Astral Weeks and Self-Rediscovery...
So, it’s been just
over a year since I posted the last article on this blog and well – it’s been
one hell of a year. During this period which I chose to name a ‘gap year’ – an artificial
creation put in place to give those around me the potentially false hope that I’m
still planning on going to University whilst in actual fact immersing myself in
365 days’ worth of pubs, clubs, romance and drug dependency… it seems I needed
this time to rediscover myself and rekindle my romance with music.
Despite popular belief, drugs and music don’t go quite as ‘hand
in hand’ as you’d first imagine, certainly not the ones that primarily go up
your nose anyway. In fact they’re merely there to fill in the void that perhaps
music once did, fundamentally numbing your brain and the senses in a robotic
fashion in turn making only repetitive, electronic sounds seem appealing to
you. Because of this mind-numbing process, music and I have been avoiding each
other for quite a while now – something which I once would have believed to be
impossible. Despite this, throughout the year’s ongoing struggle, there has
always been at least one light throughout the storm. One comfort I could always
turn to when there was nothing else. An album which ultimately I owe my life to…
and that is Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks.
The album itself is one of those creations which is so
simple and beautiful that I almost feel I’m diminishing its importance by even
talking about it; there’s this voice in my head telling me to scrap this whole
article and yell “JUST LISTEN TO IT!” at the top of my lungs. Though the album
only consists of eight songs, each one is so intricately crafted and timed to surge
up through crescendo after crescendo, completed by minute yet incredibly
essential details such as that Spanish guitar you can hear dwindling in the
distance or the almost mystical sound of the triangle twinkling after every
eight bars. There really are no fillers on this album.
The peak of Astral
Weeks comes three songs in with arguably the most magical, stunning four
minutes and ten seconds to exist in the stratosphere, Sweet Thing. After the self-titled introduction and the passionate
and captivating rendition of Beside You, the gentle beginning chords of Sweet Thing sweep in like a breath of
fresh air eliminating all tension created by the previous songs… or in fact
created by any other previous personal disasters and heartaches. In that
moment, Sweet Thing is the cure to
all man’s problems. Everything in life suddenly seems like such a tiny detail
in the big picture. All that matters now is the beauty and simplicity of this
song and Morrison reminding us that ‘we
shall never grow so old again’.
The moment which made me realise the significance of this
album in my life was almost six months ago now. I recall a seventeen year old
me sitting in my bedroom home alone with nothing but two grams of cocaine to
keep me company - which I'd bought in advance of my birthday, however the temptation had become too much. Only two months before, my neurotic and reckless best friend aka my dad – the very person
who introduced me to Astral Weeks and
whose favourite record is also this very album – had been involved in a
motorbike accident leaving him lying in a hospital bed in the next county,
unaware if he would ever be able to walk again. As I racked up another line on
the mirror I had in front of me, I contemplated this saga whilst playing my
favourite album. It was as I was googling how much paracetamol I would have to
consume to effectively end this saga that Morrison sung the words…
‘And if it gets to you
And you feel like you
just can't go on
All you gotta do
Is ring a bell
Step right up, and
step right up
And step right up
Just like a ballerina’.
And with that, I closed the tab, plugged my nose and sniffed
up approximately 0.25g of self-confidence and continued allowing myself to
think the words “YES! I AM INCREDIBLE AND THE WORLD NEEDS ME.”. After reaching
the high of my self-assurance though, it was then that I realised Astral Weeks had saved my life.
That was six months ago and since then I had given up on
music. Well, I gave up on *in a pretentious, arrogant typically hipster tone* real music. From then on, my mephedrone
fuelled mind had decided that trance, dubstep and dnb were where my real
passion lies, it soon going on to become the soundtrack of my monumentally
fucked up summer. Amidst months of succumbing to the small town I live in; wearing
trackies, roaming from house party to house party, falling in love, falling in
hate, insanity, heartbreaks, drug dependency, fall outs and mistakes… it was
when this romance ended – only three weeks ago may I add – that I find myself
returning once again to Astral Weeks
to gracefully bring me down from this high by reminding me that reality is not so
bad after all.
Lyrically, this album is on the verge of being near
impossible to decipher yet this never becomes an obstacle in its appeal. For
some reason, it doesn’t seem important for us to know what Astral Weeks means; all that needs to be understood is that it means something to us. Whether it be a
person, a time or a place, Astral Weeks
possesses that magical power to evoke different emotions and memories from each
and every one of us, making it one of the most personal records you will ever
grace your ears with.
10/10
