Lyrics for A Stone as interpreted by PuNkJaSo

A Stone Lyrics
Hot breath
rought skin,
warm laughs and smiling,
the lovliest words
whispered and meant
you like all these things.

But, though you like all these things
you love a stone.
You love a stone,
because it's smooth and it's cold.
And you'd love most
to be told
that it's all your own.

You love white veins,
you love hard grey,
the heaviest weight,
the clumsiest shape,
the earthiest smell,
the hollowest tone
you love a stone.

And I'm found too fast,
called too fond of flames,
and then I'm phoning my friends,
and then I'm shouldering the blame,
while you're picking pebbles
out of the drain,
miles ago.
You're out singing songs,
and I'm down shouting names
at the flickerless screen,
going fucking insane.
Am I losing my cool,
overstating my case?
Well, baby what can I say?

You know I never claimed
that I was a stone.
And you love a stone.
You love white veins,
you love hard grey,
the heaviest weight,
the clumsiest shape,
the earthiest smell,
the hollowest tone
you love a stone.

You love a stone,
because it's dark and it's old,
and if it could start
being alive
you'd stop living alone.
And I think I believe that,
if stones could dream,
they'd dream of being laid
side-by-side,
piece-by-piece,
and turned into a castle
for some towering queen
they're unable to know.

And when that queen's daughter
came of age,
I think she'd be lovely
and stubborn and brave,
and suitors would journey
from kingdoms away
just to make themselves known.

And I think that I know the bitter dismay of a lover who brought
fresh brouquets every day
when she turned him away
to remember some knave
who once gave
just one rose, one day, years ago.



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pinder
05-27-2005

Rated 0 
about a guy who's closed off and the girl that loves him

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elstortez
07-30-2005

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i think this is a first person song, and the singer is in love with a girl who loves a stone, and he is questioning why the girl loves the man who is such a hard, cold, stone-like man.....saying pretty much that he has way more to offer, and why doesnt she love him instead of the stone

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IAmACliche
12-10-2005

Rated 0 
ooof...im the stone. :(

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tawnygypsygirl
12-11-2005

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i love this song. i agree with elstortez that it is in the first person... the singer is talking about how he is so very in love with a girl and goes out of his way to demonstrate his love to her, but she casts his love aside for another more "challenging" love interest. the stone is the "other man" who puts forth little effort to woo her, but wins her love anyhow. it is sort of the classic situation of someone who loves "the thrill of the chase", or who feels the relationship is only worthwhile if she is never quite sure of where she stands in it. she loves "the stone" because he makes her crazy trying to figure out of he really cares for her and she mistakes this emotion for love and romance. she passes by the singer because it is too easy... his heart is on his sleeve.

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yukino031902
02-28-2006

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I agree that the song is a man singing about a woman he loves who is still in love with someone else. However, I think that the "stone" refers to a gravestone, and that the woman is still in love with someone who has died. The line, "And you love most to be told that it's all your own," refers to her previous lover belonging to her forever b/c he died while he was in love with her. But I feel what is most telling is the final verse that talks about how she is still in love with that man and can't forget about him b/c he was the first to capture her heart.

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rolandfrompoland
03-12-2006

Rated 0 
I guess it could plausibly be a gravestone...but I think the way Will Sheff makes the "stone" a negative thing would be disrespectful if it was about a woman in love with a dead lover. He has too much empathy for a song like that I think.

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JimDillon
03-23-2006

Rated 0 
I think everyone has felt like that at somepoint. He is in madly in love with a woman but she doesn't care that she has a good thing going. She wants the flame. She wants a guy who is emotionless (like a stone). And it drives him absolutly crazy.

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MargaretDeVico
04-02-2006

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This is so well-put. Just.... amazingly well-said. I know exactly what it's talking about, and I especially love how its refrenced in "Song of Our So-Called Friend."

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alysiabfk
06-27-2006

Rated 0 
I agree with it being about the singer who is in love with a girl who loves a stone. I think another way you could look at it is a friend who has a mental problem. In the stanza:

And I'm found too fast,
called too fond of flames,
and then I'm phoning my friends,
and then I'm shouldering the blame,
while you're picking pebbles
out of the drain,
miles ago.
You're out singing songs,
and I'm down shouting names
at the flickerless screen,
going fucking insane.
Am I losing my cool,
overstating my case?
Well, baby what can I say?

