‘NEATH THE COVER OF OCTOBER SKIES

A PAEAN TO A SONG OF DESTINY

BY TODD R. NELSON

IT’S AN ANNUAL REUNION. After just a few cold, crisp nights in October, when “the leaves on the trees are falling,” and there’s a harvest moon foxtrotting among the branches, I am snapped back into the teenage barn dance where and when I first heard “Moondance” by Van Morrison.

He’s my Mr. October.

It requires only the first two ascending piano chords of “Moondance” to restore all the old feeling. Like an astral Courtier poet, Van sets the stage for love. “Well it’s a marvelous night for a moondance … with the stars up above in your eyes … the calling of your heartstrings soft and low.”

It always evokes the mood of that first hearing, “neath the cover of October skies.” It is an ode to autumn as a puckish eve of romance.

That October becomes this October, every October.

My high school friend Doug had been decorating his suburban barn for the occasion. Harvest theme, of course. I remember several attendees, a little swing dancing, refreshments, hay bales, subdued strings of light; happy vibe and cooling temperatures.

Was there a moon? Maybe.

However, “Moondance” is what’s deeply etched in memory. It jump-started 11th grade and set a romantic mood before there was romance. It was the soundtrack, perhaps the litmus test, to future romance. It was the song for us, before there was an us. I had yet to discover just whose eyes the stars were up above.

On the album (vinyl, of course), you must first hear “And it stoned me,” and its story of jumping right in a swimming hole. Then comes “Moondance,” then “Crazy Love.” Van gave a soundtrack to my various rural teenage escapades, like skinny dipping in the town reservoir, and he anticipates many later scenes, a musical suite for adventurous high school years.

Moondance is the kind of album that becomes our album. Thirty years later, now married with three kids, we saw Van Morrison live in San Francisco. Georgie Fame, Junior Wells, Jimmy Witherspoon and John Lee Hooker joined the all-star backing band. Van’s is not so much a singing voice as it is a tenor saxophone. The audience awaited “Moondance,” and its re-orchestration as an r&b medley was perfect. It arrived with “Gloria,” Van’s 1960s hit with his Ulster bandmates, Them. Every garage band knows its three chords and narrative. “She makes me feel alright.” And it’s a spelling lesson, second only to R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

We later bought the live recording of the concert and wore it out. Come to think of it, there’s always been a Van album in the car CD player, and attached to every period of our life. Van accompanied us with albums like “Hymns to the Silence,” “Enlightenment,” “The Healing Game.” He was in heavy rotation as we moved

across the country, changed houses, added children to the family, switched jobs and enjoyed myriad adventures. Previously, from way back, before iTunes, Van awaited. And every band I played in had Van in the repertoire starting with the first band, in 7th grade, playing “Gloria” down in the wood-paneled basement rumpus room. Three chords, no bridge and “Shout it every night.” Onward to “Domino” and “Brown-eyed girl.”

There are other album/song reunions triggered by just the right memory, stashed deep in our soul of souls, sometimes undetected, lying dormant. And there are literary complements: “If music be the food of love,” as Duke Orsino says. That line is a reunion for us English majors. “Play on. Give me excess of it.” In October.

“Moondance” is a bower of possibility, of romance, of swaying cheek to cheek; of “fantabulousness” that is rare, ideal, but possible. Love set to music. A dance tune: not a symphony, but a lyric that gets your feet tapping and makes the room swoon because there’s only one other dancer in it. All your dreams will come true then. “Shall we make the welkin dance indeed?”

You remember how Van brings it home. “Can I just have one more moondance with you…in the moonlight…on a magic night….Can I…just have…one more… moondance…with you…my love.” Saxophone and flute trill. Fade away. Van the Man out. Never gets old; a reunion every time. I’m back in the Avalon-barn; smitten with being smitten; dancing and seventeen; redreaming on a mystic isle of memory and a backward persistence of vision, there and then. G-L-O-R-I-A in excelsis moondance.

Play on.

Todd R. Nelson is a retired English teacher in Penobscot, Maine. Looking to sell your home? Having experience on your side matters.

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