Creativity Quote by Van Morrison

It sounds like a plea for a firewall: keep the art clean even when the artist gets messy. Coming from Van Morrison, a musician whose catalog trades on soul, spiritual hunger, and lived-in grit, the line reads less like a lofty theory than a survival tactic. If your work is autobiographical enough, the audience starts treating every lyric as testimony. Morrison pushes back on that expectation, insisting the song is its own organism once it leaves the studio.

The intent is practical. He wants the music to stand without being dragged into whatever headline, feud, or personal contradiction is attached to the person singing. That’s especially pointed in an era when fandom functions like a moral subscription service: listeners don’t just stream songs, they endorse identities. “Separate” is a strategic verb. It doesn’t ask for forgiveness; it asks for compartmentalization.

The subtext is thornier: separation protects the artist as much as the art. It’s a way of refusing accountability-by-playlist, but also a way of refusing the audience’s hunger for intimacy. Fans want access; Morrison offers distance. There’s a quiet accusation in it, too: you’re listening wrong if you can’t let a song mean more than its maker.

Context matters because Morrison’s persona has often been prickly, private, and, at times, publicly controversial. When the public conversation shifts from melody to morality, the catalog gets re-litigated. This line tries to end that trial before it starts. It’s not an elegant argument; it’s a boundary. And boundaries, like good choruses, are designed to stick.