Gordon Lightfoot: The Voice of Co-presence

Some voices resonate with you from the first moment you hear them. For example, I still have extremely clear and vivid memories of singing along to Gordon Lightfoot's "Ode to Big Blue" as a child.

However, to me, Lightfoot and his music represent more than simply happy memories from childhood. I think "Ode to Big Blue" touched a tuning fork that had already been developing in me, and in doing so, it left a reverberating effect that's lasted to the present day. Although the song is not one of his most well-known works, it shares with essential Lightfoot hits like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzergerald,""Ghosts of Cape Horn," and "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" themes about human respect for and co-presence with the non-human parts of our environment. 

I would even argue that Lightfoot used his music to contemplate his place in the environment. Songs like "Triangle," "River of Light," "The House You Live In," and "Too Many Clues in This Room," while expanding out to address societal and existential questions, maintain a rooting in environmental elements. It's as if, like many artists, including William Wordsworth, Emily Brontë, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Hardy, and Willa Cather, Lightfoot needed environmental elements to help him process and articulate his ideas. If that was the case, I can certainly relate, and it helps explain why his music spoke to me in such a powerful way.

It wasn't just that Lightfoot sang about the environment though. The way he sang about it also struck a chord with me (probably before I even fully understood why). As a child, I knew I liked "Ode to Big Blue" because it was about whales, which were among my most favorite animals. What I discovered later was that Lightfoot's music emphasized the connectedness and co-presence of humans and non-humans in the environment. In his songs, human action is inextricably tied to environmental causes and effects. If the "lifeblood" of the Canadian wilderness supplied the means for that country's economic development in "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," then the avaricious whaling depicted in "Ode to Big Blue" demonstrated the impacts that such economic development has on the environment in turn. The emphasis on these connections challenges the typical Western understanding of humans being separate from nature. 

Just as importantly, Lightfoot never sugarcoated the connection between the human and the non-human, producing a sense that while often beneficial to humans, the environment demands respect. The personification of Big Blue demonstrates Lightfoot's sense that a whale exists on equal standing with a person. Meanwhile, the power of the natural world and its ability to wipe away human life in an instant runs through "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," "Triangle," and "Ghosts of Cape Horn," leaving a jarring lesson about taking the environment for granted. In some ways, this point of emphasis might reinforce the traditional Western understanding of nature as something to fear. Yet because Lightfoot also sings about co-presence and connection with the non-human, even the scarier non-human elements garner more respect than fear in his songs. If we are part of the larger environment, we must recognize the threats it can pose, but that doesn't mean we have to wage war on it as an adversary.

As it turned out, in my adulthood, my work as a scholar of environmental communication would explore many of the same themes Lightfoot's music did. I learned that he and I shared a worldview, and I gained an even greater appreciation for what he was saying in "Ode to Big Blue." In fact, an unmistakeable line of thought runs from the first time I heard that song to how I perceive and act within our environment today. 

Gordon Lightfoot died on May 1. I am very sad the world lost him, but I expect that his music and his voice will continue to influence the way we think about and interact with the non-human environment for a long time.

Goodbye, Gordon. Thank you for singing my song!