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Melissa Bowman's avatar

Pretty much anything by the Tragically Hip. Sunday Bloody Sunday or Pride by U2 also come to mind.

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Greg McCaughey's avatar

Talk about ruminating over songs. I have been doing exactly that since I heard Bruce Cockburn perform his little gem “Pacing the Cage” at the Mariposa Folk Festival this past summer. I have been playing it over and over ever since, primarily to listen to the deeply personal lyrics.

I have been struck by the notion that it is an absolutely perfect song. Jimmy Buffett has recorded a few of Bruce's tunes over the years, including "Pacing the Cage". In my imagination, Jimmy also took note that it was perfect song as well and chose to record it exactly as Bruce had first laid it down.

It is very much a song that can offer up different meanings to different listeners, so make of it what you will. I am not a melancholic person, but I love melancholic songs, and that is the sense I emote whenever I listen to it.

I was so interested in what meaning the song held for Bruce that I searched it out… and actually came up with a result. The following is a quote from an interview in which he discussed the song with Paul Jay at The Real News Network.

“But Pacing the Cage was more a lament about just being stuck. And I think the … just looking at where I was and thinking, you know, I want to get out of this somehow. I had a fan accuse me of having written a suicide note when he heard that song. Which it wasn’t intended to be, at all. But it was certainly an expression of there must be some way out of here. And it was a while before there actually was. But you know, that was what the song was trying to talk about.“

The following are my favourite lines from the song.

“Sometimes you feel like you live too long

Days drip slowly on the page

You catch yourself

Pacing the cage”

“I've proven who I am so many times

The magnetic strip's worn thin”

“I never knew what you all wanted

So I gave you everything”

“Sometimes the best map will not guide you

You can't see what's round the bend

Sometimes the road leads through dark places

Sometimes the darkness is your friend”

Serious stuff :-) Give it a listen.

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