The Procession

The Procession
The blood, how it paints such a scene
Foul routine, pedigree
Mouth agape, stuttered hands attempt to flail, and finally agree
Her heart ceases its rhythm
Somewhere, trumpets decay
In the front by the well, wishing wishes that deny the stale smell in the hay

There, no one cry
Place these over her eyes
We are broken, alone
We are broken, alone

She’s inanimate; bloodless elegance
Fatal fascination breeds a bloom of misery
Helpless hiding tongues, bathed in revulsion
Here lies unfinished beauty, wilting premature
You can’t be too sure
No, you can’t be too sure

Reserved, always playing the part of a boy left alone
He proceeds to the road beyond the home he’d learned to call his own

She’s inanimate; bloodless elegance
Fatal fascination breeds a bloom of misery
Helpless hiding tongues, bathed in revulsion
Here lies unfinished beauty, wilting premature
You can’t be too sure
No, you can’t be too sure

One life for another

She’s inanimate; bloodless elegance
Fatal fascination breeds a bloom of misery
Helpless hiding tongues, bathed in revulsion
Here lies unfinished beauty, wilting premature
You can’t be too sure
You can’t be too sure

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Hunter comes upon Ms Terri dying, but can do nothing to save her. The community of the Lake then holds a funeral for Ms Terri, but Hunter remains troubled by her passing. Tormented by Ms Terri’s secrets, he sets out to leave the Lake.

What’s in a name?
‘The Procession’. This is the aftermath of Ms Terri’s death, including Hunter’s reaction and a funeral. That there’s enough people around to hold a funeral procession for Ms Terri suggests there is a community around the Lake.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:01 – 0:15 Instrumental
Broken out of his routine, Hunter realises something is wrong and rushes to the scene of Ms Terri dying.

>0:15 – 0:32 Instrumental
Through absolute panic, Hunter tries to intervene, but…

This feels like it’s reprised somewhere, but I’m unsure where.

>The blood, how it paints such a scene
Gee, I assert I’ll read things literally and then run into this. The literal read would say that the scene of Ms Terri’s death is bloody, so we could figure she sustained a violent injury.

Metaphorically, which I think this line is more pointing towards, it says that the scene of Ms Terri’s death is graphic. There may not necessarily be blood all over the walls, but what Hunter comes upon here is so traumatising that there may as well be.

Also, with this being the first line from Hunter since act I, note the remarkable change of tone in his voice. Time has passed since act I, of course, and he’s now in his late teens, but sheesh Hunter where’d all that spite come from! Oh is it something to do with your dead mom? Took it pretty hard, didn’t you…

>Foul routine, pedigree
So how did Ms Terri die?

Murder, right? She was afraid in City Escape that pursuers might… well, no. Casey’s gone on the record to say Ms Terri wasn’t murdered, so we can shelve that idea. That TP&P gave her job back without a fuss, too, suggests he doesn’t hold very hard feelings about City Escape.

So what are the other options.

An illness? She conceivably could’ve caught something in her line of work, or had an underlying illness that was never treated, but with her death characterised as graphic and without warning, it likely isn’t something that would progress slowly or that she would have advance warning about. Perhaps a heart attack, or a bad fall could’ve done it…

Or an accident? Extremely possible, but there’s something here that makes me want to instead suggest my favourite pet theory…

…I think it was suicide.

To start, Ms Terri’s always been characterised as someone who struggles with a life of profound ‘misery’. She thinks a lot — ruminates a lot — and is prone to questioning whether what she’s doing is right. She has moral compunctions around prostitution period, and likely has low self esteem. This is without touching the hellishly rough treatment she’s been enduring at the Dime. The strength she had to face this brutality in Inquiry has long faded, such that even Hunter recognised it in His Hands Matched His Tongue. Finally, she’s been suppressing her pain for years, been living dual lives and dual lies for years, to the point it’s been having spillover effects on Hunter. It would not be surprising if Ms Terri had fallen back into depression and flirted with the idea, or simply reached a limit where she couldn’t take it anymore. This also works as an explanation to the appearance of Red Hands in the Death and the Berth.

I can also envision her becoming so depressed or self-loathing that she could rationalise her presence as a ‘stain’ on Hunter’s otherwise pure life, now that he’s old enough to be looking after himself and doesn’t ‘need’ her as an essential provider. How can she keep her lies going when he’s not a little kid anymore?

