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Thinking outrageously, I write in cursive
I hide in my bed with the lights on the floor
Wearing three layers of coats and leg warmers
I see my own breath on the face of the door
Oh, I am not quite sleeping
Oh, I am fast in bed
There on the wall in the bedroom creeping
I see a wasp with her wings outstretched
North of Savanna we swim in the Palisades
I come out wearing my brother's red hat
There on his shoulder my best friend is bit seven times
He runs washing his face in his hands
Oh, how I meant to tease him
Oh, how I meant no harm
Touching his back with my hand, I kiss him
I see the wasp on the length of my arm
Oh, how I meant to tease him
Oh, how I meant no harm
Touching his back with my hand, I kiss him
I see the wasp on the length of my arm
Oh great sights upon this state, hallelu–
Wonders bright, and rivers, lake, hallelu–
Trail of Tears and Horseshoe Lake, hallelu–
Trusting things beyond mistake, hallelu–
We were in love, we were in love
Palisades, Palisades
I can wait, I can wait
I can't explain the state that I'm in
The state of my heart, he was my best friend
Into the car, from the backseat
Oh, admiration in falling asleep
All of my powers, day after day
I can tell you, we swaggered and swayed
Deep in the tower, the prairies below
I can tell you, the telling gets old
Terrible sting and terrible storm
I can tell you the day we were born
My friend is gone, he ran away
I can tell you, I love him each day
Though we have sparred, wrestled and raged
I can tell you, I love him each day
Terrible sting and terrible storm
I can tell you
I hide in my bed with the lights on the floor
Wearing three layers of coats and leg warmers
I see my own breath on the face of the door
Oh, I am not quite sleeping
Oh, I am fast in bed
There on the wall in the bedroom creeping
I see a wasp with her wings outstretched
North of Savanna we swim in the Palisades
I come out wearing my brother's red hat
There on his shoulder my best friend is bit seven times
He runs washing his face in his hands
Oh, how I meant to tease him
Oh, how I meant no harm
Touching his back with my hand, I kiss him
I see the wasp on the length of my arm
Oh, how I meant to tease him
Oh, how I meant no harm
Touching his back with my hand, I kiss him
I see the wasp on the length of my arm
Oh great sights upon this state, hallelu–
Wonders bright, and rivers, lake, hallelu–
Trail of Tears and Horseshoe Lake, hallelu–
Trusting things beyond mistake, hallelu–
We were in love, we were in love
Palisades, Palisades
I can wait, I can wait
I can't explain the state that I'm in
The state of my heart, he was my best friend
Into the car, from the backseat
Oh, admiration in falling asleep
All of my powers, day after day
I can tell you, we swaggered and swayed
Deep in the tower, the prairies below
I can tell you, the telling gets old
Terrible sting and terrible storm
I can tell you the day we were born
My friend is gone, he ran away
I can tell you, I love him each day
Though we have sparred, wrestled and raged
I can tell you, I love him each day
Terrible sting and terrible storm
I can tell you
Lyrics submitted by addictedtosound
Track duration: 05:23
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When I was eleven, I lost a good friend because he had a crush on me and I got freaked out. Even now, though we still know each other, we're not close, because we both still feel awkward about it. I know I feel terrible about hurting his feelings, even though it was almost a decade ago.
In my opinion, even if Sufjan didn't have romantic feelings for his friend, he and his friend may have been at different stages, and the song is pretty much Sufjan regretting the rift in their friendship and emphasizing how much he still cares about his friend.
It seems to me that when the "narrator" kisses his friend, he notes that he does it with his hand. So, when the narrator "kisses" his friend's back, it's more like a pinch.
Thus, the wasp is perhaps a symbol of this moment -- of this pinch that was actually caused by the narrator. The narrator regrets it because as a consequence of it, his friend runs away. He didn't mean to hurt him -- he was "only teasing."
This all leads us back to the beginning of the song where he is in a state of remorse over the situation, and cannot sleep because "the wasp" is still there... lurking in his room. A memory of a situation that he deeply regrets having come across, and feeling saddened that this caused his friend to run away, and therefore caused him to "lose his friend."
Thus, I see this song as a song about having regretfully done something to lose someone, creating a "wasp."
Just my two cents, I suppose.
I doubt anyone will ever read this, given the song's pretty old now. But I noticed this song had a lot of comments, and they mostly turned out to be of two varieties--people working hard to persuade people this song about pre-teens was homo-erotica (give me a break). or people working hard to persuade people that it's actually about heterosexual love (how bout another break)--either the story's told from the perspective of a girl (and by the way, they make leg warmers for guys, too--they're called long johns), or the other guy's his brother, or etc.
