Into the Mystic

The musical selection this evening is "Moondance" by Van Morrison.  Not just the song, but the album.  I'm listening to it on the new iTunes service.

It's good, of course.

I discovered Van when I was a sophomore in college, circa 1973.  My favorite album then was "Hardnose the Highway," one of his lesser known.  To me, it was magical.  Morrison always seemed to have a unique blend of soul and mysticism.  Snow in San Anselmo, indeed.  I used to put in on my stereo at bedtime to help me get to sleep.  (Now iTunes is playing "Caravan."  Such a classic.)

Why is it that my fondest memories of music are from my teens and twenties?  And why does music conjure up so many special evenings and special relationships?  There was a depth to our experience then that seems to have given ground to the constant bombardment of bits and bytes through today's technology and social media.  We had no texting, no emailing, no messaging, no snap chatting, no t.v.'s in our dorm rooms, but we sure could talk, about so many things, ultimate issues, the meaning of life.

Turn it up, turn it up, a little bit higher, the radio.   Turn it up, that's enough, just so you know, it's got soul.

During winter break of my senior year I stayed in a house rented by my friend Duane and his roommate Dan.  It was sparse.  The shower was in the unfinished basement, and the water, like the room temperature, was cold.  At night, we played Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years," over and over.  And we talked a lot.  And we read books.  Novels and philosophical and theological works.  And I worked on my senior thesis, about some of the "Lost Generation" writers and how they were affected by the First World War.  Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos.

When that foghorn blows, you know I will be coming home.

Everything today seems more intelligent but at the same time more superficial.  And I wonder if our kids' generation feels the same way about their times and their relationships with their friends and sweethearts as we did about ours.  Sometimes I wonder if I was a bad father, letting my kids have computers and cell phones and use social media.  And later, when they were beyond my reach, listen to country music (ugh!).  But they are great kids, despite my inadequacies.  There's that.

These dreams of you, so real and so true.  These dreams of you, so real and so true.  

I used to play some Van songs with my friend Eric.  We did "Brand New Day," Eric on piano and me on guitar.

And it seems like, and it feels like, and it seems like, and it feels like, yes it feels like a brand new day, a brand new day. 

Another classic, so seventies really.  A song that feels like it was influenced by Dylan, and could just as easily have been performed by The Band.

We both were Christians until Eric went to India and came back an atheist.  At least that's what he was when I last saw him, in the Bay Area a few years ago.  He even sent me an atheist book after our visit - Dawkins I think.  I started reading it, but was disappointed at the way the author set up straw men to knock down.  If Christianity was all as he described it, I'd probably attack it too.  But it's not, thank God!

Eric seemed angry when he came back from India.  The first time we performed together after his return, in one of the dorm lounges, he played guitar and sang "Positively 4th Street," such a bitter song. I played Jackson Browne's "Song for Adam":

Together we went traveling, as we received the call.
His destination India, and I had none at all.
I still remember laughing with our backs against the wall.
So free from fear we never thought that one of us would fall.

That was pretty mean of me, I suppose, but he sang the Dylan song with a lot of pent up anger too.  ("I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes, then you'd know what a drag it is to see you.")  Whether the anger was real or Eric was just channeling Dylan I don't know.  I don't think he was directing any anger only at me, at least I hope not.  We really were singing to each other more than with each other, though.  And of course, we didn't go traveling together.  He went alone.  And I could never know what he saw and why it affected him the way it did.  I later came to understand some of his attitude, and even share it to some degree.

Anyway, before Eric left for India, the music was so spiritual.  We couldn't help but feel it.  He is still a musician now, some 40 years later.  He has a band.  I still admire him and wish him well.

We had our own little acoustic band our freshman year - Eric, Deborah, Sue and me.  We all sang, Eric played piano and sometimes guitar, and I played exclusively guitar.  Eric was good on guitar and brilliant on piano.  We sang mostly Christian songs.  One I remember most was from "Godspell":  "By My Side."  The musical was still fairly new and popular then.

I'll put a pebble in my shoe and watch me walk, I can walk. 

The girls' voices were sweet and hushed.  And then there was Cat Stevens' "Morning Has Broken," before his Muslim conversion.  Eric played that well too.

We all went through changes in those early years, and later too I imagine.  I suppose we still do.

In a live version of "The Boxer," there is a verse that never made it to the single.  It goes:

The years are rolling by me, they are rocking evenly,
I am older than I once was, but I'm younger than I'll be,
That's not unusual.
No that's not strange,
After changes upon changes we are more or less the same,
After changes we are more or less the same.

I played this song, with this verse, quite a bit in the privacy of my room in law school and probably a few times in public.  I went through many changes during that intense period, and many more afterwards.  But the music always brings me back to the person that I guess I've always been.

It's good, of course.