Van Morrison: Hard Nose The Highway

THE TEMPTATION is simply to quote huge chunks of lyrics, but allow me instead the indulgence of a passage from Kierkegaard, cited by A. Alvarez in his study of suicide: "The whole world can be divided into those who write and those who do not write. Those who write represent despair, and those who read disapprove of it and believe that they have a superior wisdom – and yet, if they were able to write, they would write the same thing. Basically they are all equally despairing, but when one does not have the opportunity to become important with his despair, then it is hardly worth the trouble to despair and show it. Is this what it is to have conquered despair?"