Major Role of Nature and Its Elements in the Works of Van Morrison

by Hamid Ghahremani

Writing Research Papers Tutor: Farid Parvaneh, Ph.D. Islamic Azad University, Pardisan Branch

Ghahremani ii Outline Thesis: Van Morrisons major songs usually show a deep affinity with nature as the essential source of peace, love and spirituality. I. Introduction A. B. C. II. A Brief Biography On His Lyric-Writing Style On His Interest in Nature

Analyses of Some Morrison Songs A. Into the Mystic B. Sweet Thing C. Across the Bridge Where Angels Dwell D. In the Garden E. When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God?

III.

Conclusion

Ghahremani 1 Van Morrison, the Northern Irish singer-songwriter and occasionally poet, was born in Belfast on 31 August 1945. Schooled by his parents who were avid music listeners as well as amateur musicians, he mastered musical instruments such as guitar and saxophone and started his professional career in the 1950s. Nowadays, after five decades of nonstop production, he is hailed by many critics as one of the most important artists of the 20th century, a great musical innovator who has contributed a great deal to the popular music by injecting poetic lyrics, sometimes employing techniques such as stream of consciousness, to a self-created blend of Jazz, Soul, Folk and Celtic musics (taken from Wikipedia.org sources).

Morrisons lyrics, as described by Scott Foundas in his article The Astral Travels of Van Morrison published on the February 17, 2007 issue of The Village Voice, are usually associated with themes such as reflecting a nostalgic yearning for the carefree days of his childhood. Furthermore, the biographer Brian Hinton is quoted to believe that "like any great poet from Blake to Seamus Heaney he takes words back to their origins in magic... Indeed, Morrison is returning poetry to its earliest roots as in Homer or Old English epics like Beowulf or the Psalms or folk song in all of which words and music combine to form a new reality" (taken from Wikipedia sources). And finally, Morrison himself, in an interview with Chris Neil published on the March/April issue of Performing Songwriter, has described his songwriting by remarking "I write from a different place. I do not even know what it is called or if it has a name. It just comes and I sculpt it, but it is also a lot of hard work doing the sculpting.

Ghahremani 2 The songwriter has always been connected with nature, for example, in most of the songs on his first solo album Astral Weeks, an album ranked nineteenth on the Rolling Stone magazines List of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time published in 2003, the narrator begins from a rural area and then whispering Im nothing but a stranger in this world (a refrain from the title track) takes the listener by the hand and invites her or him to go with him on a journey, a voyage of self-awareness that can only be done when one is in the lap of nature and far from the madding crowd. Later on, a newly emigrated Morrison writes and records the song Redwood Tree, originally included in his 1972 album Saint Dominics Preview. According to Brian Hinton, 'Redwood Tree' is a song of reconciliation, which seems to graft Van's Belfast childhood onto California, where redwoods actually grow, "Keep us from all harm", an invocation to the spirit of the ancient wood (144). Coming back to Europe, Morrison, now a middle-aged man, again writes about nature, but this time from the viewpoint of a man of the world who has experienced fame and glory and has come to realize that life is so simple when one is at home (a line from the song Im Tired Joey Boy) and now feels a deep, mutual affinity with nature as the only place a man feels at home at.

The examples mentioned above are presented by the author of the essay just to give the readers a glimpse of how Morrisons thoughts on nature have developed through different periods of his life, and now to supply them with more in-depth analyses, the writer continues the essay by taking some of the Morrison songs and showing the symbolic roles of natural elements in them.

The first song to be analyzed here is Into the Mystic taken from Morrisons most famous album called Moondance which was released in 1970. This song is considered as one of the

Ghahremani 3 signature songs of Morrisons and of course one of his most popular compositions even among the people who do not usually follow music or poetry, it is curious to know that this song is among the most popular songs doctors listen to while operating, according to the article Health Smooth Operators Name Their Tunes done by BBC (March 18, 1999). Now let us take a look on the first two lines of the song: We were born before the wind Also younger than the sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thinking about the lyrics above and also taking into account what Morrison himself has said about the song that is I guess the song is just about being part of the universe (Hinton 108) one thinks about Pantheism, the belief that God is nothing but nature in all its particles (taken from Wikipedia sources), and since Morrison himself has named poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (mentioned in Summertime in England) as his literary influences, one may say he has come to this view through the works of the poets mentioned above. Now what about the meaning of the two lines? The narrator in these lines takes himself away from the material world and claims he was born before the creation of the wind and the sun, by which he is referring to the time before his physical existence, when he was a part of God. Now consider the fourth and fifth lines of the song: Hark, now hear the sailors cry Smell the sea and feel the sky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ghahremani 4 These lines refer to the second phase of the narrators life. The narrator of these lines is a human being who is describing a scene from this world with the sea, the sky and of course sailors. But considering some further line: And when that fog horn blows I will be coming home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . One feels the deep sadness and longing of the narrator for home, of course a great part of the feeling conveyed is done through Morrisons vocal which cannot be presented here. The narrator has lost his home and cannot find peace anywhere, everywhere he looks is the same. The song progresses and the narrator comes up with these lines: And when the fog horn blows I want to hear it I don't have to fear it And I want to rock your gypsy soul Just like way back in the days of old And magnificently we will fold into the Mystic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This time he forgets about all his fears, that may refer to the worldly concerns, and tries to make gypsies, the people living the simplest sort of life that is the closest of all to nature, out of himself and consequently the listener. What happens after? The gypsies try to feel like human beings felt in the days of old, and as all agree, past is always associated with nature, the more you go toward the past the less urbanized life becomes. So this time the narrator is trying to find his home again, and finally he finds it, when, in the last line above, he folds or mixes himself into the Mystic. Of course, there is no certainty what the word mystic means here. Does it

