Maybe it was the shock but when I heard the news that Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip had terminal brain cancer, it didn’t really register in more than a “oh, that sucks” sense.
Maybe it was the fact that the Hip are planning a tour this summer, even in light of this news, that took away from the severity of the diagnosis.
Maybe it was because Gord Downie already seems immortal as one of the biggest icons in Canadian music history (while also embodying the quiet gentle kindness Canadians pride ourselves on.)
Maybe it’s because cancer fucking sucks and I sometimes go numb hearing about another person stricken with this disease before their time.
Or maybe it’s because death and dying has long been a favourite subject of Downie’s (the Hip even have a song called “Inevitability of Death”!) which makes his (sorry) inevitable death seem less surprising somehow?
Here’s a few examples…
“At The Hundredth Meridian”
If I die of vanity, promise me, promise me
If they bury me some place I don’t want to be
You’ll dig me up and transport me, unceremoniously
Away from the swollen city breeze, garbage bag trees
Whispers of disease and the acts of enormity
And lower me slowly and sadly and properly
Get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy
“Inevitability of Death”
Puffy lips, glistening skin
And everything comes rushing in
We don’t go to hell, the memories of us do
“Don’t Wake Daddy”
Sled dogs after dinner
Close their eyes on the howling wastes
Kurt Cobain reincarnated
Sighs and licks his face
“Sherpa”
We were high, we were sherpa high
We conspired against old friends
We said we must be friends or die
And we’ve died a thousand times since then
“Impossibilium”
Roses are worth more dried than alive
Such a you thing to say.
Oh, how I adore when you reinvent
A rosy cliche
“Nautical Disaster”
One afternoon four thousand men died in the water here
And five hundred more were thrashing madly
As parasites might in your blood
“Escape is at Hand For The Travelling Man” (this song is about the Hip’s brief encounter with another band whose lead singer eventually committed suicide. It was often rumoured that the singer in question was Kurt Cobain though that was later clarified to be a lesser known singer named Jim Ellison of a band called Material Issues.)
I guess I’m too slow, yes, I’m too, yes, I’m too slow
You said any time of the day was fine
You said any time of the night was also fine
Our heartbeat, our heartbeat, our heartbeat
“Locked in the Trunk of a Car”
Then I found a place, it’s dark and it’s rotted
It’s a cool, sweet kind of place where the copters won’t spot it
And I destroyed the map, I even thought I forgot it
However, every day I’m dumping the body
“Opiated”
He bought a nice blue suit with the money he could find
If his bride didn’t like it Saint Peter wouldn’t mind
“Fifty Mission Cap”
Bill Barilko disappeared that summer
He was on a fishing trip
The last goal he ever scored
Won the Leafs the cup
They didn’t win another till nineteen sixty two
The year he was discovered
I stole this from a hockey card
I keeped tucked up under
“Fiddler’s Green” (written about Downie losing his nephew at an early age, Fiddler’s Green was such an emotional of a song that the Hip didn’t play it for fifteen years.)
His tiny knotted heart
Well, I guess it never worked to good
The timber tore apart
And the water gorged the wood
You can hear her whispered prayer
For men at masts that always lean
The same wind that moves her hair
Moves her boy through Fiddler’s Green
“Toronto #4” (a song Downie wrote for his grandmother while she was dying)
Now you’ll have to tell me when
Tell me when it’s imminent
So you won’t have to rise and fall alone
Or endure the wonder of survival
The wipe out loss
The elation of free fall
The rock bottom
The sweet betrayal
Alone
“A Beautiful Thing”
At three o’clock in the morning
“You’d better be dying” and you were
So we talked about time and where it went
Oh, and this.
(More: Metafilter)
