Peoria Illinoisan

A recent post on Scott O’Brien’s Briar Patch titled “I want to go way back when…” reminded me immediately of two Van Morrison songs from Hymns to the Silence.  As hard as it is to choose a favorite album from his extensive and always excellent catalog, this always ends up at the top for me.

You’ll either have to live with the 30sec clips from Amazon, ask me to illegally burn it for you, or buy the album.  If you do none of the above, and ignore this post, you’ll be missing out on genius.

Van Morrison from Hymns to the Silence:

Take me back, take me way, way, way back, On Hyndford Street
Where you could feel the silence at half past eleven, On long summer nights
As the wireless played Radio Luxembourg, the voices whispered across Beechie River
In the quietness as we sank into restful slumber in the silence, carried on dreaming, in God
And walks up Cherry Valley from North Road Bridge, railway line, On sunny summer afternoons
Picking apples from the side of the tracks
That spilled over from the gardens of the houses on Cyprus Avenue
Watching the moth catcher working the floodlights in the evenings
And meeting down by the pylons, Playing round Mrs. Kelly’s lamp
Going out to Holywood on the bus, And walking from the end of the lines to the seaside
Stopping at Fusco’s for ice cream, In the days before rock `n’ roll
Hyndford Street, Abetta Parade, Orangefield, St. Donards Church
Sunday six bells, and in between the silence there was, conversation
And laughter, and music and singing, and shivers up the back of, the neck
And tuning in to Luxembourg late at night, And jazz and blues records during the day
Also Debussy on the third programme, Early mornings when contemplation was best
Going up the Castlereagh hills, And the cregagh glens in summer and coming back
To Hyndford Street, feeling wondrous and lit up inside, With a sense of everlasting life
And reading Mr. Jelly Roll and Big Bill Broonzy, And “Really The Blues” by “Mezz” Mezzrow
And “Dharma Bums” by Jack Kerouac, Over and over again
And voices echoing late at night over Beechie River
And it’s always being now, and it’s always being now, It’s always now, Can you feel the silence?
On Hyndford Street where you could feel the silence
At half past eleven on long summer nights
As the wireless played Radio Luxembourg, the voices whispered across Beechie River
And in the quietness we sank into restful slumber in silence
And carried on dreaming in God.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.