Skip to main content

Tir Na Nog

After all we're only human ...


More of a spell than song with so many incantations, souls enraptured, heavenly songs, of being in the garden, wet with rain and golden autumn days. The natural, mythical and spiritual woven together to form a tapestry which transports the listener away from the temporal. The delicate instrumentation at once embellishes the story and heightens the vision.  

Van references freedom from attachment as the means to enlightenment and a release from the cycle of life and death but despite that being a life long pursuit he would rather come back to a suffering existence, if it meant that he and his love could be together. A love he believes they have experienced many times before such is its depth. A love that has the power to rejuvenate old souls. A love worth turning away from the eternal presence to experience once again. 

Only Van. Breathe it in.


We were standing in the kingdom
And we stood by the mansion gate
We stood enraptured by the silence
As the birds sang their heavenly song
In Tir Na Nog

We stopped in the church of Ireland
And prayed to our father 
And climbed up the mountainside 
With fire in our hearts
And we walked all the way
To Tir Na Nog

I said with my eyes I recognised your chin
It was my long lost friend
To help me from another lifetime
We took each others hands 
And cried like a river
When we said hello and we walked
To Tir Na Nog

We made a big connection
On a golden autumn day
We were standing in the garden wet with rain
And our souls were young again
In Tir Na Nog

And outside the storm was raging
Outside Jerusalem
We drove in our chariots of fire
Following the big sun in the west
Going up, going up
To Tir Na Nog

You came into my life 
And you filled me and you filled me, oh so joyous, 
By the clear cool crystal streams
Where the roads were quiet and still
And we walked all the way
To Tir Na Nog

How can we not be attached? After all we're only human
The only way then is to never come back
Except I wouldn't want that would you?
If we weren't together again
In Tir Na Nog

We've been together before in a different incarnation
And we loved each then as well
And we sat down in contemplation
Many many many times you kissed mine eyes
In Tir Na Nog

A stunningly, beautiful live version from 1986


And we loved each other then as well ...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Higher Than The World

"Wrapped up in the sound ..." A blissful and affecting piece that seems to me to be composed of almost affirmational statements, combining an element of gratitude and a desire for improvement.  "I'm living in my dreams, I'll make it better than it seems,""I gotta give a life a whirl," "Wrapped up in the sound, I'll make it better all around," "I'll leave these blues behind."  Always leaves me simultaneously soothed and elevated. Magic. Beautiful live versions from 2016 "Just a little bit higher ..."

Dweller On The Threshold

Let me go down to the water ... This song resonated with me the first time I heard it as a young man on the first disc of the original Greatest Hits. It gave voice to the feeling that there was so much 'more' and if I could only make a breakthrough, take a step over some 'threshold' then things would fall into place, make some kind of sense.  The remarkable thing about this song, propelled along as it is by the tsking of the high-hat and those insistent horns, is that it still resonates to this day even now when I am so much older. It still feels like I'm on a threshold, possibly we're always and eternally on a threshold. The darkness still exists to be consumed and I'm still waiting for the dawn to end the night. Singing the song of ages until it comes.  I'm a dweller on the threshold And I'm waiting at the door And I'm standing in the darkness I don't want to wait no more I have seen without perceiving I hav

When Will I Ever Learn To Live In God

Standing on the highest hill with a sense of wonder ... Pictures painted once again of the glory of natural creation in this deeply moving psalm. Van and companion, once more down in Avalon, as "suffering long time angels," the wonder revealed, by the beauty which surrounds them, that everything was made in God.  A revelation which returns a sense of lost innocence.  There is also a feeling of frustration contained within the title that this is still something not yet achieved, that despite the knowledge being accepted it is all too easy to be distracted. This God is a presence in which all things are created "down through the history of time." One that "is and was in the beginning and evermore shall be." The pilgrimage route of "turning down the old and bringing up the new" is a highly personal one as "you've got to do it your own way."  The lyrics and melody wonderfully complimented by a passionate solo from Georgie Fame.