Van Morrison - "Fair Play"
Van Morrison - "Linden Arden Stole the Highlights"

Often I can't hear what Van Morrison is singing, can't make out his words, obscured as they are by the singer's heart on his sleeve, the frog in his throat. Sometimes, when Van is in his stream of consciousness mode, as with the above songs, I can't understand the words even when I can make them out. "Tell me of Poe, Oscar Wilde and Thoreau," he sings in "Fair Play." "Let your midnight and your daytime turn into love of life," he continues, and then: "It's a very fine line, but you've got the mind, child, to carry it on when it's just about to be carried on." Who knows.

What we do know is this: in the world of "Fair Play," there's a perfectly blue Irish lake, surrounded by beautiful architecture; two humans stand ashore, contemplating their surroundings and philosophizing about life, until one says "Geronimo," and then, quid pro quo, so does the other. Sometimes beauty leads us into strangeness and of course sometimes strangeness is integral to beauty; there are lakes and songs, odd and unknowable, which nevertheless or thus lure us in.

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Elsewhere: today Canadians are casting ballots in a federal election, which, if the polls are roughly right, may yield a once-in-a-generation realignment of our political landscape. Tonight I will watch with interest, my usual dose of fear, and for the first time in my voting life, hope, however foolish, that the government that emerges will be one I can be proud of.