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The Visitor

Started by thevisitor, Wed, 2005-05-04, 23:20:16

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erik

Quote from: Wilford Jr. on Wed, 2005-09-28, 22:27:02
I agree that was one great post!!!  I like to delve into lyrics somewhat but I admit to being baffled by The Visitor and the premise and I was unable to get much out of the lyrics.  They were probably too deep for me!  I am still wondering about the song "The Hanging Tree", what it is all about, and how it fits into the concept. 
This is what Clive has stated about The Hanging Tree in an interview about The Visitor for the Cage magazine (the full interview can be read on the Cage Page in the Follow The Signs section):

"It’s something from my childhood, where the basic idea came from. The hero arrives in this kind of barren wasteland, to experience the things that he’s experiencing; it’s almost like having a taste of the after life without being dead, a near death experience. I just wanted to have a very strong image. Something that would really kind of make this place have a personality.

And I remember when I was a child living in a particular village in England, there was this field opposite and there was this big, big, big, well it seemed that way at the time, big old tree that had been struck by lightning, and it was dead. I think it was an elm. They all died in England; Dutch elm disease in fact, so I think it was your fault!

Anyway, it was enormous. I used to go sneak across to this field, even when I was young. I probably wasn’t allowed to go there, but this tree seems to have a life of its own. It was sort of dead and it was like this enormous monster. I used to wonder what he could see, ‘cause my mum told me that this tree was probably like say 400 years old. So when this tree was young, Dick Turpin was robbing people and before that kings were having their head chopped off. And I just had this idea about this history that this tree would have seen. I used to believe that the tree had a kind of malevolence about it as well, where the tree actually wanted to take control of certain situations. On the other side, I felt the tree was a protective thing. Sometimes when I got into trouble, I used to go and run to this tree.

I suppose the man and the boy are probably me. It’s the fact that the tree has seen the growth of man, from boy to man. I went back to this field with this tree and it’s still there, 20 years later. It’s still enormous and dead. Then I thought any farmer would have knocked it down or cut it down and I just remembered having this very strong feeling that I could see myself when I was a child with this tree. That’s the reason I started with the lyric and obviously it develops from there to be something more.

And the man and the boy, they are the hero. The tree represents something that has been watching him from the moment he was born and will watch him till the moment he dies. I chose the tree as the image to do that."

There are also many biblical references in the album and particluarly this song, I refer to JJ II's post and the article he and I wrote;
Quote from: JJ II on Fri, 2005-06-17, 13:53:13
I once tried to look at the story from a 'biblical' point of view. Note: I don't say The Visitor is a religious album! I just thought the experiment of looking at the album from a different point of view was/is worth a try.
After all, it has religious references, so I thought, let's try to connect them and see if it makes sense.... and it does... in a way.

http://www.dprp.net/proghistory/index.php?i=1998_01

We stare at our screens
All our lives
What a waste of eyes..