Lyrics for The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid as interpreted by lazzyhorse

The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid Lyrics
William:
Mother, I can hear your footfall now
Soft disturbance in the dead fall
How it precedes you like a black smoke, oh
Still the wanting comes in waves

You delivered me from danger then
Pulled my cradle from the reedy glen
Swore to save me from the world of men
Still the wanting comes in waves
And the wanting comes in waves
And I want this night
And I want this night, ah, oh

Queen:
How I made you, I wrought you, I pulled you
From ore I labored you
From cancer I cradled you
And now, this is how I am repaid
This is how I am repaid

Remember when I found you
The miseries that hounded you
And I gave you motion, anointed you with lotions
And now, this is how I am repaid
This is how I am repaid

William:
Mother hear this proposition right
Grant me freedom to enjoy this night
And I'll return to you at break of light
For the wanting comes in waves, in waves, in waves
Still the wanting comes in waves
Still the wanting comes in waves
Still the wanting comes in waves
And you owe me life
And you owe me life, ah, oh

Queen:
And if I grant you this favor, to hand you
Your life for the evening I will retake by morning
And so consider it your debt repaid
Consider it your debt repaid, repaid, repaid

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memoryburn7
02-17-2009

Rated +2 
I didn't think Colin would ever arrange a sexier female vocalist than Laura Veirs on Yankee Bayonette. He did it with Shara Worden and this insane song.

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jxnarcoticz
02-18-2009

Rated 0 
I can't believe how metal I feel when this gets me headbangin'.

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GoochyLittlePig
02-19-2009

Rated 0 
I think this about his forest queen and her son making a bargain about his wanting to go out into the real world
i'm not a big stage dork, but this song sounds beautiful.

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wanderingaloud
03-12-2009

Rated -5 
This is where my literal interpretation/take on the story get a little hazy. I'm not sure if this is whole situation is open to interpretation of if Colin will ever specify exactly what the hell is happening here. My take is this:

Colin (as the beast-guy)

Mother, I can hear your walking up here
you walk pretty quietly in the dead of the forest night
your presence is so freaky I can practically feeling coming like an evil cloud
But I really got these desires...

You delivered me from danger then
Pulled my cradle from the reedy glen (like that Moses dude)
Swore to save me from the world of men (cause I'm not really a man)
Still I want to go have sex with lots of other women (besides this Margaret girl I raped and had a kid with and even said that I would commit to her)
And the wanting comes in waves
And I want to go have that sex tonight, right now

Shara (as some sort of crazy, dark forest Queen)

Basically I probably nursed you back to health by some dark forest magic
And now, this is how you repay me?
(By saying you want to leave the forest to just sex up more women?)

You were a messed up a little thing and I really save you
And now, this is how I am repaid
This is how I am repaid

beast-guy:

Mom, hear me out
Just let me go out this one night
I promise I will come back for curfew, at dawn
Because I still really
really
really
really want to have sex
And you owe it to me to let me have some fun outside the forest

dark forest Queen-lady:

If I let you do this
And give you full personal freedom for one night
I am going to completely take back you body in the morning (either never letting you leave the forest or possibly consuming your entire being into my own. depends)
So consider that the trade-off.


[HALFTIME]

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2 Replies
Arrian
03-15-2009

Rated +2 
William/The Faun is truly in love with Margaret, as evidenced by the fact that he gives his life to the river for his love. And what's a story without a tragic hero, and the title of the album can't possibly refer to the dangers of unsafe sex.

The Queen (as any mother would) wanted to shield William from the "hazards of love." William makes the deal under the pretense of wanting a good fuck, while the "Wanting" to which he actually refers is his yearning to spend time with his child and love (even as he realizes he is not of the human world and will eventually have to part with them).

BUT by the time he returns, his lover will have been taken by the Rake (who actually acts on the sexual impulse William feigns), thus giving a new, more urgent purpose to his night out.

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2 Replies
reagank
03-20-2009

Rated 0 
One thing - William, while the Forest Queen has given hom the form of a fawn during the day, _is_ a man, or at least was born human. He says:
"You delivered me from danger then" (i.e. when he was sent adrift like baby Moses),

and so when he says
"Swore to save me from the world of men"

he means she gave him an escape from the cruel world by taking him as her son rather than letting him die on the river, not that she protected him (her natural son) from the human world. The fact that he's her adopted son that she's gone out of her way to save is what motivates her anger at how her love was "repaid".

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srsomeday
03-20-2009

Rated 0 
Her voice is so haunting with the guitar behind it - I love it!

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alisonfalzchristensen
03-21-2009

Rated 0 
Yeah I really don't get if he was a shape-shifter to begin with, or like reagank says he is actually a man and the queen turned him into a faun for some as yet inexplicable (to me, at least) reason. Because she says that at some point. That she like turned him into a faun. So yeah, I'm confused. But I mean the song is awesome. That is undeniable.

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Discovear
03-21-2009

Rated 0 
Okay, My one real question... is William a Faun? or a Fawn... big difference in terms of symbolism and story... I want to think Faun... but can't be sure...

