YOU SEE I KNOW THIS SQUIRREL that is quite obsessed with Van Morrison:
As I trade texts with the great Rock & Roll music critic Dennis Cook about the virtual Morrison mix tape he is making for me, for you, and for Mother Earth, I recalled this amazing little story I forgot to tell you.
A spring not so long ago I was in the yard listening to Van on my trusty Bluetooth, having an afternoon beer alone which for me is a rare and contemplative sight.
Unbeknownst to me, this one particular squirrel had been listening, all the while attentively. It seems he had been venturing closer and closer to witness Van’s ethereal then tenor caterwauling and whispering in a language it seems only a squirrel would fully understand.
I got up to go inside after my one beer, and this squirrel came up to me on our little deck. He was no more than 3 feet away as this particular song played and he just listened, cautious enough to be un-cornered. Yet close enough within reach to feel Van’s voice boom against his little furry chest.
When song was over it was like the spell was broken. Or maybe for that squirrel that was a perfect moment. He is a little older now, ducking Hawks and vying with the supremacy of raccoons and coyotes that quietly claim territorial rights to this yard under the blanket of night.
It felt like that song and that moment as Mr Squirrel stared at my speaker as if I had trapped the king of all Squirrels inside of my mega boom tomb; I felt that Squirrel (that just as likely could have been a lady), was having a very special moment.
He stares at me, stares at the speaker, head dipping in the silence as the song concludes. Then Mr Squirrel jettisoned like a tiny little monkey back into the thick of the trees that mark the book ends of our property and his kingdom.
A kingdom around a big ol’ blossoming cherry tree where his father once watched Andrew D.B. Joslyn climb up in their old wooden fortress, and play his violin for an unforgettable scene in The Staxx Brothers, Oh Carolina video.
Father and son in any case, half a decade later would have been about the same age. Maybe he thought it was Andrew hidden inside that speaker.
At this point, in the rabid and neurotic evolution of a Squirrel’s cult like grasp of religion, Andrew maybe upheld as some sort of forest deity or elfin Savior.
I like to think our squirrels mark the new year when their cherry tree blossoms and the grass beneath is softly speckled with white pedals.
I like to think that day Andrew Joslyn played violin in their tree was a very big deal for squirrel and man alike in this little corner of the County
Would you play early 70s Van Morrison for your local squirrel colony and help me determine through rigorous scientific method, if this was a genuine religious miracle for the endangered race of Western Gray squirrel or an anomaly.
Andrew up in that Tree at the 3:40 mark:
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many musical ventures and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. He is planning a tour of Nigeria for 2018.
