Live Out The String

Album: Join the Parade (2007)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song may have a slightly unusual title, but it had a truly terrible inspiration.

    In August 2005, as he left a concert in Denver, Marc Cohn's tour van was targeted by a carjacker. He was shot in the head just above the eye but miraculously though the bullet lodged in his skull, it did no real physical damage.

    At the time, a spokesman for Denver police told the BBC: "Frankly, I can't tell you how he survived."

    Just over a year after the near fatal attack, Cohn's assailant, drug addict Joseph Yacteen, was sentenced to 36 years in jail. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England

Comments: 1

  • Volker from HamburgThe "String" refers to the thread of life from ancient Greek (and Roman) mythology: The three sister deities called the Moirai or Fates determine destiny and life. Clotho spins the thread of life; Lachesis determines how long one lives, by measuring the thread of life; and Atropos choses how someone dies by cutting the thread of life with her shears. So "Live out the string" could stand for the decision to fully exhaust the span of life alloted to you by the Moirai.
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