My sister’s friend heard me playing guitar once and asked me to write her a song. I said ok give me a minute, and walked off. She laughed, I laughed, we all laughed. 2 days later I came back to her with RABBITS IN THE RAIN. Title in capitals, presumably to add a bit of gravitas to a theme I was worried people might treat with too much levity.

A tragedy in bunny’s clothing, this is a song about the voracious and perverse appetite of consumerism, the desperate struggle of the oppressed against systemic oppressive forces, and rabbits dancing around having a lovely time when it’s a bit wet.

That last part of the theme is covered succinctly but repeatedly in the choruses. I obviously deemed ‘rabbits in the rain’ description enough to translate the complex, multi-layered visions I’m sure I was having at the time. And I was right. Rabbits are so heavily connotative in our society that merely mentioning them over a couple of happy chords is enough to suggest a cute scene, maybe springtime, bucolic splendour, nature running its course, a world untouched by evil. The rain is a slight spanner though. Are they happy in the rain? Is it Bambi Little April Showers, or is it a darkening foreboding storm?

Regardless, we all know what happens in Bambi.

Boom, enter the minor chord, and the verse begins. It starts off harmlessly enough:

‘The rabbit has got his lettuce
And no one will take it from him
You don’t want to fight a rabbit
When it’s got its lettuce’

But in here are the corrosive seeds of greed, the same greed that will lead to Billy the Rabbit stealing from Old Farmer Jack. The same greed that will cause Billy’s death.

What can a rabbit do? His land encroached on by the constantly increasing consumption of humanity, a modern day rabbit is forced to steal in order to survive. Do you think Billy was raised to be a thief? No, Sofia the Rabbit was a rabbit of principle and dignity. But she too had to steal, eventually. And Billy sees no moral dilemma in taking back from those who ruined his last 4 homes, killed half of his friends, and left many more starving. Old Farmer Jack deserves what he’s got coming to him, Billy believes.

Trouble:

‘Old Farmer Jack
Has come out with his gun.
Run, Rabbits, run,
You don’t want Farmer Jack to get you’

And here we get the unstoppable force of the system crashing against those who would attempt to disrupt it. What is a warren of rabbits to a single human with a gun? Lettuce crumbs dropping from their panicked hungry mouths, they scatter. What started off as an act of conscious collective rebellion, a small victory in a world of grinding losses, becomes a free-for-all of selfish chaos, as rabbits clamber over each other to save their own skin. This is how the system wins. It breaks spirits. It reduces oppressed beings to their most basic and dangerous drive: to survive. In this state, even a generous, compassionate, and cute rabbit like Billy begins to display the same pernicious qualities found in the oppressors he so loathes.

Today, Billy doesn’t even get the chance to save himself. Perhaps served on a plate, with a side of the lettuce he had wanted. Maybe just discarded with the disdain Farmer Jack reserves for beings he decides are worth less than himself.

‘The rabbits were so afraid
Nowhere to go
And Billy was taken down
He was too slow’