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)

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