Belfast

All anybody wants to talk about is Trump.

I was out with a group of concert promoters and they'd all seen the buffoon on TV last night and were laughing and scared at the very same time. They knew all the players, the cabinet members, even Elizabeth Warren, and I know almost nothing about their country. Other than the IRA and war.

Turns out the north is associated with the UK and the south is independent and it all got divided in 1922 and the Catholics and the Protestants have been fighting about it ever since. Everyone refers to the "Troubles." When rocks were thrown and bombs were planted and innocent civilians died and they credit Bill Clinton with bringing them together, along with Bono, I kid you not. Bill came and united them for peace and so did Bono. So there's your power of rock and roll right there. There was a referendum, to end the war, and a concert was held just before and Bono held up the arms of the enemies and they all asked for peace...AND IT CAME!

Well, not completely. There was more violence. And...you drive around and there are walls separating the Catholics from the Protestants. They don't mix. Intermarriage is rare, you can be excommunicated from your community, and when I saw the gate that closes off the two groups every night I was flummoxed, we think of these troubles happening in the Middle East, but they're here too. And on one hand you pooh-pooh them, to quote Rodney King, can't we all just get along? But the Catholics got the short end of the stick and Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike and died in prison and I know all this, it's deep in the memory banks, but when you come here you're confronted with murals, it's palpable. And they know everything about us and we know almost about them.

Like the Titanic being built here. I went to the museum. I could live in a museum, I love to soak up the information. And to be honest, I don't care that much about the Titanic and the exhibits about it washed over me to a degree, but the museum starts by setting the scene, when Belfast was Linenopolis.

You see linen comes from flax. And it was spun at home. And then came mechanization and factories. Study history and you find out what you think is new is not.

People railed against the change. And then women and children went to work in the mills. Where pay was low, health conditions bad, and hours long, six days a week, literally half the day. Which is how we ended up with unions. But somehow "union" is now a bad word. But I'm wondering about the future. Will everybody lose their job to technology or will they find places in the new economy and will they be better off or worse? I don't know. And I'm not sure anybody else does either.

And they had whiskey and tobacco and then shipbuilding. And when you look out and see the slip where they built the Titanic right next to the Olympic, you tingle. It happened, RIGHT THERE! But they don't build ships anymore. But Bombardier does build airplane wings. And they shoot "Game of Thrones." So, it's not only runaway production to North Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, the whole world is giving incentives, it all comes down to money.

And this morning I got a "Black Cab Tour" to Shankill Road, where the Troubles occurred. My driver, Norman, knew all the passersby, and also admitted he threw rocks, everybody did, his father was shot twice the night he was born, it's just the way it was.

And then there's the wall... Made even higher with barbed wired and fencing so no one can climb over and the stones don't cross. And a gate that closes every night, even at this late date. You know how you know where the Catholics live? There's a wall around their community!

Yes, they're outnumbered by the Protestants.

And then we went to the BBC for an interview/show/program with Wendy Austin. She's got an MBE, "Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire," because she was the voice on the radio when all the bad crap went down. And I used that c-word, instead of the s-word, and I had to rerecord what I said just in case the boss got upset. I thought the BBC was like HBO, and you could swear, but that's not so.

But all the equipment was modern and there were two engineers and in the U.S. the famous radio station you listen to is a hovel staffed by the voice you hear and one minimum wage engineer in support. The free market economy doesn't always work. Then again, someone told me 70% of the workers in Belfast were employed by the government, that can't be true, can it? But government is not a dirty word here like it is in the U.S.

And government is what we talked about at lunch. Why is it everybody but the Americans is so well-informed? We're dumb and vote for Trump yet they have dumb people who voted for Brexit and they're completely unsure what's gonna happen next. The whole world is in turmoil. And what struck me is we talked some music, who can sell tickets, but the hot topic was politics, we're all citizens of the world, and the destiny of the planet is in our hands, a heavy responsibility which we must shoulder.

And then Stuart took me on a tour of Van Morrison sites.

You've got to understand, Ireland is warm and green but it rains all the time. You could get mightily depressed, no wonder so many leave, yet so many come back, like Van himself, who supposedly lives eight miles away on the water.

But he grew up on the other side of the river and we parked as it sprinkled and went down into this little park with a stream... It was the HOLLOW!

"Hey where did we go
Days when the rain came
Down in the hollow"

Yup, it happened right here, this was the inspiration for "Brown Eyed Girl"!

And coursing through the park, which was anything but upscale, just a hole between two rows of houses, were the electrical lines, held up by the pylons!

We call them towers in the U.S., but these pylons are featured in "You Know What They're Writing About" from 1979's "Into The Music," where Van implores his baby to: "Meet me down by the water, Meet me down by the pylons."

And then we went by his house, where there's a plaque, and you're thinking HOW DID HE MAKE IT OUT OF HERE? Some are destined to stay where they are, others get out. And music is still a great way to rise above.

And then down the street where he washed windows, yes, that song was not fantasy.

And then up to Cyprus Avenue, which inspired that track on "Astral Weeks."

We think these artists live in a fantasyland far above us where they make all this stuff up, but the truth is we all have influences, they're the foundation of our creations, Van led a real life and sang about it, he still sings about it.

And then off to the Ulster Museum to learn more about the Troubles, where there was a whole section on Bloody Sunday and I couldn't help but sing the U2 song in my head.

And everybody tells me Ireland was backward. There were still outdoor toilets during the Troubles. There were no jobs. But there were people, thinking, experiencing, not looking to get ahead like Americans so much as living.

So, there are no high rises, no one would invest with all the unrest.

And downtown there are buildings that are fortresses, to protect against being blown up by bombs.

But the people, they're knowledgeable and friendly. They want to talk, wrestle with the issues, and I'd say we're all in it together, but...

They're still working on that in Belfast.

They built the Titanic in the slip on the left: http://bit.ly/2m4uOPr

On the other side is the Catholics: http://bit.ly/2lTygAt

This gate closes every night: http://bit.ly/2ls03qM

Bobby Sands died in prison on a hunger strike: http://bit.ly/2kxKoXx

Van Morrison grew up here: http://bit.ly/2m4CYre


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