the Godfather of Punk and Seamus Heaney Have in Common

There is a theory of "primitive affluence" that suggests that when a society has its primary needs met by Nature food, shelter, clothing then it will turn to creativity. Bali, a tropical island in Indonesia where the rich volcanic soil produces an abundance of food and materials for fabrics and building, is held as an example. The trope is that "everyone in Bali is an artist." Yet, while it is true that most everyone spends days carving, painting and dancing, there is very little originality in the products all are variations on a standard theme, precisely ritualistic, all expressed within rigid boundaries. The island's most famous dance, Kecak, was created by a German painter and musician, in the 1930s, intended as a performance for tourists.

On the other side of the field, Malcolm Gladwell, the counter intuitive craftsman, in his book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, promotes the idea of "desirable difficulty," wherein disadvantages propel people to extraordinary achievement and creativity.

Northern Ireland may be the poster child for Mr. Gladwell's theory. About the size of Connecticut, with less than half the population (about 2 million people), it has a wildly disproportionate number of fearless creatives and original thinkers. Yes, it is as far from "primitive affluence" as can be found. The land has few natural resources. Everything from coal to timber to iron has to be imported. For much of the year, the weather is cold and dank. And, for years, the region endured ethno nationalist and sectarian strife. One rumor has it that when archeologists broke into King Tut's tomb they found a newspaper with the headline, "Irish Problems Still Unsolved."

The exceedingly carbonated era that began in 1969, known as The Troubles, ended with the Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998, an accord that brought the Peace Dividend, a surge in cathexis with the land, and the beginnings of a surprising renaissance.

Yet, throughout its fractious history Northern Ireland has continued to unleash unreasonable creativity. The Kelvin scale was invented by a Belfastian; the ejection seat, portable defibrillator, modern tractor, the safety lamp for miners and chocolate milk by engineers from County Down. It could be argued distilled whiskey was concocted here, as the flush toilet.

On the entrepreneurial side, Northern Ireland, despite its challenges, became the largest linen producer in the world. And had the largest ropeworks. It was the largest manufacturer of fizzy drinks; largest shirt maker; had the largest flax machine works; largest tobacco factory; largest handkerchief factory in the world. For a time, a century ago, it was the world's leading industrial city, anchored by the biggest shipyard in the world, and there it created the biggest man made moving object in history: the ocean liner Titanic.

And then the arts. Lewis, Jack Higgins (who was raised here), Oscar Wilde (who schooled in County Fermanagh), Sir Kenneth Branagh, Patrick Magee, Sam Neill, Liam Neeson, and the most famous film star of the land, The DeLorean. There is not so much sun in this northern clip of the world, so folks are often inside sipping the hot cup of creativity, fanning the flames of magic turf.

When I read, then, that one of my teenage heroes, Van Morrison, was being awarded "The Freeman of Belfast" honor (which allows him to drive his herd of sheep through the center of town), I knew I had to go and jump into this place.

So well I remember standing on the sidelines at a high school mixer, too shy to cross the room and make the ask. But when Gloria, performed by Them (named for the 1954 horror movie about giant radioactive ants) with the deep burr of Van Morrison's voice slashing through paper walls, came on the record player, I found a beat and a gift of confidence I never knew I had, and strutted across the floor and asked the most beautiful girl to dance. And she said, "yes."

I won't commit the crime of clich and say his songs were the soundtrack of my life, but there were milestones marked in the Druidic forest trails of his music. "Moondance," for instance, enabled my own passage to freemanhood, and I'm sure I am not alone in that refrain.

With the first bite of fall I make the pilgrimage to Northern Ireland, to Belfast, where Van Morrison, after a life time of travel, and living in the artistic meccas of Woodstock and Marin County, has come home, to the place he was born.

I make my way to Waterfront Hall, and settle in just below Violet Morrison, Van's mom, in the balcony. It's a family affair, as the chief back up singer is Van's daughter, Shana.

Silence, anticipation seem in command. Then The Lord Mayor Mirtn Muilleoir takes the mic, and says, "He united us in the past, he's united us tonight and he will unite us in the future. This honor represents our love, respect and gratitude for Van Morrison from the 'dark side of the street to the bright side of the road'."

And Van the Freeman, six time Grammy winner, sporting signature dark suit, black hat and sunglasses, struts out stage left and gives a thumbs up to the crowd. He signs a special scroll, accepts a gold key to the city, bows, and then, without a word, picks up his alto sax, and launches into a sensual Celtic Swing.

And from there into "Moondance," "Brown Eyed Girl," and a roll call of greats, many citing patches of his personal map, sign posts and street names from his East Belfast boyhood. Van, of course, remains rock's foremost curmudgeon, and true to form he lets the music do the talking, rarely speaking, sometimes turning his back to the audience to play.

But at 68, after 50 years as a fiercely prolific copy van cleef pendant artist, he still summons the nerve to sing about the world as if it remains to be made, or as if it could be unmade, something he's witnessed in his hometown. As so many in Northern Ireland, he rattles the door of convention in its frame. And as he growls his lines, making himself into a sea monster, his daughter Shana swoops over him and digs van cleef bracelet replica into the songs, adding fervor in a glittering dress.

