Astral Weeks

http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/van/reviews/astral.html

The most wonderful essay about this album can be found here. I think it'll help all of you get closer to the creative and mystical mind of the very young man who made Astral Weeks. I'm convinced that even Van couldn't explain what some of these songs mean, as he opened up let the mystic flow into him. He escaped all boundaries and made a timeless work about yearning and coming of age, about sex and death, acceptance and love. I'd put it up against some of the greatest poetry or prose we have.

Once in a while over his career Van has touched something like this again, but rarely. St. Dominic's Preview had some, Veedon Fleece had a lot, but never did he, nor anyone in this era, equal the beauty and enigma that is found in Astral Weeks.

Irish?.........Well anyway I thought I'd add another little piece of info. This song was actually recorded last, kind of as an afterthought to fill space. In fact the session flutist had already gone home, the flute you hear in the song is the flutist who had been playing in Van's Jazz trio.

Weaves so many images together. Such a chill and amazing song, though it feels effortless and light. Like it could just vanish at any moment but it's memory would always remain.

This is one of my favorite songs on one of my favorite albums. I think that it's all about finding yourself, love, and that which is beautiful in the world.

By the way he is poor and she is rich. Also he is big into astrological stuff. The Astral plain is the level above this one, its weird because things arent what they seem in that level. Things can come and go in exist randomly. It is believed that one can possibly wish something hard enough in that realm and it will occur in this world. Also kissing the eyes has something to do with Tir Na Nog. Irish folklore. He thinks that if his eyes are kissed it will give him sight into the the Astral plain. Deep. i dont fully understand it myself.

The chord structure of the song is quite repetitive (and I believe that enforces his lyrics even more), but the complexivity of the words is what makes the song so beautifully poetic and eternal. My interpretation of the Astral Weeks is pretty simple to grasp though.. Van is writing about his love.. and how if he got into the very depths of her thoughts, where all the peculiarities of life that could alter her genuine train of thought were gone.. at the core of her true soul.. would she still do it all the same? Would she come find him? Would she even want to? Would she kiss his eyes and love him for the man he is? Or would life be different? Would she lay him down in silence, in a soothing calm, to be reborn to come back into her life over and over for internity.. as to question does she love him so much that she would put him on replay? Like an old record she loves too much to throw away. This song to me, is about him questioning life, love, and how differences can often alter life's path.. and in turn, ponder the unknown.

As a Dartmouth undergrad steeped in the historical and literary underpinnings of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks,” I’ve dug into every line of this song, tracing its echoes through poetry—classical, modern, and everything in between—while pinning it to the gritty context of Morrison’s life circa 1968. This isn’t just a song; it’s a tapestry of influences, from Belfast streets to Beat poets, with a nod to the ancients. Let’s break it down, line by line, with the rigor of someone who’s spent too many late nights in Baker-Berry Library cross-referencing everything.

“If I ventured in the slipstream / Between the viaducts of your dream”
Right off the bat, Morrison drops us into a fluid, elusive space. “Slipstream” isn’t just a poetic flourish—it’s got roots in aerodynamics, a term for the air current behind a moving object, which by 1968 was creeping into counterculture lingo as a metaphor for riding life’s flow. Think Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), where motion and drift define existence—Morrison, fresh from Belfast and a stifling contract with Bang Records, was a wanderer too. “Viaducts” conjures industrial Belfast, its railway bridges a stark image from his youth, but also nods to W.B. Yeats’ The Tower (1928), where structures bridge the earthly and the mythic. The “dream” bit? That’s straight out of Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale (1819)—“fancy cannot cheat so well / As she is famed to do”—blurring reality and reverie.

“Where immobile steel rims crack / And the ditch in the back roads stop”
Here’s where Morrison gets earthy. “Immobile steel rims” could be the rusted wheels of Belfast’s shipyards—think Harland & Wolff, where the Titanic was forged, a symbol of stalled progress by the ‘60s. Historically, Northern Ireland’s industrial decline was kicking in, and Morrison, born 1945, saw it firsthand. “Ditch in the back roads” feels like a memory of rural County Down, where he’d ramble as a kid. Poetically, this echoes Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill (1945)—“down the rivers of the windfall light”—a pastoral nostalgia tinged with decay. The “crack” and “stop” halt the motion, like Eliot’s “still point” in Four Quartets (1943), hinting at a pause before transformation.

“Could you find me? / Would you kiss my eyes? / And lay me down / In silence easy / To be born again / To be born again”
This is Morrison wrestling with intimacy and renewal. “Could you find me?” has a lost, plaintive ring—think Sappho’s Fragment 31 (c. 600 BCE), where the speaker’s yearning fractures under observation. “Kiss my eyes” is tender but odd—maybe a riff on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”), subverting romantic norms. “Lay me down / In silence easy” feels like a burial or a rebirth, tying to the Irish aisling tradition—vision poems of renewal, like Aogán Ó Rathaille’s 17th-century works. “To be born again” screams gospel, sure—Morrison’s Belfast was steeped in Protestant hymns—but also recalls Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence from Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), a cycle of self-overcoming. He’s pleading for a reset after the chaos of 1967 New York.

