I was disappointed when not many of my friends seemed to notice or recognize my cover of this song. While I was talking to a friend, I tried to explain the meaning that the song held for me, and realized that maybe I should write it down. Perhaps that way it will be more obvious why it's such a powerful song.
Here's my cover:
And a rooster crowed, Sea Lion
And began to lie, Sea Lion
Sea Lion Woman, Sea Lion
She drank coffee, Sea Lion
She drank tea, Sea Lion
And began to lie, Sea Lion
This is how I sing it. This song has a haunting, almost mythical sound. Its meaning formed somewhere in the back of my brain, turning it into something deeper than just words to sing.
That's how the lyrics got changed, in an organic process of infusing the song with meaning. It sprung about from the melody, which reminds me of the lulling motion of great waves. It has that push and pull of a deep, sonorous trance. The meaning had to meet the depth. It might be safer when there's no meaning, because there's no fear of it being something shallow and incongruous with the melody. Maybe if the lyrics are something that isn't understood, the mystery of the song will remain. Same as a religious ceremony that holds ritual power when sung in an unknown high language.
But we're too late for that. There's a moss-covered part of my mind that resides at the dank bottom of an ancient well, and it came up with the story.
Sea Lion Woman, Sea Lion. A woman washed ashore on the beach, her body swept by waves and tangled in seaweed. No mere woman, Sea Lion. A creature of myth, sister to the Selkie and the Melusine. Sea Lion Woman, Sea Lion.
Lost in the ways of the land, she stumbled about. Sea Lion Woman, Sea Lion. Struggled with the ways of the people. She drank their drinks, and ate their food, and bit by bit she became one of them. She was an empty kind of being, a clean slate, the Sea Lion Woman. With wide eyes that held the endless vertigo of black space. Her hair went wild about her. She would never speak. Not utter a word.
She drank coffee, Sea Lion, she drank tea, Sea Lion. (She tries to recall her name, she struggles. Sea Lion Woman, Sea Lion.) Little by little, her mystical essence was muted, faded, dissipated. Growing closer to the world of men, her essence was run aground, rooted in the land. Farther away from the lull of mighty sea. It was only a whisper remaining, the whisper of waves, on a rainy day. As she stared out a stone window, through a fog of melancholy. Only woman, woman.
She began to lie, Sea Lion. When she uttered her first word, she began to lie, Sea Lion. Lie was the way of the people, the way of the land.
And the rooster crowed, Sea Lion. The rooster crows three times for Peter, the Biblical sign of betrayal. The shrill crack of a sudden dawn that sheds a pale light upon unpleasant knowledge. Such as waking up in a strange bed, tangled with a lover one knows nothing about.
That is the sorrow of this song. It is a lament for a being that's lost its way. It is a dirge. Sea Lion Woman, Sea Lion. Just a woman, woman.
But maybe she lies. Maybe she just lies. For a while.
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