God Tree (神树)
First released at Mars Concert 2019 on November 15, 2019, and is included in Hua Chenyu’s 4th album “NEW WORLD”.
On March 13, 2020, Hua performed this song on EP6 of the Singing Talent Show Contest “Singer 2020”.
1. About the song
Hua mentioned that “God Tree” and “Arrival (降临)” represent Yin and Yang respectively. They symbolize the conflicting, yet balancing factors whose cyclic interactions determine the flourish and decay of all things in this world. While in appearance we can simply take “Arrival” as the arrival of new lives and “God Tree” as the destruction of them, as Hua Hua himself explained, beneath there is more.
We won’t blame the Singer 2020 audience who ranked these songs relatively low. One critic even said that Hua didn’t quite bring out the emotions in “Arrival”. There is no denying that “Arrival” and “God Tree” fall outside the general sensibility in content although, in terms of their melodies, they are still very appealing and refreshing.
So, what are the underlying emotions in “Arrival” and “God Tree” that the audience may have missed? Needless to say, there is peace, sadness, bravery, fear, and determination. However, if I were to pick out one hidden, yet prominent emotion, then it’s the sense of helplessness: the despair of seeing masses of people walking toward their doom, yet there is nothing you can do to stop the tragedy, no matter how loudly you scream. Hua Hua has explained it well in an interview:
– When I see myself as tiny, it broadens my perspective. Then, I can see many different things which I care a lot about. For example, nature. Many people don’t care about it as long as they are not the ones who are hurt. But actually, it’s not like that. When many things get destroyed in nature, it may not affect you right now, yet it may affect you in the future because there is a cascading effect. So “God Tree” is talking about this effect. I am quite alright with the low ranking of the song. Perhaps people want to listen to music that’s close to what’s in their hearts right now. “God Tree” and “Arrival” are not competitive songs. Within the short time frame of one song, it’s quite impossible that the audience would be shocked.
We can see that Hua Hua is very conscious that these two songs are far away from the heart of the audience right now. While he is always gentle in his manner in interviews, his performance of “God Tree” revealed that his attitude would contradict that. He is screaming and shouting in flashing lightning and deafening thunder. The sense of urgency and helplessness are tearing his world apart.
This helplessness comes from the realization that the deafness of people is the result of entrapped minds that can’t see the invisible chains they unconsciously impose on themselves. To warn these minds about their predicament is tantamount to telling them that they are believing in transient and undependable relics of truth from the past. Most adults in this world are so sure of their beliefs and it’s hard to even nudge them a little bit outside of their comfort zone. So, under normal circumstances, such warnings would be swept away quickly. It takes courage to open up about it as Hua Hua did. I noticed that although he is fully aware that these songs may not strike a chord with the audience, at the end of his interview, he still defiantly asks the audience to “please carefully savor these two songs and many different things may appear”.
Naturally, we want to ask: What could have caused this entrapment of the mind, and why is the song titled “God Tree”? For that we can refer to the metaphors from the mythological stories mentioned in “Arrival” and even the Japanese anime series, Naruto, in which there is a God Tree that was created partially based on the story of Adam and Eve. The haphazardness of knowledge is the common theme of these creation mythologies.
Knowledge has a high status in our minds because without it we would have been living in the constant flux of contingent events of the phenomenal world. We would have never been able to grasp the laws of this world and make any progress. However, no matter how valid knowledge was at the time of its creation, knowledge is categorically the knowledge of the past, the bygone world of yesterdays. While some ideas of knowledge are science-based discoveries of the universal laws which are still applicable to the foreseeable future, a lot of others, especially in the form of ideologies, are unscrupulously accepted from habits and conventions which are out of sync with the reality of the here and now.
Our attachment to our knowledge traps us in the past and sets limitations to our perceptions. The God Tree that Hua sings about is the knowledge tree in Paradise which seems to have nourished the world for a long time, but in reality, it’s sucking away its vitality. Such is the force of death: our ineptness to see what we are doing to the environment, our lag in cognition to its dangers, is all due to our attachment to our “old ways”, which is bringing, and will bring, more disasters.
