Running On Ice

Running On Ice
(The Bridge) (1986)

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A video for "Running On Ice" with clips from various videos or movies including the seminal film "Koyaanisqatsi" (Life Out of Balance) by Godfrey Reggio. Koyaanisqatsi is © IRE, 2013. All rights reserved.

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  I could never understand why the urban attitude
    Is so superior
    In a world of high rise ambition
    Most people's motives are ulterior

   Billy starts off The Bridge with the frenetic "Running On Ice." This is sort of "Pressure" part 2, as the song is about the pressures and anxieties of modern life, and how one can never seem to get ahead of the game.  It's a theme also found in "Close to the Borderline" from Glass Houses. The song may have seemed edgy at the time though sounds somewhat dated today. It has a definite 1980s feel to it with its heavy use of synthesizers.

       Billy has said that he originally wrote the song with Sting in mind, and it does sound like a Sting song (here is a video of Sting singing Billy's "Big Man on Mulberry Street" from 2014 in concert). Apparently, Billy, Sting, Don Henley, and others had kicked around the idea of forming a pop supergroup similar to the Travelling Wilburys but with a jazz bent that would be called Pork Pie Hat, which is also the name of a Charles Mingus song. Billy talks about it here at the The New Yorker Festival in 2015.

I have never heard "Running On Ice" played anywhere, not on the radio, on TV, or live, until it was used in an episode of the television program The Office in 2011 (the hilarious "Threat Level Midnight" episode). And here is Billy doing "Running On Ice" from a concert in 2005.

There's a lot of tension in this town
I know it's building up inside of me
I've got all the symptoms and the side effects
Of city life anxiety

I could never understand why the urban attitude
Is so superior
In a world of high rise ambition
Most people's motives are ulterior

Sometimes I feel as though I'm running on ice
Paying the price too long
Kind of get the feeling that I'm running on ice
Where did my life go wrong

I'm a cosmopolitan sophisticate
Of culture and intelligence
The culmination of technology
And civilized experience

But I'm carrying the weight of all the useless junk
A modern man accumulates
I'm a statistic in a system
That a civil servant dominates

And all that means is that I'm running on ice
Caught in the vise so strong
I'm slipping and sliding, cause I'm running on ice
Where did my life go wrong

You've got to run
You've got to run

As fast as I can climb
A new disaster every time I turn around
As soon as I get one fire put out
There's another building burning down

They say this highway's going my way
But I don't know where it's taking me
It's a bad waste, a sad case, a rat race
It's breaking me

I get no traction cause I'm running on ice
It's taking me twice as long
I get a bad reaction cause I'm running on ice
Where did my life go wrong

You've got to run, you've got to run

Running on ice, running on ice
Running on ice, running on ice