Dead Songs in Depth

    
"While you were gone, these faces filled with darkness.
The obvious was hidden. With nothing to believe in,
The compass always points to Terrapin.

Sullen wings of fortune beat like rain.
You're back in Terrapin for good or ill again, for good or ill again."

AGAIN?
  

    

These SPACES filled with darkness...
  

    
Oops... careless screen scrape!
  

    
Never left? It is everywhere, just need eyes to see?
  

    
i always think about terraplane blues, and syd barrett's terrapin
(great minds?)

and when I take all the vowels out of trippin situation i get TRPPN
STTN, but that's not quite the same as TRRPN STTN and involves droppin'
the g, so put that down to stoned navel-gazing.
  

    
I have gazed at many a stoned navel without experiencing that
revelation.
  

    
Here are some early Terrapin outtakes from Mickeys barn in 76 with
some never heard lyrics sung by Jim McPherson...

https://archive.org/details/paf1976-06-01.136237.flac16
  

    
Wow--trying to make out these lyrics....thanks so much for posting!
  

    
I had a go - they are hard to decipher:
<http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/FLYERSID.HTM>
  

    
Great work! I wonder if we'll learn more. Might be worth checking in
with Nick at the Archives...
  

    
Even before I started living and touring in my schoolbus, I knew
Terrapin was the theme song of the bus people. It was part of why I
traded my van for a 35' mid-sixties GMC bus half converted to
camping use.

What is a terrapin, after all, except a sea turtle fitted with feet
instead of fins? A carapace on wheels; a self-contained, fully
realized mobile home. Nomadic by nature, it's self-reliant yet
connected to a network of like organisms.

In Bus Nation, a terrapin station is any place a busload of hippies
is welcome to bivouac.

It's pretty obvious when you think of it. After all, the first
movement of the suite is called Lady With A Van.
  

    
!!!
  

    
I'm there.
  

    
Wow! I was completely unaware of this nomenclature. However, I am
naturally suspicious of the possibility of being misled (see the
essay on bells regarding Franklin's Tower...), so I'm wondering--is
this serious? Is there a "bus nation" subculture with Terrapin
Stations awaiting their arrival? Fun!
  

    
There was certainly a bus nation subculture following the Dead
around in the '80s. Like a lot of other bus people, I made my tour
happen furnishing transportation. It also overlapped with the
Rainbow gathering. I took my bus off the summer tour in '83 after
the Santa Fe show and diverted to the New Mexico regional Rainbow
gathering that fall, e.g.

In the larger circle of bus folks I knew Terrapin was a sort of
totem. Campfire stuff.

The Bus subculture has deep roots in the hippie origin story, of
course, from Furthur to Gaskins' caravan. It's one of the ways to
run away and join the circus. 

It promises more freedom than it can deliver on, but you pretty much
have to fuck around to find out.
  

    
I recall seeing a bus from New Mexico called Terrapin Trailways on
the lot quite a bit back in the 80’s.  I believe it was mentioned in
Skeleton Key.
  

    
That is Norm Ruth's bus! Great friend from Rio RanchoNM
  

    
One of the marvelous things about the oral tradition (of which Song
is a pillar) is that the listener gets to fill in the blanks and
find the meaning they need. Certainly Hunter's lyrics serve this
purpose admirably, else we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

I don't think Hunter intended this suite to glorify the vagabond,
but it isn't hard for the wandering soul to find support between the
lines for the romance of the road.

There's a semiotic connection between the narrative of risk and
reward, security versus achievement, and the impulse to jettison the
baggage and get On The Road, whether by thumb, repurposed student
transportation, or Ford Econoline van (RIP Nanci Griffith). The
questing spirit resides restlessly in the Sailor's heart. The
Soldier fights only for hearth and home. The Lion's Den is shredding
the lease, the mortgage, the steady job and a secure future in favor
of something just over the next horizon. It may be classified as a
disorder, IANAT.

It takes a high tolerance for uncertainty, but a nomadic existence
is a radically different way of relating to the rest of society. And
as I aver above, it's not an unalloyed good. Most bus people are
former bus people.
  

    

I figured the sailor is used to being at the mercy of the elements a lot more
than the soldier is. Strategy vs disaster. So the van-dweller is the sailor?
  

    
Yep. If that lady's ever gonna get her van back...
  

    
My kids know every lyric to this song.  It was their lullaby for
years when they were young, and I was living in a divorced-dad
apartment, and they slept in two bunk beds in a 12x9 room...To us,
it's a fairy tale.
  

    
Wonderful! My kids similarly have many Dead lyrics embedded deep in
their cerebral cortex from endless lullabies....
  

    
I'm surprised no one mentioned these further lyrics for the entire
suite:.
https://archive.org/post/149968/terrapin-station-suite-part-2-ivory-wheels-ros
ewood-tracks
  

    
There's a full list of all the related lyrics here:
www.whitegum.com/songfile/TERRSUIT.HTM