The Tree of Life of Nits – “Our Father who art in the tree”

Fifty-one Shapes of Nits: The thirty-ninth shape is the tree

When the fire raged in all its strength of indifference, one green shape resisted destruction. It was a tree. Robert Jan Stips had noticed this astonishing fact of the almost unharmed survival of this tree that had grown and lived in close proximity to the music and work studio of Nits. It must have been – without any doubt – the tree of the boy. The tree, with its glorious views and perspectives on world, where the young boy once had spent his time looking out and listening for the shapes and colours of his world. It could be the symbol of the surreal reality of the world: an almost metaphysical presence of otherworldliness rooted in the earth and reaching, growing towards the skies, where the flames could not reach, where the flames could no longer grow. 

I guess many of us had a tree or trees in our lives when we grew up, when we were children. The memories of trees closely connected to their tactility of steadfastness, their movements in the wind, their height and their branches as multifold beings stretching out to us and offering us a labyrinth in which to climb and experience our own flexibility and power to reach new heights, discover new positions to view our small world, play and imagine ourselves high above anything else. Trees are sparring partners of our own individuality. They are faithful and trusted companions.

The lyrical world of Nits abounds with trees. And in their world too, they seem closely connected to childhood and younger days. When a tree is falling or cut down, it usually is no good sign, it feels as if part of our past is cut away from us, its continuous flowing into ever more moments of a new present is suddenly halted and we are left unprotected, unsheltered by its branches and leaves, a part of our organic Lebenswelt is destroyed. The song “Boy in a Tree” is an iconic Nits song for many a reason. It evokes the kind of world Nits seem to be fond of: the imaginative, reflective and wonder filled universe of an innocent being looking around. 
One of the most stunning and recurring elements in the imagery of Nits are the trees of winter with bare branches. We meet them in several of the few music videos they made. And I for one have always been struck by this powerful image and the presence of these empty, somewhat forlorn shapes of trees. But I love them. I think they belong to the world of Nits. Just like the snowflake does and the ice and the mountains, the iceberg, the river to skate away on. Their songs include a spacious tree museum for sure; but not a sad museum like in Joni’s song where they took all the trees and charged the people a dollar and a half just to see them. No the Nits trees are these remarkable beings that stand the multiple tests and weathers of time… if we let them… be.

Trees are shown and sung often as metaphors of Being and of being-in-the-world. They stand next to the house – as it should be, like in a child’s drawing. A tree and a house. That is where one lives. That’s where Nits invented their musical world. But the fire doesn’t belong. House and tree both shelter our being. The fire can keep us warm … if it behaves. A landscape of trees seems to be the natural setting of our homes. You can talk to them like aunt Eleonor did, count them when night falls, stand in their shadow as she did in a dream, make them out of used furniture or just use them to inspire musical lines as Robert Jan did in a Play, where someone was falling out of the highest tree in the world … dudududu …. dudududu. I always thought that the songs of Nits of urban life in cities and towns secretly have a bucolic feel to them: the elements of nature – one of them being the tree – often soften the geometrics of buildings and streets and the music of Nits always seems to hunker for the quiet of a peaceful landscape or for an escape to the countryside, just like Japi in Nescio swimming away for ever into a lush Italian landscape. The cars & cars driving away from town into fields of bucolic beauty.
I’d go as far as defining the music of Nits as bucolic cityscapes of sound and poetry. A refined, pastoral world of an arcadian city idyll, or of an idealised city dweller who holds nature in his heart. The portrait that Nits draw of cities through their music and lyrics feels almost primal, pristine and pure. As if the eyes of the child are present still. The tree of the boy for ever standing in the picture. Even the railway station is sweet! The city is carved out – as by a sculptor – between mountains, rivers, forests and meadows; the city is sweetened by their perfume. The urban songs softly cocooned in a tender sound of nature. The pop music of a delicate strawberry-wood world. And the music just makes its way along the river and the reeds like the little rowing boat … At nature’s pace, with the patience of the seasons.

And then eventually, the inevitable happened. A song appeared bearing as its title the name of this fascinating being of nature that Nits had cherished for so long. The Tree. And on top of that it featured on an album that holds its name even in the title as the first constituent of a trinity: TREE HOUSE FIRE. Prior to that the house had received its share of attention and now the tree was finally taking centre stage. And it became a messenger of the most intimate, simple and complex form of human feeling: love. It is no wonder of course that the innermost experience of living-in-the-world – the feeling of love – is now being concentrated in the image of the tree. So “The Tree” is a love song, beautiful and steadfast as its metaphor.  In the lyrics the vibrant colours of the tree are mirroring the colours of our feelings and moods. Henk Hofstede expresses the wide-ranging sensation and fervour of love through this song of nature; an intuitive leap was taking place in the song as if this tree was destined to be the tree not only of life, but of love too. It all just happened naturally: “The Tree” became a song of love for the world, for the tree, … for Riemke. And the music … well the music – as usually with Nits – knows only kindness of spirit … for anything it embraces in its loving melodies. It probably was the thing the boy had felt the most when looking out of his tree … but he did not yet know it. 
There are falling leaves from a family tree in the song of the strawberry girl. The tree bounds different generations together. And when the boy is up in the tree he only hears the wind in the leaves … maybe it is his mother talking to him … or his father … that he hears talking to him through the wind in the leaves? Henk Hofstede seems to couple the being of a tree directly to the notion of time in the NEON song “When a Tree”, its juxtaposition with the adverb relating to time – “when” – making for a title cut short: the song holding all the sadness of a tree cut down or dying. The image of the tree and its branches loaded with an almost spiritual meaning in those meditative musical moments of Nits. From the fresh times of “Boy in a Tree” to the darker times of NEON, the tree is on the musicians’ mind. As if the tree were there to guide the music through its short timespan of being…
The trees sustain, comfort and encourage our hearts in a world of stone. In the video of the dA dA dA song “Dreams” , the little house of the family stands in the clearing of a forest. The song “The Hole” has the following lines: “ It falls like the rain in a forest – It falls like rain in our hearts “.
I remember the old oak that once stood at the end of the meadow behind my parents’ house, my childhood home. It was split in two by a storm and then later on finally taken down. I never climbed in that tree; I just watched it as the years went by. And where I once saw the tree and the leaves, now there’s just a hole that is left. 
So I’m not so sure after all that Nits is a “city band” who have the arts at the core of their creative drive. I think their natural environment is just as important, if not more. Their songs house a very tender little philosophy of nature as it were, in the midst of which the city has nestled itself under grey, rainy or blue skies, surrounded by water, mountains and trees in the light of the sun, the moon and the stars.

I think Henk Hofstede identified with the tree that survived the fire. In the little green film – in the colour of hope and new beginnings – that accompanies the song, he is seen with a piece of a branch in one hand, his arms sweeping like the branches of a tree in the wind. It is a wonderful story of life and love.
How the boy became a man became a tree.

“The Tree of Life” is a movie by director Terence Malick, a Harvard graduate, philosopher and scholar – who studied the work of Martin Heidegger (and it shows in his films) – turned movie maker.
“Our Father Who Art in the Tree” is a novel by the Australian writer Judy Pascoe, written from the perspective of a ten year old girl … the girl in the tree…

Joke Roelandt, August 2025