Jul 042011
 

Almost Independence Day

by Richard Farrell

I can hear them calling, way from Oregon..

I can hear them calling, way from Oregon..

And it’s almost Independence Day

The Fourth of July: I’m uncertain about what this holiday means to me anymore, or if it means anything at all beyond crowds and jammed freeways. But this is no good. This is no good because it’s an attitude which shuts down something deeper, which forgets the simplicity of being young, when the day was un-examined and alive: barbecues and swimming pools, flapping flags and a night sky filled with fireworks. I feel the need to give my own kids something better than a smug dismissal of this holiday, even as my inner-cynic chides and warns that I’m perpetuating the machinery of our commercial culture. How to find a way to embrace the day, to provide my kids (and, no less, myself) a cultural framework, a sense of place and community, beyond simply filling my shopping cart with hamburgers and hot dogs like some living, breathing cliché. Who knows?

I turn toward Van Morrison for help, toward an album I refuse to listen to for eleven months of the year but play it in the days leading up to the Fourth of July, like some self-imposed sacrament against my unwillingness to celebrate the actual holiday.

The song, “Almost Independence Day,” was recorded on the album Saint Dominic’s Preview, when I was only three years-old. I discovered it within my father’s massive record collection. Maybe I was nine when I first heard it, my daughter’s age now. I’m not overstating it if I say that I fell in love with music that day. Ilistened to that album over and over.

“Almost Independence Day” is the last track. The song begins softly, with the plaintive Irish troubadour moaning in tune with his twelve-string guitar across a sparse silence. A Moog synthesizer comes in and imitates foghorns echoing across the San Francisco Bay. The opening instrumental riff continues for more than a minute. The song itself spans just over ten, filled with haunting, repetitive vocals structured like some wild chapter out of Joyce.

Me  my lady, we go steppin’ (we go steppin)

We go steppin’ way out on Chinatown.

All to buy some, Hong Kong silver.

And the wading, rushing river (we go stepping)

We go out on the town tonight.

Continue reading »