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reagank
03-22-2009

Rated 0 
I think it's pretty clear from context in HoL 1 that William is a fawn, a young deer. Margaret stops to fix the fawn's leg, and if it were a faun (half goat/half man) then he probably wouldn't need any help with his leg (as he'd have opposable thumbs with which to help himself). Also, the description as white also suggests a young deer - I've never run across any stories where a faun was described as white, but it's common for magical animals in myths to be solid white or solid black, stressing their rarity.

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alisonfalzchristensen
03-23-2009

Rated 0 
oh yeah. well i meant fawn when i wrote that. i just can't spell i guess.

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avsrule131
03-25-2009

Rated 0 
The chorus of this song is magical. It literally takes me out of this world and into a higher plane of existence.

I love this song death.

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elfrijol
03-27-2009

Rated -2 
The taiga forest (densely made up of mostly spruce and birch trees) wraps around the entire northern hemisphere at about the same latitude as Alaska.

And how does this song fit in with the rest of the album? It's driving me nuts!

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elfrijol
03-27-2009

Rated 0 
Umm I meant to post that about the rakes song and it won't leg me delete it....haha

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2marinerssurvive
04-08-2009

Rated +2 
William has been spending time with Margaret, and the Queen finds out and isn't happy about it. It seems that she has been scorned by the world of men, and when she finds William as a child, abandoned in a river, she swears to love him as her own, but never submit him to what she sees as a horrible, unloving race. So when William, whose wanted to connect with one of his own kind, begs for just one last night to spend with the first woman he's known and come to love, he says "you owe me life" or, you've kept me to yourself your whole life, and I've never had a chance to really live, you owe me this one chance. So because she really does love him, she allows him this once, but then he'll never again be allowed to mingle with men.


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allen87
04-21-2009

Rated 0 
In this song, William begins by singing about his mother, The Queen. How he can always tell when she's comming. He continues by explaining the way she rescued him as a child from some terrible danger. She promised to save him from all other danger. He wants to be let go now, to see the rest of the world beyond where he's being held by the Queen. "The wanting comes in waves" is just WIlliam's way of explaining that this longing is just a phase. If she is to let him go, he'll come back and eventually forget about leaving. She protests by pulling the "mommy card", and reminds him how she saved him and asks "You repay me by leaving me on my own?" He makes a deal with her to let him go and he'll come back by the morning, reminding her that she owes him. She gives in, considering the debt repaid, but does leave him with the warning that after this one night, there'll be no more.

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orypeci
04-26-2009

Rated +1 
AAH! AAAH! [Decemberist Spazz]



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SecretConviction
05-07-2009

Rated 0 
'i gave you motion anointed with lotion' is referencing her changing him into a fawn. which is the spelling in the cd insert, Discovear.

why did she change him into fawn? beats me. the lady is crazy.

but the song is amazing, and Shona Warden blows me away.

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3 Replies
Occam
07-06-2009

Rated 0 
"How it precedes you like a black smoke, oh"

I could be wrong (I've misplaced my CD case recently), but it seems to me this line is:
"How it precedes you like a black smoke pall"

A pall is "anything that covers, shrouds, or overspreads, esp. with darkness or gloom." That certainly fits with the context of these first couple of stanzas, and after listening to it several times, I'm pretty sure I hear "pall."

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omghayley
07-09-2009

Rated -2 
This song is just good.

Stop over analyzing it.

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1 Reply
omghayley
07-09-2009

Rated 0 
And I meant that in a non-degrading way to the song.

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fenwaygnome
07-09-2009

Rated 0 
No one has mentioned it, but the Queen is most likely a Dryad. The Queen Forest Nymph.

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dancegabbydance
08-07-2009

Rated 0 
This song is one of the most amazing I've ever heard.
It gives me chills and butterflies and makes me smile.
Hahahah, I think I'm in love with it.

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Yubi Shines
08-09-2009

Rated 0 
I don't quite agree with the theory that William is Isaiah, though I do think he may have been either dead, crippled, injured, dying, or some combination of the above when the Queen found him. If he was a crippled baby that would be why he was abandoned, actually. "The miseries that hounded you/And I gave you motion" is the Queen reminding him how she healed his deformity/injury.

The Queen is very reminiscent of how the fae are characterized, also known as the Fair Folk (if you use their actual names or unkind words you might summon them -- also why the Queen isn't named through the album). Think Titania and Oberon and A Midsummer Night's Dream: Selfish, needy, capricious, and no understanding of humanity or human relationships. It's natural for a mother to be protective of her son, and be upset that her little boy is becoming independent/in danger of getting his heart broken. It's NOT natural to be grasping after your son (most likely a fully grown young man) and sullenly reverse-Oedipusly jealous of his lady-love.

The fae are also very prone to kidnapping babies and transforming people and making deals that go very very bad for the other guy... I don't think the Queen is necessarily the Queen of Fairies, but pretty similar.

Also, Shara Worden is freaking amazing.

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