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Color of Water Lyrics
I was all geared up and ready to go
bounding for to leave my mountain home with a sky of blue
between the leaves and the color of the water was green
high over the sea.
“Do you have to leave so soon my boy?
The winter time aint even begun….”
“Well I’d stay awhile,” I turned to
say.
“But the color of the water is grey and I’m going away…”
bounding for to leave my mountain home with a sky of blue
between the leaves and the color of the water was green
high over the sea.
The winter time aint even begun….”
“Well I’d stay awhile,” I turned to
say.
“But the color of the water is grey and I’m going away…”
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I think it's about the sun. My boy = son; homophone of sun. And all the other imagery; just think about it. Change of seasons and the like.
On every M. Ward - record the first song is an instrumental and the second is completely amazing.
Very true, but the third, fourth fifth, etc. are also amazing. I love his falsetto in this song. Not really sure about the meaning though...
They definitely are. Post-war discontinues this tradition (amazing record anyway).
I love this song, it has kind of become my travelling song, I put it on when ever I go anywhere.
Maybe he means when you spend so long in one place it almost turns to black and white, you stop noticing things. Then I guess it's time to move on. But of everyone wants you stay and help, hence
“Do you have to leave so soon my boy? The winter time aint even begun….”
Imply theres a lot of work to get through winter and it'll be harder alone.
It also describes almost every teen's dream in a rural setting.
The guitar part at the beginning of this song is one of my favorite acoustic riffs. It lasts a while but I love listening to it the whole time. The lyrics are a nice story where a boy (or girl, I suppose) leaves home far up in the mountains to go into the world, leaving family behind
I think that, as in so many of his songs, M. Ward is setting a hazy, almost mystical scene for a grand metaphor. In this instance, the departing mountaineer he describes could just be a melancholy, disaffected lover who has seen the waters of his relationship turn from green to grey. What I've discovered to be so beautiful about his poetry (and is most prominent on Transfiguration of Vincent) is his passion for cloaking the emotional rises and falls of everyday life in the scrim of foreign, often fantastical realities. Call it metaphor, call it a dreamworld, he seems to employ it here with natural ease.
When he says he was "all geared up and ready to go" (and doesn't something in your stomach do a little leap when his voice cuts in after two minutes of intoxicating acoustic guitar?), maybe he's preparing himself for a longterm relationship--priming and prepping his heart to depend on a dependent. He shuts out the lights and locks the door behind him as he departs the hermetic "mountain home" of bachelorhood, while the first-blossom imagery of green water and a "sky of blue between the leaves" conjures a burgeoning love.
Alas, quickly, he bows out. Why he smells trouble is unclear, but -- greyness spied ahead -- he's bounding up the mountain again before the winter frost of a chilled-over love can get the chance to nip him.