Ghahremani 5 refer to Mysticism? Is it the name of a river whether actual or fictional? Nevertheless, it is certain that it refers to something closely connected with nature, so it may be taken as a conclusion that Morrison through this song wants to imply that to avoid the weariness the city lifes confusion brings upon us and to live the truer life, one should, and must, be mixed and even identified with nature, his or her only original home.

Secondly, the writer focuses on another song called Sweet Thing taken from Astral Weeks. Morrison himself has described the song to Ritchie Yorke by saying Sweet Thing' is another romantic song. It contemplates gardens and things like that...wet with rain (57). Now let us take a look on the first quatrain of the song that goes this way: An' I will stroll the merry way, An' jump the hedges first. An' I will drink the clear, clean water, For to quench my thirst. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Considering the lines above, again we have the theme of distancing from the city life. The narrator strolls until he comes across the hedges, that might have been used as the symbol of the borders of city life that confine one to it. Passing the borders, the narrator enters a free world, a world in which he can find the symbolic clear, clean water that can quench and satisfy his thirst, that is not a physical thirst but a spiritual one, a thirst for freedom and the spirituality found only in nature. Going further, the listener is confronted with another phase of the song:

Ghahremani 6 An I shall drive my chariot, down your streets and cry. Hoy its me, Im dynamite an I dont know why . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Here the narrator who has found the mystic joy he was craving for, comes back to the city, but not in the shape of an ordinary, everyday man, this time he is like a dynamite filled with energy and he shall drive his chariot that gives the listener the feeling that the narrator is coming from the past, just like a chivalric hero coming to set his beloved free. Then he continues with these lines: An you shall take me strongly in your arms again. An I would not remember that I ever felt the pain. We shall walk and talk, in gardens all misty wet Wet with rain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The narrator finds his beloved, and all his existence is filled with peace. He no longer feels any pain and it is all because he has found love, the true spiritual love, the love that combines both celestial and terrestrial loves. Then, in the last line mentioned above the listener finds out that the two lovers, again distance themselves from the city and go walking in the gardens misty wet with rain. Rain, according to the J.E. Cirlots A Dictionary of Symbols, is associated with purification (271), and so it may be taken as a conclusion that the two lovers, by walking in the rain, purify themselves from any worldly concern, that have been referred to as pains, and go back to the origin of life, that is nature. Now to finish this section, let us have a look on the purple patch of this song:

Ghahremani 7 An' I will never ever, ever, ever grow so old again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The song is in fact finished with the utterance of the line above, of course not literally. Here the narrator implies that after finding the true love and being embraced by mother nature, his ephemeral, worldly existence has turned into an unchanging one filled with unaging youth that is the symbol of intuition as opposed to the contemplation characterized through old age (Cirlot 381), and this again is a proof of Morrisons romantic affiliations.

The next song to be analyzed in this essay is called Across the Bridge Where Angels Dwell taken from the 1982 album Beautiful Vision, in whose praise The Guardian writer Laura Barton in her article Hail, Hail, Rock n Roll writes There are Morrison albums I like better, but Beautiful Vision has never struck me as dull; on the contrary, its particular strangeness has always proved appealing an exploration of Celtic heritage, distance, reminiscence, spirituality and the writings of Alice Bailey (March 13, 2011). The song begins with the repetition of its title: Across the bridge where angels dwell Across the bridge where angels Across the bridge where angels dwell Children play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ghahremani 8 The three first lines echo the implication that the narrator is looking from a place separated from where angels, symbols of divinity, and children, the most innocent and so closest to the divinity and nature, live and play. Then the listener is given these lines: Beyond the place where time is still Beyond the place where time is Beyond the place where time is still Night is day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The dream-like atmosphere of the place across the bridge is intensified through the lines above. Another world, a world more peaceful and serene is shown to the listener, a place where time is still, night is day etc., a place where everything can happen. Then these lines follow: Close your eyes in fields of wonder Close your eyes and dream Close your eyes in fields of wonder Close your eyes and dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The listener is taken away into the arms of nature, but a truer nature with fields of wonder where one can easily close his or her eyes and dream. Nothing else is needed here, the only thing one has to do is dream. In this phase of the journey the listener is in a place between Earth and Heaven, he walks in the fields but fields of wonder. Now consider these lines: Along the path where heaven lies Along the path where heaven