It sounds like Will is talking about his friend being lost somewhere and everyone is worried and looking for them, However because the friend/person has a mental problem they are just in some field picking flowers and singing. I'm probably very wrong that is just something I thought of while listening to the song. But I do think it's about the singer and his love interest loving a stone.

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MattisTrees
08-22-2006

Rated 0 
I agree to most of these comments.. but i think that a stone isnt limited to another guy that doesnt care. I think that a stone could be anything that would distract you from seeing whats really good for you (mostly love i guess). examples of Stones: White veins (possibly heroine?), hard grey (not sure, maybe just bland-ness, unexiting people), heaviest weight (weightlifting, manly-ness), clumsiest shape (art), earthiest smell (possibly pot, or nature), the hollowest tone (obviously music, possibly empty, meaningles music).

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JeremyB1
12-15-2006

Rated 0 
I think there's a very good case to be made for the tombstone interpretation. "If it could start being alive you'd stop living alone" is probably the best support. But also, throughout the song the narrator is contrasting himself with "the stone" and one of his qualities is "hot breath," something no living person lacks (though I guess the death could be metaphorical). Also, white veins would belong to a deat person and stones come in all colors but tombstones are almost always a "hard grey" color and are large and heavy. Finally, the idea of "a knave" who gave her a rose "years ago" suggests someone who is not around any more.

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mysilenceislouder
02-16-2007

Rated 0 
uh oh. i'm the girl...

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deadhead085
05-09-2007

Rated 0 
This is easily my favorite OR song out of all their albums. The last stanza alone shows Will's great songwriting ability.

"And I think that I know the bitter dismay
of a lover who brought
fresh bouquets every day
when she turned him away
to remember some knave
who once gave
just one rose, one day, years ago."

I know exactly how he feels, and the song still kinda hurts to listen to each time, but it's just SO good.
I agree with a lot of the previous comments. This song is about a man who is absolutely in love with a girl. She means the world to him, but no matter what he does, she's stuck in her past and doesn't want a future with him...

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buenoverde
06-12-2007

Rated 0 
I think there are actually a lot of indications that the girl in the story is still in love with someone who passed away. The narrator is frustrated that she's still wrapped up in this memory and he's trying to be realistic and help her move on by simply saying, it's a stone, he's not alive anymore. "White veins" implies no blood, "Heaviest weight/Clumsiest shape" could be used to describe a dead body. "Earthiest smell" would come from being buried. Then the first stanza is describing everything he has to offer that the guy she's still in love with can no longer can. He's basically telling her there that she's giving up on all these things she enjoys because she can't move on. I could seem a bit disrespectful, but I don't think that's the intention... It's just realism. But even if it is, it's not that shocking, Okkervil River has written about more horrific things. This line from "Kathy Keller" for instance, which could certainly be construed as the narrator talking about how he killed this girl's mother...

That bright kitchen, that old cleaver,
the spots of blood, the fallen phone reciever,
don’t you get tired of seeing those pictures?
That was me, but now I'm different.
I did all that, but now I'm really better.

So I don't think its too out of the question to hypothesize that the "stone" is actually dead. That being said, I think that the most important part of the song though, isn't the story... I think it's more the pain and frustration this guy is feeling... He expresses a lot of emotion in the lyrics and in the tone of the song as a whole, so I think those emotions are really the lead character in this song.

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ExcessiveClaptrap
06-15-2007

Rated 0 
Interpret however you want, but what is definitely sure that these are some of the most amazing lines I've ever read. They fit so well in my life right now, that this song almost makes me cry.

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ohne_form
06-24-2007

Rated 0 
i love the last three verses so much. whatever they mean...they're pure, heartbreaking loveliness.nothing less.

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tippita
10-08-2007

Rated 0 
Many of you have grasped the greater themes I think (though it's not really necessary to nail down whether the "stone" implies a dead lover or not. It might or it might not; it makes no difference whether it is even human, really. It can be *any* lingering one-sided obsession on the part of the unreachable beloved. If you are looking only at this one song, of course.)