Just before Into the Mystic, The Belfast Cowboy sits down and jests: "This is the part where I hide behind the piano." A German journalist next to me, who has been to a score of Van's concerts, turns to me shocked and says "that's the most he's ever said at a concert." Then the piano takes off, like a boat untied, into waves of melody. There is the feeling that Van is looking back at his dock from a future already passed.

This is a "hand of history" moment in Belfast. We're immersed in something called "yarragh," fleeting elusive moments of transcendence, when the sense of an unrepeatable event is present. Like the city itself, this is an irresolvable adventure, someplace between the breaks and holes in the music.

He ends the municipal tribute with a muscle and fiber rendition of "Gloria," and I am transported back, as no doubt many in the audience, to teendom, to that moment when we loosed ourselves from words and floated on the bowers of his music.

Van is now a Freeman of Belfast, which is doubly significant, as just a few years ago men were not free to walk this city, and now they are.

The day after the concert I head out to meet another cyclone in residence, Terri Hooley, the "godfather of punk," at the latest awakening of his record shop, Good Vibrations, with its 1955 Elvis effigy out front. He is still, after all these years, hawking vinyl, posters, and the trending whiffs of the '70s. He insists we head over to the pub for a pint of Guinness with a brandy chaser, his preferred poison for the last half century. He lost an eye with a stray arrow as a boy, and has a reputation for plucking out his glass eye and dropping it into a drink, so I keep my pint out of reach. After a sip or few he shares, "I honestly believe punk bands saved countless lives, keeping impressionable young people away from the paramilitaries and giving us all something exciting to focus on."

Terri Hooley first opened his record shop on Great Victoria Street in 1976, at the time the most bombed piece of real estate in the world. It quickly became a safe haven, a neutral harbor, at a time when things were very thin on the ground. Teens and lost tribes from all sections and classes, from both sides of the divide, joined by a love of music, hung out in peace, preferring tunes to stones, music and culture more than the dead hand of sectarianism. It was a firefly of light in the blackness of Belfast at the time.

Though a Hank Williams fan in a polo neck, when he heard Punk it screeched his being. "To be a punk was to be different from the past." He started his own label, and produced edgy, alternative records. "Teenage Kicks," by the Undertones, was his biggest hit. He took the record to London and pedaled it around, but no one bit. "They said it was the worst record they ever heard in their lives." Then John Peel, the rock star DJ, played it on the BBC, twice, in a row, and the Undertones were signed to a major label. Hooley never did it for the money his store has gone bankrupt more times than the airlines and he still doesn't have any savings, but his unending efforts to build peace through music are recognized now around the world. "My brother was addicted to heroin; I'm addicted to having a record shop."

"For such a small population we have more talent per head of poets, painters and performers than anywhere else in Europe. Because of our in between status the arts give young people something to be proud of. It proves to every kid here that he can achieve something, and have a bloody good laugh doing it." Terri Hooley

Terri has a sign in his store at the top of the stairs, "Help the Aged Appeal. Don't let the elderly be on their own. Support this lonely old man by coming to hear him play his golden oldies every Thursday night at the Voodoo." I ask Terri if he still pogoes, and his eyes light up (well, his eye actually), and with a quick smile, up and down he bunts, like a kid on caffeine.

I make my way back to the Europa, once the most shelled hotel in the world, now a chic boutique. Along the way I pass the Albert Clock, which lists like the leaning tower of Pisa. It not only has the inclination, it has the time.

And I take a stop at the storied Ulster Hall, the Grand Dame of Bedford Street, where if the walls could talk, they wouldn't talk, they would sing. Glenn Miller performed for American Troops stationed in Belfast preparing for the Normandy invasion of 1944 (a local saw at the time: The Americans are "oversexed, overpaid and over here; the Brits are undersexed, underpaid, and under Eisenhower); Paul Robeson bellowed Old Man River here. The Rolling Stones, in 1964, played their shortest set, 13 minutes, before hysterical fans broke up the show. Led Zeppelin debuted Stairway to Heaven here in 1971 to an unimpressed audience. The Clash were due to play in 1977, but when insurance was cancelled for the gig, hundreds of disappointed fans rioted. Terri Hooley said it may have been "the only riot of the Troubles where Catholics and Protestants were fighting on the same side."

That evening its back to Waterfront Hall, this time for a concert celebrating the man who threw a net across the world with his poetry, Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize winner who died in August 2013 at 74. His final message to the world, van cleef bracelet knock off written in Latin just minutes before he passed: 'Noli timere', "Don't be afraid."

The main presenter is Belfast born actor Stephen Rea (were you surprised in The Crying Game?), who enjoyed a 35 year relationship with Seamus. They both served as directors of the Field Day Theatre company, which they saw as a "direct intervention" of art and culture during The Troubles.

• vac earrings fortunate men copy Make espousal still happy
• adorn van cleef and arpels bracelet alhambra mens knockoff offer marriage to a higher degree happy
• love imitation van cleef white gold necklace do you want it?
• fashion replica van cleef & arpels pink gold jewelry How much it?
• unique imitation van white earring do you want it?