Ghahremani 9 Along the path where heaven lies All is clear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In this part the listener has been ascended to Heaven, of course it is not the literal heaven where the souls of the innocent dwell after death, but a heavenly state that is only felt when one is deeply identified with nature. In this so-called heaven, all is clear. Contemplating this sentence, one comes to conclude that this clarity is not derived from the place, but from the persons wisdom. Thus, Morrison seeks to show us that the mysteries of the world are clear to human beings only when they are wise, and this level of wisdom can never be achieved unless by going away from the hurly-burly of the city life and taking refuge in the serenity of nature. In the next step, the narrator shows his addressee the destination of the journey that also conveys the key concept of the song: Ahead where home awaits the heart Ahead where home is waiting Ahead where home awaits the heart Peace is near . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . These lines that are the last unrepeated sentences of the song tell us about our original home, where our heart yearns to be. Taking the whole song into view, the critical listener may come to believe that Morrison has intended to convey that the soul of a human being is peaceful only when she or he has understood the true function of nature, and this can never be done unless

Ghahremani 10 through meditating the meaning of life and ones role as a particle of the universe. Being wise, there is no ambiguity, and as a result, anguish in ones life and so one can walk through the heaven that he himself has found on the same earth any other person lives on. The song to be talked about here is called In the Garden that is the fifth track on Morrisons 1986 album No Guru, No Method, No Teacher whose title is taken from a part of the song itself. Morrison himself has described the song in the book Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison by saying I take you through a definite meditation process which is a form of transcendental meditation. It's not about TM, forget about that. You should have some degree of tranquility by the time you get to the end. It only takes about ten minutes to do this process (Hinton 255). Now let us begin with the first lines of the song: The fields are always wet with rain After a summer shower When I saw you standin' Standin' in the garden In the garden Wet with rain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Again Morrison chooses a similar setting to that of Sweet Thing for his song, a setting with fields wet with rain and all. The song progresses this way:

Ghahremani 11 You wiped the teardrops from your eye in sorrow And we watched the petals fall down to the ground And as I sat beside you I felt the Great sadness that day In the garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . These lines tell the listener about a great sadness in the heart of the narrators friend or maybe beloved. After she wipes the teardrops from her eyes, they watch the petals fall to the ground and feel more comforted. Then the song is continued by such lines: And then one day you came back home You were a creature all in rapture You had the key to your soul And you did open That day you came back To the garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Through these lines the listener understands that the great sadness is vanished now, and this is all because she has found the key to her soul and of course she has found it in the garden. What does the key to soul mean? Definitely it is self-awareness, the recurring theme in the works of Morrison, that is always achieved when one is closer to nature, that is represented here

Ghahremani 12 in the shape of a garden. Now that she has reached a higher level of understanding, let us see what happens: The olden summer breeze was blowin' gainst your face The light of God was shinin' on your countenance divine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A summer breeze is blowing, but it is not an ordinary one, it is the olden or ancient summer breeze. The adjective olden again echoes the concept of the more you go toward the past, the closer you get to nature, so the closeness to nature is intensified through the use of this word. The summer breeze blows and her countenance divine gleams with the light of God, that is poured on her face through the olden summer breeze. Taking the whole part into account, one may conclude that Gods beauty is seen on ones face only when she or he has reached a high level of self-awareness that is nothing but understanding nature. And you went into a trance Your childlike vision became so fine And we heard the bells within the church We loved so much And felt the presence of the youth of eternal summers In the garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ghahremani 13 After Gods light shines on her face, she goes into a trance and she is as innocent as a child, because now she looks at everything with a childlike vision that is fine or completely developed now. She has grown young again, young and innocent. In this part, God is represented through two thing, firstly the bells within the church and secondly the youth of eternal summers. The former symbol is obvious, since church bells symbolize religion and religion itself is nothing but God. Now how can we justify the youth of eternal summers as a symbol of God? We all agree that nothing worldly is eternal, especially youth, so when the narrator talks about it the listener must understand that he is talking about a spiritual kind of youth that lasts forever, and that is achieved only through ones being a part of the only eternal existence by which the narrator is referring to God, that according to Morrisons Pantheistic beliefs is nature itself. Now let us consider the last parts of the song: And as it touched your cheeks so lightly Born again you were and blushed And we touched each other lightly And we felt the presence of the Christ within our hearts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . These two lines refer to a love between two human beings and it implies that through love, people may be born again, which refers to a spiritual birth rather that a bodily one. These lines tell the listener that love purifies the souls of people, but not every kind of love, one through which you feel the presence of the divinity within your heart, the divinity that is referred to as

