St Dominic's Preview - Van Morrison
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
The Van Morrison of St Dominic's Preview is always on the edge of apprehension, travelling, reaching for, trying hard "to make this whole thing blend". He is seeking some kind of ecstasy, some Blakean revelation where words and music combine together to open the zipper which keeps your eyes blind to the invisible, your ears deaf to the inaudible, your fingers insensible to the impalpable. It's Almost Independence Day.
