Isolation, Foreign Places, and Van Morrison’s “Saint Dominic’s Preview”

Abstract

Isolation, Foreign Places, and Van Morrison’s “Saint Dominic’s Preview” Geoff Munns (bio) In the late 1970s Greil Marcus invited twenty writers to contribute an essay about what rock and roll record they would take to a desert island. The essays came together in the collection Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island.1 I came to this book about thirty years after it was first published, at a time when I was seeking out and researching critical writing about Van Morrison for a study I was doing on the use of place in his songwriting. So M. Mark’s discussion on Morrison’s 1974 live album, It’s Too Late To Stop Now, and Lester Bang’s delving into the lyrical depths of Morrison’s seminal 1968 recording, Astral Weeks, were among those pieces that helped me get closer to an understanding of the ways the songwriter deploys place as a poetic and aural device, and how that both defines and distinguishes his work.2 I was reminded of Stranded in mid-2020 as I sat in my Sydney apartment in COVID-19 isolation and talked over the phone with a friend about how we were both handling the lockdown. “I’m reading that Greil Marcus desert island book,” he told me, “and it seems to be perfect for these times.” He was right, and it got me thinking about my Van Morrison study, and what song of his I would take with me to a desert island that would not only work for me in isolation but would also widely capture his sense of place. My attention was drawn to “Saint Dominic’s Preview” (1972) and the expression of isolation marked out through differences between early Belfast memories and the concerns that now press into the isolation of the San Francisco apartment block. The words and the image of the lonely artist caught within doubts and misgivings seemed, in mood, to capture something of the uncertainties of the current 2020 world. If we accept the suggestion that a song with social isolation as one of its central ideas is a good desert island companion, then I reasoned “Saint Dominic’s Preview” would be a fitting choice. [End Page 44] Furthermore, it is a song that provides a concrete example of the different ways that Morrison utilizes place in his songwriting, highlighting how his songs very often return to and reimagine places through memory, and how there is frequently a fluidity of place and time in their lyrical energies. Added to this, in the song’s often oblique and unsettled series of emblematic spaces are embedded many of the songwriter’s major themes that focus on place—childhood memories, formative musical influences, isolated exile thoughts, music industry blues, and a sense of social and cultural dislocation. “Saint Dominic’s Preview,” then, becomes my Stranded desert island song. ________ When the locations of “Saint Dominic’s Preview” are considered, a picture emerges that highlights many of the different ways Van Morrison employs place. From the opening lines there is a sense of movement that edges restlessly across different places—from the first image of a domestic chore, a city street and a church across the way, to that of a “jagged story block” and a city far removed in distance and time from the comfort of friends and home. Later in the song the scene shifts urgently again between supermarket car parks, country crossroads, railway lines, restaurants, and high-class apartments. As the song proceeds what becomes apparent is that these are also places marking out spaces that are both familiar and foreign, where tensions play out across location and time, between past memories and more immediate and pressing experiences. Beyond descriptive words and phrases, they are also lived “social places,” echoing with the sounds of music and conversation, filled with symbolic objects, caught up with interpersonal relationships. As such, they are embedded with meanings, capturing a range of emotions, including nostalgia, uncertainty, and dislocation. Place thus emerges as a key feature of “Saint Dominic’s Preview.” And this evidence aligns with the general agreement among scholars and critics that “place” is a key poetic device and thematic...