“From the far side of the ocean / If I put the wheels in motion”
Morrison’s transatlantic jump from Ireland to America in ‘67 looms large here. “Far side of the ocean” is literal—he’s in Boston now, recording this—but it’s also Homeric, straight out of The Odyssey (c. 1200 BCE), Odysseus longing across seas. “Wheels in motion” keeps the travel motif rolling, maybe echoing Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” (1856)—“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road.” Morrison’s escape from Bang Records’ pop machine was his own odyssey, and this line’s the spark of agency after stagnation.

“And I stand with my own hand / Held out in the market place”
This shifts to defiance. “Stand with my own hand” is Morrison reclaiming control—historically, he’d just ditched Bert Berns’ commercial shackles. “Market place” could be Cambridge, MA, where he gigged in ‘68, but it’s also classical—think agora in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BCE), a public reckoning. Poetically, it’s got shades of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956)—“I saw the best minds of my generation…starving hysterical naked”—a cry amid capitalism. He’s offering himself, raw and unscripted.

“And you came / And I was lifted / Out of the emptiness and strife”
Enter the savior figure. “You came” is ambiguous—lover, muse, God?—but it’s got a Biblical echo, like Psalm 40: “He lifted me out of the slimy pit.” Morrison’s Pentecostal roots surface here. “Emptiness and strife” nails his 1967 nadir—penniless, dumped by Berns’ widow, dodging deportation. Poetically, it’s Rilke’s Duino Elegies (1923)—“Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?”—a rescue from despair.

“There you go / Movin’ across the water now”
This is elusive— “you” gliding away? It’s got a mythic vibe, like the Irish Tuatha Dé Danann crossing seas in Lebor Gabála Érenn (c. 11th century). “Water” ties back to the ocean, but also 1968’s cultural currents—think Woodstock vibes brewing. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (1916) lurks here—“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood”—a figure drifting off on their own path.

“And you breathe in / You breathe out”
Simple, but loaded. Breath’s a life force—think Genesis 2:7, God breathing into Adam—but also meditative, like Zen poets Bashō (17th century) fixating on the moment. Morrison’s jazz leanings—think Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (1965)—pulse here, inhale-exhale as rhythm. It’s grounding after the lift-off.

“In another time / In another place”
Time bends. This could be Morrison’s Belfast childhood, or a lover’s memory, but it’s also Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE)—shifting realms, fluid identities. Historically, 1968’s upheaval (MLK, RFK, Paris riots) makes “another time” a collective ache. Charles Olson’s Maximus Poems (1960) play with place and memory this way too—Morrison’s tapping a modernist vein.

“And I will never grow so old again / And I will walk and talk / In gardens all wet with rain”
The payoff. “Never grow so old again” flips Dylan’s “Forever Young” (1974, but floating in ‘60s ethos)—it’s eternal youth, but darker, like Keats’ “Bright Star” (1819), frozen vitality. “Gardens all wet with rain” is Edenic—Genesis again—but also Irish, like Seamus Heaney’s boggy landscapes (pre-North, but germinating). It’s Morrison picturing peace after strife, a nod to Belfast’s damp green.

Conclusion
This undergrad sees “Astral Weeks” as Morrison’s kaleidoscope—personal history (Belfast, Bang Records), literary ghosts (Yeats to Ginsberg), and 1968’s restless air, all smashed together. It’s not tidy; it’s a howl of survival and wonder, stitched with threads from Homer to the Beats. I’d title my term paper “Slipstreams and Steel: Van Morrison’s Lyric Cartography”—and I’d ace it.

What can be said that hasn't already been said out the Man, the Myth, the Mystic, the Morrison. This as you know is the very first song on his first solo album.(Not counting what he did for Bert Bang's Bang records) It is the beginning of the story of the album Astral Weeks. It starts off in a style similar to maybe Dylan. With the semi-concrete images. Viaducts of your dreams?. In any case some of the most beautiful lyrics ever. Sets the story of a boy, a younger Van in Belfast, who is taken by this one girl that he yearns for and imagines himself with her. He's got it bad for her. But her persists in the next song. Beside You

one of my favorite songs ever. so summer-y and peaceful.

thought i would share....

Morrison sings of lost love, death and nostalgia for childhood in the Celtic soul that would become his "signature." Astral Weeks didn't reach the charts, but its mystic poetry, spacious grooves, and romantic incantations still resonate in ways no other music can."