Titanic Terrarium

"His great grandfather worked for Goodyear he'd see the blimp on Sundays wonder what the driver knew about making rubber tires."

i love that line. It remind me of NHL hockey team owners. Many team owners don't know a thing about hockey, they proably don't even know how to skate. They are just the business side of things and raking in the big bucks while the players do the dirty work.

"an accident's sometimes the only way to worm our way back to bad decisions,"

We all make bad decisions but no one will ever no about it if nothing bad happends becuase of it. It's not untill something goes wrong that we trace back to the reason (bad decision) it happend, then we point the almighty finger.

"My great grandfather was a welder he helped to build the Titanic he didn't certainly think that it was unsinkable."

I love that line as well and prettty self-explanatory.

gotta be about technology and how we rely on it too much (JasonReeher said it best 'double-edged sword')

its such a lovely song tho.

'an accidents sometimes the only way to worm our way back to bad decisions'

fuck, gordie makes u think...

One of the most fragile songs on a very dark album, Titanic Terrarium is ostensibly about technology. Blimps and giant cruise ships of yore float through the singer's mind; he is both protected by and imprisoned in a futuristic dome that provides shelter but largely excludes nature (except, of course, pervasive "ants and roaches"). The current situation is sterile and dull, but there is hope at the end: "if there's glory in miracles, it's that they're reversible." Technology is a two-edged sword.

Human arrogance results in disaster, so don't be arrogant and think you can go out traveling in the freezing blizzard. Stay home, warm and safe, inside.

P.S. Definitely don't fuck with the 401. It tried to kill me one Christmas Eve. Black ice!

Titanic Terrarium references\n\n"Growing up in a biosphere\nNo respect for bad weather"\n\nAs Most know, Biospheres are enclosed reproductions of the Earth\'s unique atmosphere and environment.\n\nHip Head Chris Janzen may have figured this out:\n"Heard something on the radio a few days ago that the line \'no respect for bad weather\' seems to reference. In Biosphere 2, none of the trees could hold their own weight due to the fact that they\'d had no exposure to wind."\n\n(This link contained some info about such. Click it. Maybe it still works: https://www.mindbounce.com/trivia/the-absence-of-wind-in-the-biosphere-2-research-lab-proved-severely-detrimental-to/ \n\n"The trees grown in Biosphere 2, in the absence of the nearly constant and variable action of the wind upon their trunks and branches, failed to grow the stress wood that would help them stand strong."\n\n "...There\'s a trace of mint wafting in from the North\nso we don\'t fuck with the 401"\n\nThe 401 is the busiest highway in Canada and runs east and west across the province of Ontario. It\'s notorious for its traffic, especially in the Greater Toronto Area, so motorists who can avoid messing with it, do. \n\nThanks to the kindness of Jennifer Baichwal, Gord himself solved the mystery:\n\n"Mint equals cold. Winter/storm coming, so don’t do the drive on the 401— snow, blizzard,"\n\nI actually got this from a website that is EVERYTHING HIP! \nI go there often .... \nIt\'s called: http://www.hipmuseum.com

Um...no clue what it means. Maybe my fellow fans know, but I am lost to the meaning. It might be a heavily veiled song about a horrible misfortune of some kind like the death of a grandparent. It could be about a grandparent freezing to death. Cold weather, death of grandparents, discuss amongst yourselves.

I think it's just a song about childhood. There are various allusions to childhood nostalgia. The line about not fucking with the 401 is probably referring to Highway 401 that runs through the north side of Kingston, the hometown of The Hip. They could have possibly played as children in that section of the highway while it was being built. The references to Great-grandfathers and the like, could be the bragging that most kids are inclined to do. "My great-grandfather did this...etc." Each new reference to a relative seems to out-do the last. "Her great-grandfather saw the future," then "My great-grandfather saw the blimp on Sundays," (some obviously more far-fetched then others). I think the song on a whole is trying to say that we live in this sort of bubble as children (or Terrarium). Everything is huge and daunting (Titanic) - "Its bigger than us and larger than we bargained" (The 401).