In contrast, the force of life is the constant renewal of knowledge. In “Arrival”, we see that the start of this renewal process is alluded to by the returning of the apple (the fruit from the tree of knowledge) to Paradise, the place where knowledge was first born and where the judgment of good or bad does not exist. In addition, the end of this renewal process is alluded to in the lyrics by the descent from Paradise with “new sprouts”. If we make a connection between the knowledge tree and the new sprout, then it’s apparent that this “new sprout” is a metaphor for renewed knowledge. I might add that knowledge from Paradise has more importance than that from our common understanding, because it is not derived from a place with presumed judgments, thus it’s prejudice-free.
But to return to Paradise is difficult given that we have been living in a world full of judgments for so long. That gulf between Paradise and our world is almost insurmountable. How could we suspend judgments even briefly? We live in a judgmental world. To take action, we have to make quick decisions based on our knowledge. Can we halt our actions even briefly so that we don’t have to judge for a while? The renewal of knowledge requires the action-free tranquility expressed in “Arrival” in its melody. But where on earth can we find that tranquility, the true tranquility which is not tainted by ideas from the past at all? Such tranquility is not possible unless we actively and purposefully seek it with the correct method.
This helplessness is subtly expressed in “Arrival” when he sings that “secrets are revealed too much, too much, and Narcissus can scarcely hold back his tears”. Why is the revelation of secrets sad? It’s because the secret matters a lot and yet if you tell people about it, the hope of being understood is slim. It is all the more moving considering how conscious Hua and his lyricist are aware of this reality.
The dialectics between life and death, or the renewal of knowledge and the attachment to old knowledge, are the two coexisting, breathing forces that move our fates along their interplays. In the words of Hua Hua’s most recent interview: “’Arrival’ and ’God Tree’ can be viewed as the rotational forces in Tai-Chi (the core symbol of Taoism).” Being dialectical means that none of the opposing forces will be judged as bad. Both are indispensable components of a vibrant system. Without knowledge, we won’t have any certainty of the laws behind the phenomenal world and we will be unable to make any progress. However, without casting old knowledge away, we cannot adapt to the constantly changing environment. The old idea from the east is that when one of the balancing factors, Yin or Yang, overwhelms the other, then evil arises. It requires our consciousness to keep these opposing factors in check. If we stay ignorant of them, we can never hope to escape from their ruthless hands. Therefore, as expressed in “God Tree”, no matter how slim the chance is, we will “never give up, never give up”.
2. Videos
Listen Online
Mars Concert 2023
“Singer 2020” EP6
Mars Concert 2019
3. Lyrics Translation
Lyricist: Pei Yu |
| 神树 | God Tree |
|---|---|
| 害怕混浊的天空 | I fear the murky sky |
| 巨浪席卷狼藉一片 | Crashing rogue waves have left everything in shambles |
| 都惶恐 | All are anxious |
| 我害怕入髓的冰冻 | I fear the bone-chilling cold |
| 太多生命无一幸免 | So many lives but none are spared |
| 都失控 | Everything is out of control |
| Crash and cold | Crash and cold |
| 我害怕电闪与雷轰 | I am fearful of flashing lightning and deafening thunder |
| 大人放逐孩童被困 | The exile of adults and the entrapment of children |
| 都相拥 | They all cling to each other |
| 我害怕黑暗与伤痛 | I am fearful of darkness and pain |
| 踩著废墟越陷越深 | Stepping on the ruins, I am ensnared deeper and deeper |
| 都落空 | All in vain |
| Crash and cold | Crash and cold |
| 我淹没在万人声响 | I drown in the clamor of thousands of people |
| 眼泪已经盖不住哀伤 | Tears can no longer keep the sorrow covered |
| Never give up | Never give up |
| 我感应著海啸悲凉 | I sense the tsunami’s desolation |
| 拆碎这座万籁的牢房 | Demolish this prison of thousands of sounds |
| Never give up | Never give up |
| 我淹没在万人声响 | I drown in the clamor of thousands of people |
| 眼泪已经盖不住哀伤 | Tears can no longer conceal the sorrow |
| Never give up | Never give up |
| 我感应著海啸悲凉 | I sense the tsunami’s desolation |
| 拆碎这座万籁的牢房 | Demolish this prison of thousands of sounds |
| Never give up | Never give up |
| 害怕混浊的天空 | I fear the murky sky |
| 巨浪席卷狼藉一片 | Crashing rogue waves have left everything in shambles |
| 都惶恐 | All are anxious |
| 我害怕入髓的冰冻 | I fear the bone-chilling cold |
| 太多生命无一幸免 | So many lives but none are spared |
| 都失控 | All are out of control |