A Ransom

Man, I just love this song. I'm a HUGE fan of the Winterpills. I instantly fell in love with their first album. And I mean INSTANTLY. This song is probably my favorite from 'The Light Divides.' Dunno exactly how it translates, but I feel like it's about a guy who simply enjoys being a "bad" person. Especially the part about dancing downstairs while the bride cries in bed. Makes me think he got married for his own selfish needs (he doesn't really love her and only married her because she was rich, perhaps?). He's such a bad person, in fact, that even when he was born, the world became a darker place (and the sky grew grey). I think the last part about forgetting the author's name but saying a prayer, means this guy's sins finally came back to haunt him. He's never truly acknowledged God's presence before, so when he asks for forgiveness, he doesn't really even understand what he's doing. Anyway, that's MY thoughts about it. I hope one of you will chime in on this one, because the Winterpills definitely deserve more recognition!!!

I think this is a song about Jesus. The narrator is telling us that he is distanced from this whole world...a world in which there is a word ("the Word") that is also "a ransom." Christian theology, in fact, often describes the death of Jesus as a ransom (based on Bible passages like Mark 10:45, for example).

The first verses describe a kind of portentous birth – birds flying from corn, skies cracking open (and weeping), etc. It could work for any sort of divine being, really...stories abound in all sorts of cultures describing "signs and portents" attending the birth of divinities.

In the second set of verses, we learn that he was wed – to angels, who wept while he "danced downstairs" on Earth? Or perhaps he was wed to mankind, whom he was to abandon for his final infernal dance with death.

When the "end finally came," he forgot the author's name! In other words: dying on the cross, he seemed to forget who had actually written the script for the passion play. Yet he prayed. In Matthew and Mark, he actually says "Eli, eli, lama sabacthani," which in Aramaic means "my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?" Note that he does not use God's name here. "El" (the "i" is 1st-person possessive) was not God's name...it's the same word that an Aramaic speaker would use for any god.

And finally, we have the apocalyptic choruses: "this is what you will wear at the end of the world." In the first verses, he's just born, and so he must be naked...and that's how he'll leave when his world (or perhaps the entire world) ends. In the last verses, he seems to be downright joyful, or at least determined...and that, too, is what he "wears" at the End of the World.

That's my take, at any rate!