What a wickedly brilliant song. Their best, in my opinion. I'm going to get my band to do this one, along with Murder By Numbers. As to what the lyrics mean....
I have always assumed it is about man and nature, in a Stephen Crane/naturalistic sort of way. What I mean is, I think Sting is saying that nature has no obligation to conform to the fickle, meaningless (in the whole scheme of things) needs and wants of man. The things we humans desire in life, if you think about it, are really quite strange when you analyze the world and the universe on the appropriate scale; the things we ask of nature or whatever higher power we believe in are as bizarre as expecting to be granted tea in the Sahara.... And if we do ask, we should not be surprised that we're not always granted tea, that our cups will often fill only with sand....
There are religious implications here as well, as hinted above. The sisters are praying, dancing, looking to the sky... it's a lot like a religious ritual. In this interpretation, the "he" the sisters are waiting for is God. They've prayed and done their part, follwed the rules and the ritual, and they have faith... but too much faith, Sting implies, because they're left stranded in the Desert with (again) cups full of sand, not tea. "He" didn't come through for them.
Those are my thoughts anyway.
As to the live version Tepes mentions... yes, it has a completely different feel to it. Stewart lays the emphasis on an off beat eighth note, not on four as in the studio version, and it completely changes the character of the music. The studio version feels more spacious and settled, while the live version has more of a quirky kind of forward momentum to it.
I always took it down a more literalistic path. I thought it had to do with the strange liason between a man and three witches. They cavorted with him for some reason which would have somehow fed into a ritual of theirs. In the end he was merely a mortal but their rituals, in perhaps some unideal way, led to their ghostly immortality. Now they are doomed to keep hoping to see a man who long since died. Then again, maybe that's just a male fantasy projecting itself onto the song. I imagine that...
I always took it down a more literalistic path. I thought it had to do with the strange liason between a man and three witches. They cavorted with him for some reason which would have somehow fed into a ritual of theirs. In the end he was merely a mortal but their rituals, in perhaps some unideal way, led to their ghostly immortality. Now they are doomed to keep hoping to see a man who long since died. Then again, maybe that's just a male fantasy projecting itself onto the song. I imagine that I would like to be persuaded by a trio of fine desert witches to do some rituals with them.
What a wickedly brilliant song. Their best, in my opinion. I'm going to get my band to do this one, along with Murder By Numbers. As to what the lyrics mean....
I have always assumed it is about man and nature, in a Stephen Crane/naturalistic sort of way. What I mean is, I think Sting is saying that nature has no obligation to conform to the fickle, meaningless (in the whole scheme of things) needs and wants of man. The things we humans desire in life, if you think about it, are really quite strange when you analyze the world and the universe on the appropriate scale; the things we ask of nature or whatever higher power we believe in are as bizarre as expecting to be granted tea in the Sahara.... And if we do ask, we should not be surprised that we're not always granted tea, that our cups will often fill only with sand....
There are religious implications here as well, as hinted above. The sisters are praying, dancing, looking to the sky... it's a lot like a religious ritual. In this interpretation, the "he" the sisters are waiting for is God. They've prayed and done their part, follwed the rules and the ritual, and they have faith... but too much faith, Sting implies, because they're left stranded in the Desert with (again) cups full of sand, not tea. "He" didn't come through for them.
Those are my thoughts anyway.
As to the live version Tepes mentions... yes, it has a completely different feel to it. Stewart lays the emphasis on an off beat eighth note, not on four as in the studio version, and it completely changes the character of the music. The studio version feels more spacious and settled, while the live version has more of a quirky kind of forward momentum to it.
I always took it down a more literalistic path. I thought it had to do with the strange liason between a man and three witches. They cavorted with him for some reason which would have somehow fed into a ritual of theirs. In the end he was merely a mortal but their rituals, in perhaps some unideal way, led to their ghostly immortality. Now they are doomed to keep hoping to see a man who long since died. Then again, maybe that's just a male fantasy projecting itself onto the song. I imagine that...
I always took it down a more literalistic path. I thought it had to do with the strange liason between a man and three witches. They cavorted with him for some reason which would have somehow fed into a ritual of theirs. In the end he was merely a mortal but their rituals, in perhaps some unideal way, led to their ghostly immortality. Now they are doomed to keep hoping to see a man who long since died. Then again, maybe that's just a male fantasy projecting itself onto the song. I imagine that I would like to be persuaded by a trio of fine desert witches to do some rituals with them.