I can't believe no one else got this. This is a song about a group of male friends meeting a group of girls, and having a one night stand with them! These events probably happened when the singer was still a teenager.
The refrain is very clearly a description of sex, although a fairly deep one. The second half of the refrain goes "flesh becomes water...", the exchange of fluids, "wood becomes bone", procreation (and, also, erection). That being said, there is a layer of poetic depth underneath the literal description: water is also a symbol for spiritual rebirth, "living waters", "baptism", flesh is a symbol for an inferior animalistic realm, wood is a symbol for youth and the strength of the body, and bone is a symbol for the holiness that can reside in a human soul.
The "ocean" in "walk on the ocean", meanwhile, is a double entendre, representing both the literal "ocean" where the story is taking place, and "ocean" as a metaphor for the judgment of God, which includes not only punishing sinners and eternal afterlife stuff, but also deciding who gets to be King and who gets to have children, while the overall line is also suggestive of Christ walking on water. Finally "step on a stone" is evocative of all of: our human vulnerability and creatureness, our interaction with the earth (why all sculptures of saints show them as barefoot), and a series of "stepping stones" across water to cross from one place to another, such as childhood to adulthood.
The first verse represents anticipation, adolesence and ultimate destiny, the things that confront a young life, male or female, still very much a mystery. The latter half of the verse includes the optimistic promises that early teen boys pass to themselves about their sexual relations: "where everything's better, everything's safe."
The second verse speak to the parting of ways after the act. Here, it is clear that the "we" very much refers to multiple boys, and the "they" very much refers to multiple girls. "We came" here very much refers to ejaculation, and the passive if oddly peaceful and accepting forgetting of the girls represents indifference: they wanted this to be casual more than the boys did. As Cyndi Lauper put it: "girls just want to have fun!"
The third and final verse speaks to reflecting upon this fond memory from their miserable estate. More than anything else, they seem to feel very alone, and miss the trust, intimacy, promise and liveliness that surrounded this profound acceptance of their physical selves. In the statement "as we slowly grow old", there is an acceptance of the consequences of their frivolity.
I can't believe no one else got this. This is a song about a group of male friends meeting a group of girls, and having a one night stand with them! These events probably happened when the singer was still a teenager.
The refrain is very clearly a description of sex, although a fairly deep one. The second half of the refrain goes "flesh becomes water...", the exchange of fluids, "wood becomes bone", procreation (and, also, erection). That being said, there is a layer of poetic depth underneath the literal description: water is also a symbol for spiritual rebirth, "living waters", "baptism", flesh is a symbol for an inferior animalistic realm, wood is a symbol for youth and the strength of the body, and bone is a symbol for the holiness that can reside in a human soul.
The "ocean" in "walk on the ocean", meanwhile, is a double entendre, representing both the literal "ocean" where the story is taking place, and "ocean" as a metaphor for the judgment of God, which includes not only punishing sinners and eternal afterlife stuff, but also deciding who gets to be King and who gets to have children, while the overall line is also suggestive of Christ walking on water. Finally "step on a stone" is evocative of all of: our human vulnerability and creatureness, our interaction with the earth (why all sculptures of saints show them as barefoot), and a series of "stepping stones" across water to cross from one place to another, such as childhood to adulthood.
The first verse represents anticipation, adolesence and ultimate destiny, the things that confront a young life, male or female, still very much a mystery. The latter half of the verse includes the optimistic promises that early teen boys pass to themselves about their sexual relations: "where everything's better, everything's safe."
The second verse speak to the parting of ways after the act. Here, it is clear that the "we" very much refers to multiple boys, and the "they" very much refers to multiple girls. "We came" here very much refers to ejaculation, and the passive if oddly peaceful and accepting forgetting of the girls represents indifference: they wanted this to be casual more than the boys did. As Cyndi Lauper put it: "girls just want to have fun!"
The third and final verse speaks to reflecting upon this fond memory from their miserable estate. More than anything else, they seem to feel very alone, and miss the trust, intimacy, promise and liveliness that surrounded this profound acceptance of their physical selves. In the statement "as we slowly grow old", there is an acceptance of the consequences of their frivolity.
[Edit: The spaces aren't displaying correctly.]