Lazarus - Box 3

Lazarus - Box 3

This box was named from inspiration for the song Lazarus written by Steven Wilson / Porcupine Tree.

Follow me down to the valley below
You know
Moonlight is bleeding from out of your soul

"Lazarus" (Porcupine Tree, Deadwing, 2005) reads as a ghost story told from the other side of the veil. A mother who has died returns in spectral form to her grown son, and the song is her voice reaching across that gap — not a warning to stay away from death, but an invitation to follow her into it. Steven Wilson has described it plainly as a mother speaking to her son, though he's also been cagey and contradictory about the album's meaning elsewhere, which fits Deadwing's whole method: it grew out of a screenplay he wrote with Mike Bennion, and the songs function more like fragments of that film's mood than a literal narrative.

What makes it work as "Lazarus" and not just a lament is the reversal built into the title. In the biblical story, someone is called back from death into life. Here the pull runs the other direction — death is the one doing the calling, and it's dressed in the most intimate voice possible, a parent's. The son is caught between grief and something closer to temptation: the promise of reunion, of an ending to loneliness, offered by the person he'd trust most to guide him. Musically the song holds that tension too, drifting between hushed acoustic verses and a widescreen, almost triumphant chorus — comfort and dread sung in the same breath.

It's a beautiful song, so the box was gifted to two beautiful people: Stu and julie.