Wondering Where The Lions Are?

Lyrics:

Sun's up, uh huh, looks okay
The world survives into another day
And I'm thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

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

Walls windows trees, waves coming through
You be in me and I'll be in you
Together in eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

Up among the firs where it smells so sweet
Or down in the valley where the river used to be
I got my mind on eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

And I'm wondering where the lions are...
I'm wondering where the lions are...

Huge orange flying boat rises off a lake
Thousand-year-old petroglyphs doing a double take
Pointing a finger at eternity
I'm sitting in the middle of this ecstasy

Young men marching, helmets shining in the sun,
Polished as precise like the brain behind the gun
(Should be!) they got me thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

And I'm wondering where the lions are...
I'm wondering where the lions are...

Freighters on the nod on the surface of the bay
One of these days we're going to sail away,
going to sail into eternity
some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

And I'm wondering where the lions are...
I'm wondering where the lions are...

"Huge orange flying boat rises off the lake" - The lake is Sproat Lake (on Vancouver Island, BC) and the flying boats are, Mars Water Bombers, used for fighting fires. The petroglyphs are on Vancouver Island too. (Submitted by Audrey Pearson, 25 November 2002)

a rerun of a dream I'd had some years before in which lions roamed the streets in terrifying fashion, only this time they weren't threatening at all. When I woke up in the morning some things connected, and I wrote the beginning of this song while driving out of town along the Queensway."

-- from "All The Diamonds" songbook, edited by Arthur McGregor, OFC Publications 1986. Submitted by Rob Caldwell.

"How many of you find petroglyph to be a strange word? I don't know, I mean, I didn't go to any special trouble to learn the word petroglyph in my life but it just sort of came, you know, like other words like 'don't' and 'okay' and 'frankincense' and you know, whatever. 'Victorian', 'novella.' Petroglyph. Petroglyph is a rock painting, for those who haven't run across the word, and in the context of the song in which that word appears, which I'm about to do it makes sense, to me at least.

1994

"I have a relative who is involved in one of those kinds of government jobs where they can't say what they do. The part you can say involves monitoring other people's radio transmissions and breaking codes. At that time China and the Soviet Union were almost at war on their mutual border. And both of them had nuclear capabilities. I had dinner with this relative of mine and he said, "We could wake up tomorrow to a nuclear war." Coming from him, it was a serious statement. So I woke up the next morning and it wasn't a nuclear war. [Laughs] It was a real nice day and there was all this good stuff going on and I had a dream that night which is the dream that is referred to in the first verse of the song, where there were lions at the door, but they weren't threatening, it was kind of a peaceful thing. And it reflected a previous dream that was a real nightmare where the lions were threatening."

-- from "Closer to the Light with Bruce Cockburn" by Paul Zollo, SongTalk, vol. 4, issue 2, 1994. Submitted by Rob Caldwell.

A couple of people have done different versions of this song -- once in a while somebody other than me records one of my songs -- and in both cases that I'm aware of, they were not aware of the meaning of petroglyph, apparently. Back in the early '80s Leo Sayer -- remember Leo Sayer? [falsetto] 'You make me feel like dancing' -- he did a version of this song and when he came to the word petroglyph he substituted 'dinosaur.' He was being more candid than we thought, maybe, I suppose, but I thought it was really strange, though, and when you hear the verse it appears in it's going to seem even stranger, like 'WHY?' Why if he's going to substitute anything is he going to substitute dinosaur? I think it's 'cause it started with P and had a few syllables and looked kind of Greek-like and so petroglyph, pterodactyl, you know it's all the same shit.

And then not too long ago, a couple years ago, a younger band, who I admire very much actually, a band called Vigilantes of Love did a version of the song for a compilation record and they changed the words too. They changed it to something about a big bird flying around. Which at least didn't conflict as much with the rest of the verse as dinosaur, but it didn't suggest to me that, even though I came by the word petroglyph without going to any special effort, other people perhaps had not run across it. You can judge for yourself whether it makes sense or not, I guess."

-- from a concert transcription of the 22 March 2002 Seattle, WA show. Submitted by Jeff McCloud.

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