Isn't the song about preserving the natural world for future generations?
It's genius is in the double meanings of every line... on one hand it is talking about a family tree and being a kid on the other it is talking about the environment...
The first verse is about how silly all of our social ideas are, i.e. making momma so proud...
but these are just childish things...
We are wasteful as children in pursuit of these things: "picking insects of plants/ no time to think of consequences" This Kid like behaviour is damaging to the environment(i.e. stop bugs from pollinating the earth due to climate change: see for example the honeybee epidemic facing the western world)
Therefore, we must grow up and "control ourselves" and "take only what we need" from the earth. The trees are wanting to be haunted because it is man who destroys them.
"The water is warm" but the thought that that is at the expense of polar ice caps melting and flooding land below sea level etc... is "sending shivers"
Then we get to the "baby is born." In which we are reminded that the human race will still carry on when the ice caps melt and bugs die etc... there will be a new generation of kids...a new part of the family tree...The trees in the chorus now become both literal trees and forests and also our descendents whose world we are destroying by taking more than we need...
and then it hurts a lot because the decisions about the future need to be "made" and the worry is that the "memories will fade" and the future generations will not learn from all of our mistakes and over consumption and "crying out for attention"...
I'm pretty sure thats what its about
if it is then its genius
Isn't the song about preserving the natural world for future generations?
It's genius is in the double meanings of every line... on one hand it is talking about a family tree and being a kid on the other it is talking about the environment...
The first verse is about how silly all of our social ideas are, i.e. making momma so proud... but these are just childish things... We are wasteful as children in pursuit of these things: "picking insects of plants/ no time to think of consequences" This Kid like behaviour is damaging to the environment(i.e. stop bugs from pollinating the earth due to climate change: see for example the honeybee epidemic facing the western world)
Therefore, we must grow up and "control ourselves" and "take only what we need" from the earth. The trees are wanting to be haunted because it is man who destroys them.
"The water is warm" but the thought that that is at the expense of polar ice caps melting and flooding land below sea level etc... is "sending shivers" Then we get to the "baby is born." In which we are reminded that the human race will still carry on when the ice caps melt and bugs die etc... there will be a new generation of kids...a new part of the family tree...The trees in the chorus now become both literal trees and forests and also our descendents whose world we are destroying by taking more than we need...
and then it hurts a lot because the decisions about the future need to be "made" and the worry is that the "memories will fade" and the future generations will not learn from all of our mistakes and over consumption and "crying out for attention"...
I'm pretty sure thats what its about if it is then its genius