, as if I, especially, were possessed with Mercury's sandals. An hour and a bit later in this transit, we got back inside the residence, and went immediately into the common room, where, of course, we began to regale the waiters-up with our reports of the concert. Not two minutes back indoors, barely more than saying "Oh, damn, it was great," there was a thunderclap outside. We all turned in surprise to look out the common room window.

      And then it rained. It rained and rained and rained, that cold, heavy, miserable rain so typical of Ontario in April. The quad the next morning seemed rotten and musty, as if there had been no reprieve the night before, no glimmer of summer at all. It was as if it had all been a bizarre dream, and some of us joked that we expected to find Bobby Ewing in the shower. The night before was suddenly cast into a kind of magical relief, another fact that somehow made its way into all of the newspaper reviews of the concert. It really did seem that the skies had opened up just for that concert, just for that night, that marvellous, marvellous night. I've not seen anything like it since, nor do I think I will again. But it affirmed, in grand form, that every now and again, coincidence or magic makes its presence known in the most serendipitous way. God Was Good. It Was A Beautiful Night. And all the stars were shining bright.