But do be very careful of how you refer to "he/she" or "the singer." Will Sheff is a poet and a student of literature. This song fits into the greater narrative of the entire "Black Sheep Boy" album and the narrator of this song is no more "the singer" than Shakespeare is the main character of all his plays (!) You belittle this small piece of poetry to simplfy it as such.

That said, I'm extremely curious to see how anyone reading this thinks it might fit in to the greater narrative of "Black , especially in Sheep Boy," the album. Especially, in relation to songs like "For Real" ("...sometimes i thirst for real blood, for real knives, for real cries...I want to know this time if you’re really finally mine...") or "A King and a Queen" ("...be hands holding a knife. Be a being on two feet, with his heart trembling, butchering for a king he believes in though he's never seen. Be the princess in that stone tower, crying for that handsome butcher's plight...") The same unreachable beloved shows up but who are these different narrators? Or are they the same character? The recurring motif of the princess in the tower of willing stones...the blood...hot life vs.the cold inanimate...what do you make of it, hey?

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tippita
10-08-2007

Rated 0 
And, oh my god (!) the first time I heard the last part, starting with "if stones could dream," I got twisted in the chest and teary in the eyes.

Such simple and powerful poetry! This is not some novice's direct, dull, black and white, 1-to-1 metaphor...no, this is far more abstract and evocative!

It pulls you into the small soul of the tiny stone that had, until this part, no voice at all. I mean--come on!-- what a mind is that (!?) to bring us into the hypothetical dreams of a emotionless stone. A stone that screws things up for our narrator so horribly...yet he's still got a bit of compassion for that unwilling stone and imagines how it might understand its role among the human world, and ultimately, how its emotional landscape is so different from those of humans who feel warmth and love and longing...all unknowable for a stone who wants nothing more that to be laid side-by-side, piece-by-piece with its own kind.

Does the stone long for that the way the narrator longs for his princess? Is that beloved stone as lonely and frustrated as the narrator (in his own stone-emotion language that we can't really understand)?

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WoodenIndian
10-31-2007

Rated 0 
i think that will is singing about a guy who loves a girl who has no interest in him whilst longing for someone herself, but the person that she longs for cares nothing for her, thus making him(the other guy) the stone. the stone cares nothing about her, and is inturn a lifeless thing, if you will, a stone.

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LimeLight
02-20-2008

Rated 0 
dude i love the poetry, but im so that guy (not the stone the other more loeserish one) its most definatly about a man in love with this hardy upfront kinda girl, and his heart breaks cus he cant stop loving her, but she dosent want to know, shes inlove with a shallower person, someone who doesnt show affection, probz (or in my case) cus she dosent want what she can have, she wants to be unhappy and unsure, and as for the stone (again in my case) he probz cares but not that much.
see love sucks :) (also fucking stone ass wanker) feels good to let it out anonimasly on the web
xx

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misterflak
04-26-2008

Rated 0 
I see this song as a take on the classic theme of unrequited/'she's taken' love. Let's just say that Mr. Sheff does it better than Mr. Jovi. This song gets me in how it's a both a desperate plea to this 'queen' and a scathing review of her 'king'.

My favorite line: "If stones could dream, they'd dream of being layed side-by-side, piece-by-piece, and turned into a castle
for some towering queen they're unable to know."

Poetry....

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misterflak
04-26-2008

Rated 0 
I see this song as a take on the classic theme of unrequited/'she's taken' love. Let's just say that Mr. Sheff does it better than Mr. Jovi. This song gets me in how it's a both a desperate plea to this 'queen' and a scathing review of her 'king'.

My favorite line: "If stones could dream, they'd dream of being layed side-by-side, piece-by-piece, and turned into a castle
for some towering queen they're unable to know."

Poetry....

