This has long been a favourite of mine and, indeed, is one of my 'funeral songs'.
I came late to listening to Van though, even though I liked THEM when I was at school. The early Van Morrison albums escaped me in my late teens and early twenties.
It was later, that the various albums with their edgy, jazz-type musicianship and evocative lyrics in the songs gripped me and still does. I get lost in them sometimes.
Cyprus Avenue is from the 1968 album ASTRAL WEEKS. In 1968 I was in the 5th form at St Patrick's College in Wellington. We were in a structured and academic environment where liberalism and free speech and thought weren't encouraged. I'd already given up on religion, and Catholicism in particular, but was still confined by family, tradition and authority so hadn't properly broken out. My music listening was either via the parents' gramophone and TV at home or my transistor radio which, while playing edgy classics like Cream's 'White Room' didn't open up to me the ground-breaking music that wasn't played on the airwaves but was on LPs. Until I went 'flatting; and had my own stereo system these weren't available to me.
In 1968 I was in a state of flux. I loved my family but wanted some sort of escape. I felt restricted by them and the school I attended. Ten years of religious instruction and convention had its way however. The only rebellion I did, I guess, was to give up. I coasted. I gave up on effort and cruised through School Certificate, University Entrance Accreditation and Higher School Certificate with effectively no study and minimal effort - a habit of a lifetime. I'm not proud of this - it's just a fact.
Tonight, while listening to 'Cyprus Avenue' I thought that, if I had heard this song and the other songs on the album, in 1968, would I have been brave enough, or at least encouraged to break out - leave home at 15 and forge my own path.
Who knows.
My life now might not be different but the path to here certainly would have been. What might have been.
6 comments:
Hey, some nice bass and violin playing on that track.
My 'what might have been' wasn't intended as regret. It was more an interest in what the path might have been like.
Like you I feel blessed in reasonable health, security in my old age and the love of a wonderful woman.
You also have children to enrich you.
Maybe the path isn't as important as the getting there.
I think you need to take your silly religious ideas and shove them ........
Bugger off.
In the real world such declarations can be taken as a form of assault.
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