Fucking Van Morrison breaks my heart. Associations go way back, girls, women, smoky clubs and cold streets. I’ve been avoiding putting discs in the rig with van Morrison tunes, but it’s hard to tell, I don’t mark them “NOT Van Morrison”.
The last association, like all the others, is sweet and cruel. When I first got here my folks were still taking luncheon at the senior center on Tuesdays and Thursday. I drove. Not because my dad was suddenly too demented to drive. He’d been too demented to drive for years but he had a car and a license. It’s a good thing that a sort of politeness was inherent to his nature, there wasn’t an argument over driving.
I tried to tailor the tunes to his tastes; old Miles, various Big Bands, early Coltrane. I don’t have discs labeled “Stuff my Dad Used to Like” either, so other things would creep in. He loved the van Morrison tune I’m about to post, I mean in his dementia, on the drives to the senior center. I tried to think of it as a sort of echolalia, applying names of symptoms I know from other ailments. I still know very little about dementia and he’s two years gone.
He’d sing low harmony to Van Morrison songs with repetition, which is most of them.
He also liked singing Sha-Dooby along with Mick Jagger. The Old Jazz didn’t seem to do much. When I was a kid and he was driving I learned to recognize when a clarinet solo was about to come up and I’d wrap my hand in the seat belt for added support. He’d close his eyes and raise his air clarinet to play along.
I like Van but he’s just showed up too often at the right time and right place or wrong time and wrong place and I don’t know, heartsick. No white boy should have that much soul and soul shouldn’t be allowed to hang out with lilting melodies. Fuck Van Morrison.
I want to say something about Orlando; I haven’t the words. I’d sure like it if candidates, also rans and lame ducks quit pretending they had the words. Tragedy should be mourned before a battle cry is raised. I mean dignity and grace suggests it should be mourned. In general dignity and grace should be the first foot forward and there should be a backdoor always opened before crazy takes the day. Just an opinion.
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