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A Light Behind The Veil
October 1999


The Visitor

 Religion plays quite an important role in The Visitor and therefore I want to dedicate an episode of ‘Follow The Signs’to analyse the Visitor lyrics from a religious point of view. One of our co-workers, Jan-Jaap de Haan, has some interesting ideas about it and this is actually his vision of the album. The quotes from the Bible refer, unless stated otherwise, to the New Testament.

The track Running From Damascus gives rise to a religious discussion about The Visitor. This lyric has some striking resemblances with Saul’s conversion [The Acts 9, verses 3-19]. Saul is a Jew in Roman service and he persecutes Christians. He’s on his way to Damascus when suddenly a light from heaven shines down on him. He falls to his knees and hears God speak to him (‘There’s a light behind the veil/ And it’s calling to me’). Saul can no longer see and God sends him to Damascus. The episode ends with ‘Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and got baptized [...]’ (‘Open your eyes’). 

If this lyric is written from Saul’s perspective, then the Visitor must be God (‘I can hear the Visitor’). It’s remarkable that throughout the booklet Visitor is written with a capital, just like God is written with a capital. The Visitor can be interpreted as an album about someone who has strayed from his faith and after a long inward conflict returns to God.

In A Crack In The Ice the protagonist has experienced something that has shaken his faith; there’s a turning point, a crack. Maybe someone dear to him has just passed away, or maybe he’s dying himself (‘You held the white rose out/Just before we parted’). This song is full of anger. The protagonist seems to be challenging God, because he’s disappointed in Him (‘I defy you to stand/On the crack in the ice’).

In Pins And Needles the protagonist’s still turning away from God (‘I’m not ready to be taken yet’ and ‘Don’t walk towards the light’, light represents God in the Bible). In Double Vision (the title already indicates the inward struggle) it’s made clear that the leading character did believe in God, but that he sees the world through different eyes now, because of the negative experience in A Crack In The Ice (‘Demon eyes watch what an Angel once saw’). 

It’s not the first time that he has doubted God (‘We’ve played this game before’), which fits Clive’s remark ‘I have a big sort of personal struggle with God’ (see Visitor Revisited interview). The phrase ‘I will always find you’ is put between quotation marks and therefore cannot be from the protagonist’s perspective. It’s God calling him; He won’t let His creatures go. This message returns later on in Blood Red Room (‘You can’t hide/You can’t hide from me’).

Then Elea follows. Although this is an instrumental track, combined with The Hanging Tree it does fit in the general theme. According to the dictionary, tree can signify the cross of Christ. Thus, the song The Hanging Tree might represent (the sufferings of) Jesus, just like The Visitor represents God. Elea sounds very much like the name of one of the prophets: Elijah. According to the bystanders, Elijah is the prophet who Jesus calls while he’s hanging on the cross [Mark 15, verse 33 and Matthew 27, verse 45]. Furthermore, according to the Jewish tradition, Elijah is said to be the herald of Christ’s return: ‘And look, I send you Elijah, before the Lord’s day comes’ [Old Testament: Maleachi 4, verse 5]. Therefore it’s striking that the song Elea (Elijah) comes just before The Hanging Tree (the Lord’s day).

The Hanging Tree contains many references to the Bible. The first verse strongly resembles the flight of the Jewish people from Egypt [Old Testament: Exodus]. Thus, the protagonist’s struggle of faith is compared with the exodus. The Jewish people flee through the Red Sea along the walls of water that has receded (‘Walk along the waterfall’). There are also references to the ten plagues that sweep Egypt (‘Watching as the world turns red/And the blood on the riverbed’): when the Egyptians keep the Jewish people in prison, the Nile (and thus also the supply of drinking-water) turns into blood [Exodus 7, verses 14-25]. The earth turns to poison. The people flee through the sea and through the desert (‘Reach across the salt and the sand’) to the promised land Israel (‘Moving deeper into the land’) [Exodus 14, verses 21-28].

The verse ‘Climb to the top of a tree...’ contains another remarkable reference: in Luke 19 [verses 1-10], the tax collector Zacchaeus climbs in a sycamore-fig tree to see Jesus. Zacchaeus is an extortioner, so he sells his soul for money (‘A life to be torn into pieces of gold/For a soul to be sold’), but now that he meets Jesus he repents: ‘Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount’. So he also returns to God.

