Thank You Bruce!

Music has helped to give shape to my life. Songs, artists, genres, even seasons have been important at different times to define, colour, and give texture to my life's experience. One of the most important figures musically in my life has been Bruce Cockburn. I saw my first Cockburn concert in 1977 when he released the album In the Falling Dark. Songs like "Lord of the Starfields", "Vagabondage", "Little Seahorse" and "Gavin's Woodpile" provided my first introduction to the possibility of a Christian theology of creation, a Christian passion for justice and the beginning of "wanderlust" - the joy of travel, experience, and adventure. Subsequent albums such as The Further Adventures Of, Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws, and Inner City Front showed different and more complex sides of Cockburn and later when he became quite outspoken in his societal critique, I too saw the urgency and passion of his vision and identified closely with him and his music. For example, I still love the lines from "Laughter" which go "

Let's hear a laugh for the man of the world
Who thinks he can make things work

Tried to build the New Jerusalem

And ended up with New York

Ha Ha Ha..."

Yesterday I went with Elaine and a couple of friends to the Small Source of Comfort concert in  Winnipeg. Cockburn didn't disappoint. There were a lot of great songs from the past: "Wondering Where the Lions Are", "Last Night of the World", "Lovers in a Dangerous Time", "All the Diamonds", "Tie Me at the Crossroads", etc. There were songs from the new album of which "Five Fifty-one", "Call Me Rose", "Each One Lost", and "Lois On the Autobahn" especially caught my attention. Jenny Scheinman and Gary Craig accompanied Cockburn with elegance and understatement although Scheinman's violin  accompaniments sometimes left me breathless with their evocative artistry.

I left the concert with a sense that Cockburn is in a good place, content but still not ready to quit. I did have the feeling, however, that he is not nearly as ambitious as he once was, and that the passion and anger in his social critique has morphed into sadness and sorrow for a world so disjointed and conflicted. Perhaps that is a sign of age; one no longer has the strength to take on another cause. On the other hand, it may be a sign that bearing witness is what the artist does best. Looking, pointing, calling, challenging. Prophets are uisually without honor in their own country. I'm glad that Cockburn has received many honours for his great body of work. I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to listen to him and to weave his songs into the soundtrack of my life.