Objective Expression: Van Morrison - “Cyprus Avenue”
-Former auteur, current grumpy old man Van Morrison
It might be easy to wonder if Van Morrison ever had any good thoughts at all. Especially if you listen to his three recent COVID-related songs where he, among other things, compares the ‘new normal’ to the Berlin Wall (“Born to Be Free”), cries out ‘fake news’ (“As I Walked Out”), and comes directly for scientists’ heads (“No More Lockdown”). Still, I assure you, there was a time where Van Morrison was not only coherent, but was making some of the most profound music of his time.
Astral Weeks is particularly special, an all-time great work of art, no doubt. Morrison is masterful, acting more like a vessel for life’s experiences than a bandleader. Oftentimes these experiences are buried below what might seem like absolute nonsense on the surface, and I’ll concede that it’s possible that Morrison is just not good at writing lyrics, but, for me, it’s fully intentional. He alternates between dogmas and personal truths, at times narrating life from a top-down perspective, at others participating in first person. “Cyprus Avenue” is one of the best examples of this. Before digging in, it’s important to note that there is no objectivity with this era of Van Morrison, not just because of the cryptic themes, but also because Morrison stated time and time again that he had no idea what the songs were really about. This is kind of an easy out, and if the songs had thematic weak points, I would be quick to condemn it as such, but, they really don’t, and on closer inspection, you can see how subjective most of the themes are. Whenever you talk about life in a grander sense, there are no correct answers, it’s really just descriptions and interpretations anyway.
Lester Bangs said it best: “what Astral Weeks deals in are not facts but truths.” Van Morrison does not even attempt to explain any subject on Astral Weeks, he merely sets the scene. In “Cyprus Avenue”, Morrison is helpless, inside a car, as life is lived around him, wishing he could be involved, but he cannot. I can’t help but interpret this as a memory, Morrison reflecting on this moment as a sort of Sliding Doors scenario, questioning what might have happened if he had done things differently. I really hope this is the case: when I mentioned before that these songs could be taken a lot of ways I absolutely meant it. The first six and a half minutes of the song go off totally without a hitch as far as total immersion is concerned, but the two penultimate lines of the song could definitely raise some eyebrows if taken completely out of context: “Nobody, no, no, no, no, nobody stops me from loving you baby / So young and bold, fourteen-year old”. To be fair, the age of this song’s narrator is never mentioned, and if it’s a memory, then it’d be safe to assume the narrator is around the same age. Reflecting on one’s high school years is universal, and I don’t think there’s any evidence to support a pedophillic interpretation, even so, did no one in the room bat an eye at these lines? Maybe the whole gang was just vibing so hard that no one even noticed Van had sung this? According to Van himself, it was more of a ‘stream of consciousness’ situation, that he didn’t really consider an individual lyric among the whole, only a feeling. When performing “Cyprus Avenue” live, most of the outro, including these lines, are removed, replaced with improvisational repetitions of earlier lyrics and an extended conversation between Van and the band behind him. These performances, for me, cement Van Morrison’s free associative nature, moving in and out of the song, both leading and following, creating a space where the artist and listener can take a step back together, briefly understanding the unexplainable.