Ghahremani 14 Christ here (we know that after all Morrison is a Christian). After all these, the listener is given the conclusion of the whole song in the finishing touches: And I turned to you and I said: No guru, no method, no teacher Just you and I and nature And the Father in the garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . These lines refer to Morrisons mystical approach toward spirituality. In this part he reminds us of the purple patch of the Rumi poem Moses and the Shepherd that reflected the same idea. Morrison advocates the self-found way of worshiping God. He obviously is certain about the existence of God, referred to here as the Father, but he does not think it necessary to follow the rules of academic religions to find God. He believes the only necessary things to find God are you and I and nature which means human love mixed with the understanding of nature. The last song to be discussed briefly here is called When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God? taken from Morrisons 1989 album Avalon Sunset. The song begins with a romantic-style description of the imaginary island of Avalon (taken from Wikipedia sources) in the time of sunset: The sun was setting over Avalon The last time we stood in the west

Ghahremani 15 Suffering long time angels enraptured by Blake Burn out the dross innocence captured again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Then the narrator, of course after some verses, comes up with such lines: And up on the hillside its quiet Where the shepherd is tending his sheep And over the mountains and the valleys The countryside is so green Standing on the highest hill with a sense of wonder You can see everything is made in God Head back down the roadside and give thanks for it all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In the lines above the narrator tells us about the quietness he has found on the hillside. He has found the silence he craved for and now he is able to contemplate more important things. So again the theme of taking refuge in nature is present here. Therefore, the narrator stands on the highest hill, the higher the more spiritual, and forgetting all about the din of the city life, looks at everything with a sense of wonder. He has never been so close to God, so now that he is almost a part of Him, he understands there is a great gap between his perception of the things when he saw them as a human and his perception of the same things from his present point of view. So he has a sense of wonder now that he has found everything is made in God, and as

Ghahremani 16 it has been proved up to this part of the essay, Morrison believes that God is identified with nature. As a result, now he goes back to life but this time not as an ignorant person, but as one who knows the origin of things. Therefore, as it was shown in the analyses above, nature has always been present in the works of Morrison as the only source of peace, that is a human beings one and only true home.

Ghahremani 17 Sources Cited Astral Weeks. Retrieved at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_Weeks. on 30 April 2013. Avalon Sunset. Retrieved at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon_Sunset on 30 April 2013. Barton, Laura. Hail, Hail, Rock n Roll. The Guardian. 13 March 2011. Beautiful Vision. Retrieved at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beautiful_Vision on 30 April 2013. Cirlot, J. E. A Dictionary of Symbols. London: Routledge, 1990. Common One. Retrieved at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_One on 30 April 2013. Foundas, Scott. The Astral Travels of Van Morrison. The Village Voice 17 February 2007. Health Smooth Operators Name Their Tunes. BBC. 18 March, 1999. Hinton, Brian. Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison. New York: Sanctuary Publishing, 2003. Moondance. Retrieved at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moondance on 30 April 2013. Morrison, Van. Across the Bridge Where Angels Dwell. Beautiful Vision. Mercury, 1982. ---. Astral Weeks. Astral Weeks. Warner Bros, 1968. ---. Im Tired Joey Boy. Avalon Sunset. Mercury, 1989. ---. Into the Mystic. Moondance. Warner Bros, 1970.

Ghahremani 18 ---. In the Garden. No Guru, No Method, No Teacher. Mercury, 1986. ---. Redwood Tree. Saint Dominics Preview. Warner Bros, 1972. ---. Summertime in England. Common One. Mercury, 1980. ---. Sweet Thing. Astral Weeks. Warner Bros, 1968. ---. When Will I Ever Learn to Live In God? Avalon Sunset. Mercury, 1989. Neil, Chris. Performing Songwriters Issue 116, 2009: 44-50 No Guru, No Method, No Teacher. Retrieved at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Guru,_No_Method,_No_Teacher on 30 April 2013. Pantheism. Retrieved at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism on 30 April 2013. Saint Dominics Preview. Retrieved at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Dominic%27s_Preview on 30 April 2013. Van Morrison. Retrieved at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Morrison on 30 April 2013. Various Writers. 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Rolling Stone. 2003. Yorke, Ritchie. Van Morrison: Into the Music. New York: Charisma Books, 1975.