Useful Chamber

When a songwriter or lyricist picks words simply because they sound well together, one has to wonder if at some subconscious level the artist intuitively connects to some latent meaning in the words or sounds of the words. <br /> <br /> "Bitte" has been used in French, German, and old Norse. In German it's a polite word, a word of supplication. This song has a few lines of pleading: Call to me, soft and sweet / Cool the fire that burns in me /Catch me when I lose control. So there's that possible connection.<br /> In French "bitte" can also stand for a mooring post (probably this is what led to its use as a slang term for a penis). The image of a mooring post could connect with the idea expressed in the song that the the person wants and needs their love object rather than refuge from the storm. That is, one's love or the object of one's love serves instead of a mooring post. <br /> <br /> Orca is of course the name of the whale, but the sound "ork" or "orc" (as in orca, orcinus, orc-neas, orch) is associated with death, the underword, monsters from the underworld in various historic European languages, and was assigned to the whale because of the assocation between "orcus" and "killing" or "death." Killer whales can be vicious preditors of other sea mammals. At the archetype level the fusion of the opposites of love and death, or love and killing, is often made. One kills one's ego and replaces it with devotion to one's love object, or one participates in the cycle of aging and death to make room for new life in one's descendants. <br /> <br /> Doubt any of this was consciously in mind when bitte and orca were combined in this song, but knowing the historical roots and some deep meaning-structures of these words only adds to the beauty of the song for this listener.