God calls the protagonist again: He wants him to come back to Him and kneel (‘And the heart of the tree/Was crying for me to come back’ and ‘It was praying for me to fall down’). Again it’s pointed out that the leading character has strayed from God (‘Take me to the hanging tree/It’s the place where I come from’). The Word of God is referred to: ‘The Word was the first/And the last to be heard’ strongly resembles ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ [John 1, verse 1]. The protagonist starts to obey God’s call; ‘take me to Jesus’ he seems to call (‘Take me to the hanging tree’). According to the Bible, through Jesus you find God. Now the protagonist kneels for God again (‘I’m falling... Falling down again!’).

A State Of Grace is a plain complaint against the hypocrisy of the church, which cares more for itself than its believers (‘Don’t look for comfort in this house of mine’). This may be an additional reason why the leading character has cast his faith aside. In the Visitor Revisited interview, Clive says he doesn’t like ‘any of the dogmatic religions available’ and that’s made very clear in this lyric.

‘Think before you throw yourself/Upon the tables and merchants’ refers to the Bible episode in which Jesus clears the temple of Jerusalem. The temple has become a place of trade and finance and Jesus fights this: ‘In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and other sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area [...]; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables [...] he said, ‘Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!’’[John 2, verses 14-16].

In The Blink Of An Eye is a continuation of the leading character’s inward conflict. This lyric seems to alternate between God’s and the protagonist’s perspective: God brings salvation (‘the freedom you needed so much’) and asks whether the protagonist keeps turning away from Him (‘Do you close your eyes on me’), but the protagonist’s still full of questions: ‘Why should all the wise survive/When nothing is what it may seem?/Why do all the living die/When only the dying remain?’. Those who die find salvation in heaven.

In (Don’t Forget To) Breathe the devil also appears on the scene. He tries to tempt the leading character to choose for evil; ‘Bolt the door, put out the light’ (shut yourself off from God) and ‘Don’t forget to breathe’ (to die means salvation [memento mori], the devil appears to say ‘enjoy life’ [carpe diem]).

In Tears In The Rain, the protagonist’s disappointment that already appeared in A Crack In The Ice returns. This lyric might even stem from Jesus’ perspective: he sacrificed himself in order to redeem humanity from its sins (‘I stood before the world and gave you my soul’).

The leading character's conversion’s becoming stronger and stronger now (‘Something on the edge of my mind/Getting stronger in me/Growing stronger in me all the time’). He reflects upon how he cast his faith aside (‘Faith in the attic/Tied up with string’) and - although he believed in Him (‘I made a promise - my soul laid bare’ and ‘This solemn oath I swore to you’) - how he ignored God (‘Any place I could ignore’), because he was disappointed in Him (‘The falling of this hero’). Now he returns to God and opposes himself to everyone who condemns him because of that and doesn’t believe in God (‘You cannot judge me’ and ‘You hide behind these faithless words’).

The definitive conversion occurs in Running From Damascus. This track can be seen as a summary of the whole inward struggle. The protagonist literally sees the light (‘There’s a light behind the veil’). Then his anger returns (the return of the ‘I defy...’ theme of A Crack In The Ice), which then permanently gives way to devotion to God (‘Rising, rising/I can feel your hands upon me/I can feel your arms around me’).

The Visitor, then, is the epilogue. The leading character’s still filled with questions, but a good religion should teach you to ask the right questions, instead of giving all the answers (‘I think people should find their own answers and I think it’s too easy when you’re fed with a set of solutions’, as Clive put it). The protagonist wonders whether he has really met God (‘Are these the faces of the Visitor?’). The Bible contains many episodes about persons who meet God and only realize this afterwards, like, for instance, the episode about a group of people on their way to Emmaus [Luke 24]: ‘[...] Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him’ [verse 15 and 16], ‘Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight’[verse 31]. Then the conclusion follows that you’re never alone when you believe in God (‘You’re never alone/Take it from me’). The song The Visitor (God) ends with the melody of The Hanging Tree (Jesus), which might represent the unity of God (the Father) and Jesus (the son)...

It still fascinates me how many different levels The Visitor contains and how much symbolism is woven subtly in its lyrics. This is not THE definitive interpretation of The Visitor, but it’s a way to put some religious pieces together and put the lyrics in a different perspective. 

By: Erik Beers

(Many) Thanks to: Jan-Jaap de Haan