Is it not fairly accepted (everywhere but the Pretty Mark K page on this site) that the Figure 8 version is about his mother? This is obviously a different song, but some of the images -- the "little boy in blue" (I took blue to mean sad here) and "crying black and blue" (which implies both emotional and physical injury) -- make sense. I don't think this song is about religion, but the last two lines are obviously a religious reference. In my religiously-ignorant mind, I assumed the Pretty Mary he was referencing was the Virgin Mary, which I took as a counterpoint to the image of the prostitute. Of course, n0thingends may be right and the reference is Mary Magdalene (which probably makes more sense). Either way, I think the prostitution is more about selling yourself than it is about actual prostitution and the walking on water is more about redemption than it is about Jesus.
But then "I'll be with you soon just as soon as I pay" throws a bit of a wrench into my mother theory, doesn't it. And it kind of sounds like he's paying to walk across the water with her, which I don't understand.
But I usually get caught up on the genius of "I'll be waiting still impatient with my dead imagination" and don't listen properly to the end of the song anyway, so it doesn't really matter.
Is it not fairly accepted (everywhere but the Pretty Mark K page on this site) that the Figure 8 version is about his mother? This is obviously a different song, but some of the images -- the "little boy in blue" (I took blue to mean sad here) and "crying black and blue" (which implies both emotional and physical injury) -- make sense. I don't think this song is about religion, but the last two lines are obviously a religious reference. In my religiously-ignorant mind, I assumed the Pretty Mary he was referencing was the Virgin Mary, which I took as a counterpoint to the image of the prostitute. Of course, n0thingends may be right and the reference is Mary Magdalene (which probably makes more sense). Either way, I think the prostitution is more about selling yourself than it is about actual prostitution and the walking on water is more about redemption than it is about Jesus.
But then "I'll be with you soon just as soon as I pay" throws a bit of a wrench into my mother theory, doesn't it. And it kind of sounds like he's paying to walk across the water with her, which I don't understand.
But I usually get caught up on the genius of "I'll be waiting still impatient with my dead imagination" and don't listen properly to the end of the song anyway, so it doesn't really matter.