The Sleepwalker

I think it means being lost all throughout life, wandering aimlessly and feeling frustrated by not getting anywhere. "Crush snow on my face / feels like burning" -- tell me how lost I am and it hurts me. "I can't see an end -- salvation anywhere" -- Chan can't see an end to such a lost life. "Think I'll wait here if he comes he comes down the river" -- Chan is waiting until natural death saves her.

Thanks for the reference to the This Kind of Punishment original, I tracked it down and listened to it on their home page. It validates that the line repeated twice at the end is "Think I'll wait here 'till the cows come down the river". I didn't think I was hearing things, that's a universal rural expression for "wait here alone until darkness falls" (since the cows come home to the barn at dusk to be fed and milked) and both New Zealanders and people who grew up in the Rural South would be familiar with the expression. That said, Chan re-arranged this song entirely, picking and choosing the lines she liked and putting them into the order she liked to give the meaning she wanted and changing some lines entirely. So yes, it's valid to discuss what Chan might have meant by her arrangement of the song.

Finally Got it. This song is infact about being loss, though its at a particular time in the narrators life. The river represents life passing by,"I can hear voices in the water ",the voices are her conscience trying to find something or better yet someone.(She cant find herself), she lost it in the river. "I think I mustve lost it in the river "

"To green eyes they give nothing away Do you think now at last You can tell me No you won't - give away "

While she looks at her reflection in the water, she hopes her eyes will give her some evidence of who she was or who she has become.But they give nothing away!

"And birds blackface singing in the tree (Black birds represent death,ex.Edgar allen poe the raven) If I got myself a gun Then I could shoot down everyone " (She is now expressing her frustration)

"I saw father dancing with his daughter And the music singing softly on the breeze " ( these are nostalgic memories of her life as a child)

"I can't see an end - salvation anywhere " ( nothing is coming to save her from herself) "Think I'll wait here if he comes he comes down the river " ( She is hopeless and will wait forever)

"I've heard all this before,Already I know,A lost soul - I won't say anymore" She has repetitiously gone over this argument within herself many, many times, and she is tired of fighting. Now she just will be quiet, and not say anything else.

SORRY FOR SUCHA LONG POST, BUT CHAN MARSHALL DOES PACK ALOT OF MEANING IN HER SONGS......... VIVA LA CATPOWER: WE LOVE YOU...

This is a cover of a This Kind of Punishment's song... so the meanings that could be associated with Chan maybe are not with the "original" sense of it.