Madame George

When I first moved away from my hometown to the big city (many years ago) I was kind of lonely, but I had good company in a record album I took with me: Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. No one does melancholy and commiseration quite like Morrison, and so his first solo album was getting plenty of air time at my new digs.

One day, while listening to the ten minute track that is Madame George, I got out my paints and created my vision of the mysterious and compelling eponymous character. The swirling, shimmering instrumentation and murmured vocals guided my brush, and I felt at one with the music and with the one and only Madame George.

The first time I ever heard that song was at a friend's place after school. Timothy and I were in grade twelve and we had formed an alliance as outsiders. Even in the wild 60s, with its hippies and mod kids, we were different. Tim and Van taught me that that was okay.

Timothy lit a stick of incense and put his new album on the turntable. It was Astral Weeks. As the Irish singer growled and whispered and cajoled out the title cut, I sat with my eyes closed. I was floating in another time, in another place and Van’s sensual swirling utterances were taking me there. Got a hormone high, I heard Morrison sing. Later, I'd discover that the lyrics are got home on high. In keeping with the musician’s recurring theme of transcendence, home on high connotes a place above the throng:

We are goin’ to heaven. 

But the track that really took me to heaven was Madame George. Spellbound, I listened as the orchestral strings reached ever so sweetly for the transcendent moments. The quivering instrumentation wrapped in soft vocals spoke to me of other worlds, free from the constraints of my smalltown with its small minds -

Playing dominoes in drag/the one and only Madame George.

Van would go on to record a much different version of Madame George. The cut on Astral Weeks is dreamy and magical, whereas the rendition on TB Sheets is a raucous party done in half the playing time as the other. Different takes for different moods. I love them both. Each transports me to heaven yet keeps me grounded, each inspires my next artistic adventure, each reminds me of Timothy and all the creative, struggling souls out there, looking for a home on high.

Ultimately, it's a love song. It has brought love and joy into my life when it seemed there was none -

She jumps up and says "Hey love/You forgot your gloves, and/The love that loves the love that loves the love/That loves the love that loves to love/The love that loves to love the love..."

Just listen to the audience cheer when he hits that run. It gives me goosebumps everytime. From 2008 -

From '68 -

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