I think the point is that's irrelevant in the song. As a songwriter myself, I can say that songwriting (the best kind of songwriting) is about evoking an emotional response. The songs I hate the most--the blatantly preachy ones like anything written by Lady GaGa--are unmistakable in their message, because that's their whole purpose. They require no thought or introspection.
The important thing about this song is the emotion it elicits--the sting of the loss of childhood innocence. I think that's what's most ironic about the interpretations that want to make it about adult sexuality. To do so is to project adult emotional and adult sex drives onto something that's clearly not about that. I remember being a 10 year old boy and hating girls. And I remember how much I loved my best friends and how much I missed them when somebody moved away. But I never thought about having sex with them. I never really thought much about sex at all when I was that age.
This song makes me remember what it felt like to be 10 years old. And I'm still afraid of wasps--that's something else that immediately takes me back to childhood.
For anyone who isn't precisely heterosexual, one of the most poignant experiences of your young life is when you have that one friend you feel... differently about, and I feel that here Sufjan is telling us a story of an experience he had with someone who was "different" to him, and confusing. Sufjan has already told us on multiple occasions that there was an actual occurrence with a friend of his at a summer camp where they invented a predatory wasp-bird creature to scare each other. To me, based on my experiences, there are simply too many lines to ignore, that suggest a homo-questioning undertone. I don't know Sufjan's orientation and he may well be straight as an arrow. But this is obviously something that happened when he was young and that can be a really confusing time of figuring things out and having conflicting feelings for those close to you.
The beginning of the song, he is writing "in cursive" in a cold room. When he sees a wasp on the wall, his memory drifts back to this specific experience at summer camp.
He was swimming in a park in Michigan (yes, a real place) and his best friend at the camp was stung by a wasp, multiple times. He reaches to tease him about the creature they created, and perhaps to pretend to bite him, and it turns into a kiss. By the way, just because he's wearing his brother's hat, that doesn't mean that it's his brother he kisses. AND for those who would attempt to rationalize this into something else, he does say very clearly that he kissed his friend. Then he "sees the wasp on the length of his arm" and the wasp becomes this recurring metaphor for the repressed, forbidden and extremely confusing thing that is happening between the two of them.
The rest of the repetitive verses after the chorus of "we were in love, I can wait" (how does that not seem like someone lovestruck and heartsick?) seem to convey their continued struggle with their feelings. They like each other, love each other, but they're not sure if they are gay or even questioning.
"I can't explain the state that I'm in. The state of my heart, he was my best friend." In some ways he's still shocked at what has happened. He was his best friend, but this thing has come between them.
"Into the car, from the backseat. Oh, admiration in falling asleep" This is either directly afterward, and they end up back in the car, or they see each other again for a while afterward. It's just that end of the day exhaustion after swimming and being in the sun, and as he's falling asleep he feels this love and admiration for his friend, despite what has happened.
"All of my powers, day after day
I can tell you, we swaggered and swayed
Deep in the tower, the prairies below
I can tell you, the telling gets old"
They both swaggered and swayed, they both wrestled with their feelings. What he says here is so powerful. He fights against his feelings, they both do, and from the top of the mountain to the prairies (this all happened in a park, remember) they keep coming back to the same conclusion. They do have feelings for each other. When he says the telling gets old, he just means he has gone over the story so many times in his memory it's drudgery.
"Terrible sting and terrible storm
I can tell you the day we were born"
I might have believed any theory other than two men kissing each other and having conflicting feelings for each other, if not for these two lines. Continuing the wasp metaphor, in that moment of the kiss they are both stung with something new and unknown and perplexing, and it creates a storm of emotion within them. They are born again in that moment as they begin to question their respective identities.
"My friend is gone, he ran away
I can tell you, I love him each day
Though we have sparred, wrestled and raged
I can tell you, I love him each day
Terrible sting and terrible storm"
Keep in mind that he's writing and reflecting on all this years later, possibly decades. He's remembering this event, and the strong feelings of love and devotion that he had towards his friend, and how this crush changed his life, but they eventually went their separate ways. As so many of these things do, the love dissolved as they grew up. It was a terrible sting and terrible storm at the time, but he has grown and changed away from who he was then. He still loves him each day, but not actively.
Sorry for the length, but it just seemed like so many people were missing the mark on this one, or trying to come up with outlandish things to avoid the possibility that he was discussing a male-male crush.
and oh yeah, at the end when he's talking about how his best friend is gone now, and whatevs, he's just talking about how in the present they're not as close as they used to be literally and emotionally. so yeah, it's not about his brother killing himself necessarily, but just growing apart and that puts quite a sad ending to such a nice, childhood memory.