Song picture
The bird in the cage - remix
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A remix with keyboard effects added
cage sad boy bird smiling
Hi folks. I have added a lot of videos recently. Please take a look!
Hi folks, This site acts as a personal archive of my work. So you'll find my best recordings here as well as some pretty crappy ones. The earliest recordings here were made on simple cassette decks, others were made on mobile phones, some are live recordings made at various gigs over the years, a handful were made in small recording studios, but most of the more recent ones were made at home on a Zoom portable studio, which itself is now rather ancient! If you like a song and want to download it, click on 'Full song info' for that song and you will see the download link. You can also read the lyrics and any background information on the songs that I may have added. All my music is available for free - enjoy :) cheers, Charles
Song Info
Genre
Acoustic • Acoustic Folk
Charts
Peak #68
Peak in subgenre #18
Author
Charles Tyler
Rights
Charles Tyler
Uploaded
June 15, 2022
Track Files
MP3
MP3 11.2 MB • 320 kbps • 4:54
Lossless
WAV 49.5 MB
Story behind the song
This song is a meditation on the nature of time based on an incident in Laos in 2008. I was staying in Luang Prabang, and I took a boat trip up the Mekong river to the Tam Ting cave temple, where I paid a young Lao boy to release a small bird that he was keeping in a bamboo cage. He was one of several children selling small caged birds to the visiting tourists and pilgrims where the boats stop near the cave entrance. Paying to release captive birds and fishes is a common Buddhist practice - to earn 'merit', as they believe. The pictures in this video from that day illustrate the story.
Lyrics
I held a bird in my hand And then I let it go It flew away across the river Where I could not follow The bird was in a bamboo cage Before I set it free I bought it from a sad young boy To see him smile and to ease his poverty Some say time is an illusion And that makes sense to me The bird is always in the cage The bird is always free And the boy is always smiling The boy is always sad I always pay the money And for that I'm always glad
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