Van Morrison
Astral Weeks

Say goodbye to Madame George. 

Feel sadness, shed a tear for her, feel a bit of pain for her. Pain, the strangest and most complex feeling, encapsulating all others, from love to loneliness, from joy to nostalgia. Pain is in everything, even if it's in less visible forms, sometimes it's even possible to confuse it with a good feeling. And so the pain in seeing the outcast George, the subtle little joy in realizing one is at least superior. But the man said the show must go on, and if the show is life, then Madame George's condition is absolutely indifferent to the course of events. So why dwell so much on this outcast, praising him, infusing sad feelings? Couldn't life, music, be made solely of graceful Ballerinas, as sweet as they are majestic in their movements? No, because even in these visions sooner or later, visibly or not, forms of pain, more or less deep, would come to form, perhaps even just nostalgia or profound sadness transmitted only skin-deep, only by music itself. And so everything is pain, music especially, and Van discovered it with T.B. Sheets a few years earlier. The times of the brown-eyed girls and easy glories were over, or at least it was time for reflection. It was time for astral weeks, placed between a cold spring and a warm autumn, without going through summer, because that's just a mirage, an illusion. In summer everything seems to be going well, everything seems solvable, even pain seems to disappear behind the sun. And so let's arm ourselves with long avenues, among dry leaves, feel grand, like we'll never feel in our lives, load up our guitar and tread this long path, describing everything we see, excluding nothing. It's a difficult mission, especially if you’re just twenty-three years old and manage to complete everything in just two sessions. It’s called Stream of Consciousness, right? It was James Joyce if I'm not mistaken. Yes, it was him. And the result seems like an impressionistic painting or a simple beat poem: this record is of a grandeur unparalleled in music itself, it never had and never will have, because here it's really not just about music, although it is simply immense. So let us be taken by Astral Weeks, walk that long path made of poetry and solitude where only the great do not get lost. And would you find me? In this idyll formed by guitars and flutes, with inserts of strings that create a surreal air, with the strong voice of Van Morrison reminding us that we are still on earth. And yet it's Van himself who says at the end that we're going to heaven, in another time, in another space, and even in another face. And so who Jimmy is and what his story seems really like details, because the lyrics seem to be embroidered on the harmonic canvas with magnificent perfection, managing to give more and more information, increasingly lengthening the verses, without ever being out of rhythm, indeed it's precisely his voice that is the principal instrument of all tracks. And when he throws himself into those crazy descents of tongue-twisters repeating a word or phrase to the point of spasm, he seems unreachable and perhaps he is. And we feel satisfied without the need to read between the lines, because now without realizing anything we are in the middle of that huge cypress road, where nothing is a sin, not even loving a fourteen-year-old girl, because only love manages to penetrate through the dense flora of the cypress avenue. And so wait, taken once again by Cypress Avenue, look up, flakes of rainbows season a sky clear of prejudices. This must be love, surrounded as it is by such a romantic panorama that continues outside the avenue, or perhaps on a parallel little street, where young people love each other naively, still believing in that summer, frivolous love, because it is still 1968, and the world was absent from Cypress Avenue: the summer of love had passed and left its residues of hope, at least faint. This is why this record has become so important for many reasons.
And as the music dozes off we realize from the first verses and the sonorous coherence that we returned to that avenue, this time much more determined than before, with a guest that inhabits it in his marginalization. Madame George is there under a tree, while playing dominoes looks much older with a hat on his head and sipping wine. All the kids steal his cigarettes and make fun of him. A gentle character yet so mistreated by all, in his eternal condition of outcast and different. Say goodbye to Madame George, take that train, far from him, run from Madame George, but first have at least respect in his pain shedding a tear for him. Say thanks to him when with lowered head he will return your gloves, without demanding anything in return but our satisfaction with this acoustic paradise. But you run away from her, take another path, not far from that of the young lovers, where reside sweet dancers with gracious movements, as if they were living in enchanted music boxes that a single tinkling of a bell lights up. And then the vision begins, and you don't remember the last thing that crossed your mind. Perhaps it was the same Madame George a few minutes earlier, but it doesn't matter: all you have to do is ring the bell, and here’s your ballerina. Seems everything vanished, everything returned to normal, until the delightful conclusion. There's still the cover to look at, that perfect circle inscribed in a square, and Van’s face among the green of the trees. His face seems really to feel thin pain on the surface, but immense inside. Pain that only mother nature can understand, being the cause herself. And then it’s precisely from her that a man must seek, that’s precisely the road to take, whether it takes two days or two years, I believe this is the difference between a formidable artist and a common person: the time taken to find a solution or simply to come to terms with a difficult reflection, whether it’s of pain or love or any other thing, because nature makes no difference of feelings.
And then close your eyes and rest for the love that will come flowing through your stream of consciousness.

Van Morrison.