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Animal Music Monday: “Wondering Where the Lions Are”

Posted by Richard Conniff on August 22, 2016

Given the rapid disappearance of lions from entire regions of Africa, this song seems appropriate, though mostly for its title.

Singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn has said he was inspired by reading Charles Williams’s fantasy novel The Place of the Lion, which I suspect is about lions the way C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is about lions, and in that one the Aslan the lion is Jesus Christ’s avatar.

Anyway, here’s a stanza from Cockburn’s song:

I had another dream about lions at the door
They weren’t half as frightening as they were before
But I’m thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me.

So I’m thinking Cockburn got high and wrote this because he was feeling fine. Fair enough. And I hope your dreams about lions at the door are also sweet ones.

This entry was posted on August 22, 2016 at 12:22 am and is filed under Conservation and Extinction, Funny Business. Tagged: , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Animal Music Monday: “Wondering Where the Lions Are””

  1. Ed Darrell said

    September 9, 2016 at 9:01 pm

    Cockburn’s been asked about this lyric, apparently several times. It has something to do with feeling good, for sure.

    He doesn’t say whether any intoxicants were involved other than the sun coming up again, in difficult times.

    .http://cockburnproject.net/songs&music/wwtla.html

    Perhaps we should play Pete Seeger explaining the lyric to “Wimoweh” back-to-back with this one.

    Reply

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