"I love you in buckskin"

Ponder the concept of the Van Morrison love song and one inevitably reflects upon somewhere, not someone. Many of the songwriter's most celebrated ballads are gushing, long-form letters to the spaces he inhabits, as well as the spaces he no longer inhabits, but still inhabits in his mind.

Of course, when he wasn't falling ass over teacups for a particular place, he was falling into the arms of women. It was a seamless artistic transition for Morrison, when he traded, say ... the dawn-lit streets of Arklow for the girl in the kitchen with the lights way down low. You know, where he planted his two feet swapped for being swept off his feet. The places depicted in Morrison's songs are interspersed with sighs and caresses and long glances. They betray and forgive and spellbind as briskly as any person. They live and breathe. Writing so fervently and adventurously about the opposite sex was the natural consequence of writing so passionately and authentically about a Belfast or a Woodstock.