All of John's songs on Sunset Tree are about his childhood, and most involve his stepfather, Mike Noonan, in some context, specifically the bitterness, fear, rebelliousness and general damage to John's spirit produced by his stepfather's frequent physical and emotional abuse of John's mother and himself during his teenaged years in the early 80s.
Pale Green Things is the same topic, but a vastly different emotion. Anybody who has ever had an abusive/neglectful/addicted parent will understand. Parents influence our lives more than any other person, and something about that relationship (the "living Chinese finger trap") forces us to consider the results of this impact even long after the physical influence is gone. For children of abuse, this is especially hard to swallow. In many ways, they bear physical and emotional scars of their abuse and all they want is to feel loved by the abusive parent, even long after they've realized it's impossible. John built a life of his own after Mike Noonan, but the harder he pulled to get away, the more he couldn't forget what living under him was like.
In December 2004, Noonan died "at last, at last?" and John got the phone call at 3am that simultaneously fulfilled his deepest, bitterest childhood wish that his stepfather die, but also stimulated an instantaneous recall of one of the few "good" moments he had with him. This is actually a common phenomenon when an abusive parent or spouse dies; there is a need to remember something good or valuable about the relationship so that the entire period spent under the abuser's control isn't seen to have been "wasted", or "meaningless".
John's random memory of that pre-dawn morning at the track with his stepson was the little tuft of pale green Indiana sawgrass, peeking through the hard, broken asphalt of his stepfather's nature. It was literally the straw John's memory drew in that moment when his mind asked say "My stepfather is dead. Is there anything good I remember about him now?"
All of John's songs on Sunset Tree are about his childhood, and most involve his stepfather, Mike Noonan, in some context, specifically the bitterness, fear, rebelliousness and general damage to John's spirit produced by his stepfather's frequent physical and emotional abuse of John's mother and himself during his teenaged years in the early 80s.
Pale Green Things is the same topic, but a vastly different emotion. Anybody who has ever had an abusive/neglectful/addicted parent will understand. Parents influence our lives more than any other person, and something about that relationship (the "living Chinese finger trap") forces us to consider the results of this impact even long after the physical influence is gone. For children of abuse, this is especially hard to swallow. In many ways, they bear physical and emotional scars of their abuse and all they want is to feel loved by the abusive parent, even long after they've realized it's impossible. John built a life of his own after Mike Noonan, but the harder he pulled to get away, the more he couldn't forget what living under him was like.
In December 2004, Noonan died "at last, at last?" and John got the phone call at 3am that simultaneously fulfilled his deepest, bitterest childhood wish that his stepfather die, but also stimulated an instantaneous recall of one of the few "good" moments he had with him. This is actually a common phenomenon when an abusive parent or spouse dies; there is a need to remember something good or valuable about the relationship so that the entire period spent under the abuser's control isn't seen to have been "wasted", or "meaningless".
John's random memory of that pre-dawn morning at the track with his stepson was the little tuft of pale green Indiana sawgrass, peeking through the hard, broken asphalt of his stepfather's nature. It was literally the straw John's memory drew in that moment when his mind asked say "My stepfather is dead. Is there anything good I remember about him now?"