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electric_warrior
05-09-2008

Rated 0 
I agree with a lot of what has been said here…. I want to add that I don’t think that the girl is intentionally rough… I think she is truly unable to love and is un open to herself and probably doesn’t know it. In the first stanza, when he is talking about hot breath and warm skin…. ‘you like all these things’. The woman he is referencing, in my opinion, probably desires these things, but in love she goes for pretty much the opposite (and maybe she doesn’t even realize it.) I like what everyone is saying about the theme of death, although I think it could be metaphorical. (could be wrong, of course) It feels like the woman just goes for the stone, or basically lack of love/death, because she does not know how to go for life in respect to love. That implies vulnerability and being open – maybe something that the woman isn’t capable of for whatever reason, and …. Something she won’t get from someone who has a polished (ie, cool) and un-impenetrable exterior…. She gravitates not only to the coolness of the knave but also to the death/lifelessness of that person and their inability to show affection. The narrator is saying that he’s “too fond of flames….” Calling his friends, freaking out over it all basically, like losing his shit, having a real-life reaction, while she is oblivious. Maybe she is even in a dream – the dream that this other dude loves her. I also think that in this stanza, when he talks about her picking pebbles out of a drain, that the pebbles are referring to the crumbs of affection (the one red rose) that she is getting from the stone. And the other man, the stone, doesn’t give these affections to her directly even, she has to go pick them out of the drain. I also want to say….that I don’t think that this woman is a bitch, and I don’t think the singer thinks that. I think he sort of has pity on her, and that he doesn’t understand why she can’t love – he just sees that this is the case and it sucks for both of them.

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vande115
06-20-2008

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Okay, i only got most of the main point from reading the comments section, but i feel like i've got a few (okay a lot of) things that haven't been said. "called too fond of flames" moth to the flame, going back to the same girl over and over. "picking pebbles out of the drain" the girl is dating guys, who are like dead guy and who are of poor quality.(or "drain" meaning memories, therefore only thinking about him) Which leads to "shout names at flickerless screen" He tries a different tact of trying to make her feel bad (after "shouldering the blame") because her "screen"/outlook never changes.

I think it's dead guy and his girl who had one night/amount of time/"rose" together and she had a daughter. And although the singer truly loves her "whispered and meant"....he has tried to show his love to her in many ways "bouquet of flowers," but that he will never be as good as the one "rose." Also, the singer thinks it's built up over time and now she's immune to (his) love. "because it's smooth and it's cold" (also "dark and old"/unknown/murky) as in time/her mind has made it perfect and smoothed out the edges of anything that might've been wrong.

Annnd as she grows up, the "queen's daugther" will be told stories about this perfect night/love/father and will wait out for her perfect love and reject others who truly love her because she will have unreasonable expectations. In this way "heaviest weight" doubles as not wanting to love another after you think you've already found/had true love, but it's clearly meant as death early on as well. "if stones could dream...." They'd want their daughter to find perfect/true love like theirs, but they are "unable to know" that it will just make a "towering queen" preventing her from finding her true love.

Okay and i'm kinda thinking the rose is an actual rose that was given and that was passed down to the daughter. He calls the dead guy a "knave" and that guy is clearly driving him "fucking insane..."So she still has it and the singer knows the pain of unrequited love and how it seems so unknown/frustrating. So it's a common theme over time and i think the stone/rose combo ultimately ties into love/death gravestone/widow business quite well!

I still think he could be alive, but that makes for a slightly different picture. As in: Knave tricks girl into bed, girl thinks it's love, has daughter that falls for same type of knave. Meanhwhile singer/poets have trouble convincing the lady folk to love them. And the stone would be the knave being dead inside, and smooth meaning buff is suppose. And this cycle was starting long ago and the knaves have no intention of changing it. "side by side, piece by piece" Sorry this is so long, but it's my first post...so make it count. I joined because i was really helped by what everyone else said, so thanks to people who write stuff like this....it's certainly helped me.

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stephaniesnarfsnarf
07-13-2008

Rated 0 
I think it's fairly obvious what the song is about. He's in love with this girl, who is in love with someone else, someone who's a 'stone,' cold, hard and smooth. All the things, I'm guessing, that the singer or narrator is not. So he's lamenting this.

He takes it a step further and thinks of a literal stone, giving it thoughts and feelings, which is a very poetic stanza in and of itself.

And then the best part, he segues that into a metaphor of a consistent, sweet suitor getting turned down over and over again in favor of someone who gave a rose, once, long ago. The stone. The poor suitor, like the singer, loses out to a stone. So our singer can empathize.

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