Van Morrison
Wavelength

THE REVIEW

Missing. I take this as an excuse. Missing in the database. That's why. Or maybe not, perhaps it's just that you put a piece on and a bunch of people come out to tell you they liked it. Or, as often happens, it's because I should be doing some work, and I just don't feel like it.

The year is just-begun 1978. A cartoon - as always enlightening - by Altan, reads: No more Marx no more Lenin no more Mao Tse Tung. Come on Cips, rhythm. Cips, if it wasn't clear, is Cipputi. It's said by a worker, in overalls, in front of a lathe, not yet numerically controlled. I will walk through the streets.

It comes out at the beginning of that year. And the newspapers (Il Mucchio, but also Ciao 2001) turn up their noses. And it takes just listening to one song, the title track, to raise a doubt. Madonna, him too. Him too, rhythm. Alan Sorrenti comes to mind, figli delle stelle. The Altan cartoon. And the many who that year made that stuff. And Madonna, just before, it was A Period Of Transition. In life, I have forgiven Van the Man many things, but not that one. Anyway, goodbye, Van, thanks for what you've done. Now we have to face the second phase of your career. Thanks anyway, we won’t forget. I will walk through the streets.

But no.

Instead - upon closer listening - it's a completely different album. And it's touching to think about how important the title was, that year. Wavelength. It was the start of private radio stations. And maybe, some had the audacity to air it. It's a different album. With something that has always - at least for me - more than anything, characterized Van Morrison. Showing himself naked. He did it, with lion's courage, in 1968, recording Astral Weeks. Writing phrases that no one will ever take away from my heart. He did it the year before, with that album so bad, that it told us who he was. Who he was then. Without shame. Like when nothing goes right for you, when you're not sure about anything, when you don't like yourself. He does it here too. And when you realize it, you can't help but love him. This album. And who made it. It's an album filled with a very simple desire. The desire not to be alone. And to dance, too. But not with the fashionable strobes. To dance, and to feel alive. A desire, indeed. That things aren't going so well. I will walk through the streets.

So here I am, once again in my life, clapping out of sync, during the title track of the album. And I'm having a bit of a hard time sitting here, writing. I want to get up and move a bit. Soon I will. But not yet. Probably because it's not in the database. Surely. That's why after I will sing at the top of my lungs Santa Fé, or Hungry For Your Love. I will walk through the streets.

Or maybe it's the fault of the track that closes the album. That there's not a single time in my life that I haven't felt a shiver. It's called Take It Where You Find It. And for a couple of minutes, at the end, before the machine goes off, Van, The Man, sings and shouts that he will walk through the streets. That he will walk. Alone, on his own, without anyone understanding him. Until he finds a star. That shines for him.

The last words say that he sees it. A star. His star. Perhaps it’s not the database's fault. Or its users who like it. Perhaps it’s something else.

There are albums that are really difficult to talk about. Difficult, if you keep in mind that what you are supposed to talk about is the music. And not instead what you were, what you were doing, when you encountered them. Or albums that are very easy to talk about. If you think that - basically - music is nothing but something that serves to catalyze our emotions. To make us remember them, to make us feel them stronger, and also more beautiful. Wavelength, for me, is such an album. That's all. With many apologies. You know why.