What about home…?
What about home allows it to be wielded in such a way as to evoke the passage of time, the fleeting quality of life, the somber nostalgia for childhood, and the undeniable sense of intrigue, comfort, and welcome? What does this enable writers and composers to do in their poetic and musical works?
The cadence of poetry and the lilt of music are also players in this scene—they too contribute to an atmosphere of a work, and the distinction between effects of these elements and the concept of home becomes difficult. Nonetheless, we can know that to strip any of these elements away would be to change a piece.
The concept of home itself, while possibly comforting, is not moving without the particulars of the dwellers within. Later in Hanson’s song, she speaks of leaving a home, stripping its walls, and with this act, it becomes what Annison calls a non-home, at least to her. The large house from “The Visitors” has also been vacated, literally a non-home, but the pieces of lives passed remain. Essentially, if we were shown a still photograph of the spaces described in these works, we would not necessarily know the story—though of course a photograph displays a story in its own right—or if we were there, physically, in these spaces, we might feel as if we are intruding. But through the poetics of these musical works, we are not only welcomed into the home, but welcomed into the emotional reality of the dwellers. There is a hospitality being shown, even amidst these ghostly states of home-ness, that lets us into an others’ home, no matter how fictional, fragmented, or physically far away.