Gord Downie's muse: 4 topics that influenced his songs

It's all there in the lyrics.

In interviews, Gord Downie was sometimeshalting and introspective,always trying to find the right words. Hecould be maddeningly vague when asked directly about his artistic intent, but listeners could find most of what theyneeded to know in the album sleeves of the Tragically Hip's 13 full albums and Downie's four side projects.

Downie, who died Tuesday at age 53, was seemingly incapable of writing a clich. His lyrics avoided pop-rock boilerplate and had themes and motifs, not to mention heart and insight.

While he's known for being a chronicler of Canadian stories, his lyrics also dealt with bigger ideas that he returned to again and again: thoughts on how to write, how tointeract with nature and ultimately how to live.

Here's a look at fourthemesin Downie's lyrics that illuminatethe way he saw the worldand the legacy he leaves the country with some suggested listening.

'Sing for the whole sea': The water

Canadian locales aren't mentioned asoften in Hip songs asDownie'smost common motif, water.He once wrote about singing "for the whole sea," and indeed he did.

Literally dozens of his songsmention water at least in passing, sometimeswith a nod to how fragile Canada'swaterways are "made to take it and take and take and take," as he sings on 2005'sYer Not the Ocean.

"There's no such thing as a working river!"Downieyelled at a show last decade as he pushed concertgoers to support the Lake Ontario Waterkeeper,a charity working to protect the Great Lakes,of which he was a board member.

Downie believed it was vital to protect water, butsongs such asNautical DisasterandNew Orleans Is Sinkingand lyrics like"Bigger boats been done by less water/And better boats been done by this water" showthat he believed that while people may mistreat the sea, eventually, the water always wins.

Deep cuts:The Drowning Machine,The Dire Wolf,Ocean Next

'The struggle has a name': Indigenous issues

Many of the 11.7 million people who tuned into the Hip's final concert in August 2016 might have been surprised to hearDowniespeak out about Indigenous issues.In the new documentaryLong Time Running, Downiesayshisplea that night to remember the plight of First Nationswas a spontaneous decision.But his passion wasn't.

Atrip north in 2012 led to thewry songGoodnight Attawapiskat, about the troubled northernOntario reserve. Prime ministerStephen Harper's 2008 apology to First Nations led to 2009'sNow the Struggle Has a Name. Butyou can go back to Looking for a Place to Happen,from the1992 albumFully Completely, for a much earlierglimpse of theIndigenous sympathies in the Hip's music.It was indicative of the Hip's everything-to-everyone appeal that thissong about colonialism became a sort ofbroanthem among high school students in the early '90s.

In the year prior to his death, Downiereleased a solo album called Secret Path, about 12-year-oldChanieWenjack, who diedfleeing a residential schoolin 1966.On the issue of the treatment of Indigenous people, Downierecently said, "We are not the country we think we are."

Deep cuts:All of Secret Path, especiallyThe Stranger,I Will Not Be StruckandThe Only Place to Be

'Don't save a thing': The creative process

"I write about words," Downie belts inhis lowest register on the 2016Hip track Machine. "I find treasureor worse."

A songwriter who frequently wrote songs about writing songs, especially as his career progressed,Downie's creative philosophy as expressed in his lyrics was simple:Live in the moment.

Always moving forwardwas most important to him and the Hip, who insisted that any looks back such astheir Canadian Music Hall of Fame induction or the documentary filmBobcaygeon focusmoreon the fans thanon the band. Even the tracks on their greatest hits album werechosen by fans.

But when it came to ideas,Downie also refused to look to the future."Use it up," he wrote in in a 2002 song of the same name. "Use it all up. Don't save a thing for later."

Deep cuts:Machine, The Dance and Its Disappearance, The Never-Ending Present

'We'll go, too': Facing death, embracing life

Downie wasn't a morbid songsmith, but he did write a surprising amount about death ("What can you do?/They've all gone/We'll go too").

Sometimes he faced itwith a humourous bent a song about hisembarrassing terror of freak turbulence, a line abouthow sharks tend to preferAustralians to the Irish. Downiesaid he wrote the track Inevitability of Deathbecause he thought it'd be funny to hear a radio deejay say it out loud.

Other times Downie went for afiercehumanity: a song to soothe a dying grandmother, a tribute to a fallen hockey player, a poem for a relative taken too soon. Even a song about soldiers dying at sea suddenly shifts ("anyway, Susan") to two peopletrying to make an emotionalconnection.

Recorded beforeDownie'scancer diagnosis, theHip's most recent album,Man Machine Poem, has a rare spiritual side to the lyrics, with references tothe Bible ("I'm a man/I do what I hate and don't understand")and a quote from Pope Francis ("But if God walks with persons/Does he run, run, run, run, run?").

Downie's humanist take on the prospect of death is captured in the band's 2002 songA Beautiful Thing,wherea phone call surprises the narrator in the dead of night:

"You'd better be dying" and you were
So we talked about things and where they went
Big remarkable events
And how each day's a new day
And they get spent
How you'd continue, artfully, like the breeze
Trying to do one true beautiful thing

Deep cuts:Heaven Is aBetter Place Today, Great Soul,A Beautiful Thing