St. Teresa Lyrics

Lyric discussion by ChelseaGuy 

Cover art for St. Teresa lyrics by Joan Osborne

The song is about a drug-addicted prostitute, but the reference to St. Teresa is not to a patron saint, but to a famous sculpture, "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa". In her autobiography, St. Teresa describes the scene memorialized in the statute as follows:

"The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it."

Sounds like an addict in the middle of a high.

Song Meaning

@ChelseaGuy Six years after your time traveling explanation has reached me, reader, in the opposite side of the planet, in Beijing, almost another dimension. Thank you for your words, they perfectly fit the allusion to st Teresa. I saw this sculpture, the ecstatic pain...