"Of all possible worlds, we only got one..."
The Annotated "We Can Run, But We Can't Hide"
An installment in The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics.
By David Dodd
Kraemer Family Library
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
(The opinions expressed are those of the author, not of the University of
Colorado.)Copyright notice; © 1997 David Dodd
"We Can Run But We Can't Hide"
Words by John Perry Barlow; music by Brent Mydland
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission
Lyrics omitted. The annotations below are reproduced by permission of David Dodd; the song lyrics themselves are copyrighted and are not reproduced here. Read them at the official source: dead.net/songs.
"We Can Run, But We Can't Hide"
Martinez, California, February 3, 1989
Musical details:
- Key:
- Time signature:
- Chords used:
- Songbook availability: none.
Recorded on
First performance: February 5, 1989, at the Henry Kaiser auditorium, Oakland, Calif. "We Can Run" appeared in the first set, following "Althea" and preceding "Desolation Row." Also appearing for the first time in the show was "Standing On the Moon". I was there!
A turn of phrase coined by boxer Joe Louis (Joseph Louis Borrow, 1914-1981), who said, prior to a heavyweight title bout with Billy Conn in June, 1946: "He can run, but he can't hide." (Sources: Barlett's Familiar Quotations, Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations)
The turn of phrase implemented here by Barlow also recalls Pogo's maxim: "We have met the enemy and he is us!"
(See http://www.nauticom.net/www/chuckm/whmte.htm for more about this quote, and a reproduction of the original Earth Day, 1971 cartoon.)
Compare the often-quoted line from Voltaire's Candide (1759):
"In this best of all possible worlds...everything is for the best." (Chapter 1.)
and its more modern corollary, by James Branchy Cabell, in his The Silver Stallion (1926):
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
Compare the folk saying: "The rich get richer and the poor get babies."
A reference to the hole in the ozone layer. See The O3 Zone web site for more information.
This sounded like a Biblical reference, of which Barlow is very fond, and indeed there are many such references in the Bible, though not specifically to a "bad" vine; rather, there are numerous analogies using vines which bear no fruit, or bitter fruit, as in
- Psalms 80, v. 8:
"There was a vine: you uprooted it from Egypt;
to plant it, you drove out other nations,
you cleared a space where it could grow,
it took root and filled the whole country...
- Isaiah 5, v. 1:
...planted choice vine in it.
...
He expected it to yield grapes
but sour grapes were all that it gave.
- Jeremiah 2, v. 21:
Yet I had planted you, a choice vine,
a shoot of soundest stock.
How is it you have become a degenerate plant,
you bastard Vine?
Keywords: @environment
DeadBase code: [WECA]
First posted: May 2, 1997