So consider this line, ‘foul routine, pedigree’. There is some heritable or cyclical element to Ms Terri’s death — how does Hunter die? Well, he commits suicide.

If this reading is right, and both Ms Terri and Hunter’s deaths were suicides, then I also wonder if there was a history of suicide in Ms Terri’s family, too. It would tie in to her references to how miserable her life has seemingly always been. Wouldn’t put too much into that idea but it’s interesting.

I’m going to be going ahead with this reading, warning because if so then it influences a lot of Hunter’s mindset/motives going forward. Particularly, the noticeable edge of contempt and spite Hunter seems to have towards Ms Terri (and himself) while recounting her death now (and thinking about it later) makes a lot of sense if it was a purposeful action. Why mom? How could you do this to us?

I will note though. I could be completely, 100% wrong about this and the read is way more straightforward: she just had a genetic illness. ‘Foul routine’? People from this family die from this illness a lot. ‘Pedigree’? Literally, it’s in their genes. It works to kill off Ms Terri without being too garish. But let me say, the music is garish. Very, aggressively so. THE BLOOOOOD HOW IT PAINTS SUCH A SCEEEENEEE… I call that the stuff reserved for walking in on your mom hanging by a noose in the living room.

>Mouth agape, stuttered hands attempt to flail, and finally agree
Reading the subject as Ms Terri, she is gasping for breath and reaching for something, only for her hands to slump lifeless.

Reading it as Hunter, his jaw drops in paralysed shock, and he reaches to intervene to help Ms Terri, only for him to resign that he’s too late.

>Her heart ceases its rhythm
Hunter is able to recognise the moment she actually dies, so she’s still alive when Hunter comes on the scene. He may be attempting CPR, he might otherwise be touching her body and be able to feel her pulse, he might be able to see her bleeding slow as her heart stops pumping, or to be less literal he may just be able to see the last vestiges of life generally leave her as her body becomes just that, a body.

Note the tenor change — Hunter isn’t thinking about his anger towards her death anymore, but sadness.

>Somewhere, trumpets decay
The joy in Hunter’s life dies with Ms Terri. Hunter is somewhat dissociated as the reality of what’s happened sets in.

>In the front by the well, wishing wishes that deny the stale smell in the hay
Hunter brings Ms Terri’s body to the front of the house and lays it on a bed of hay, begging God or the universe to bring her back to life, or to let her not actually be dead in the first place. Tough luck, Hunter…

Also gives us a bit of detail to Hunter and Ms Terri’s residence: they have a well in the front garden, and hay lying around. Not sure if he’s literally using the well as a wishing well but if he did then that’s rather cute/sad/whimsical. I wonder if he threw a dime in the well first? Kind of darkly funny if so.

>There, no one cry / Place these over her eyes
Trying to console himself through the immediate grief, Hunter falls back into simple routine/tradition as a guide of what to do, quietly cursing his impotence. These lines sound like something someone’s told him in the past, when he was much younger.

>We are broken, alone / We are broken, alone
When did you become a king, Hunter? He’s probably still a bit dissociated, and extending the ‘we’ in a general sense, if not to himself and Ms Terri. Characterising both of them as ‘broken, alone’ would be Hunter conceding some awareness (as in HHMHT) that Ms Terri was a far more troubled person than she wanted him to believe.

Hunter feels absolutely lost in the world now, without anything to cling to. Can envision the ‘camera’ zooming out and tilting, looking down at the scene of Hunter and Ms Terri’s body in the front garden, or of it cutting to him assembled at the funeral procession.

>She’s inanimate; bloodless elegance / Fatal fascination breeds a bloom of misery
Ms Terri’s body has been cleaned and her funeral service proceeds. The image of her beautiful, pristine corpse in the casket sticks with Hunter, being the first time he’s seen her since her death, and the last time he will ever see her.

‘Fatal fascination’ — How come Ms Terri killed herself? Contemplating this thought makes Hunter edge into depression (’bloom of misery’ is a very Ms Terri phrase, and if Ms Terri was prone to depression, it wouldn’t be surprising if Hunter was too. May also be him coming to realise just how depressed Ms Terri was), but he instead channels this pain into anger and action. YEEE-AAH!

>Helpless hiding tongues, bathed in revulsion
Hunter asks people of the Lake why Ms Terri might have killed herself. They know that she was a prostitute, and that circumstances around that were likely the reason, but are reluctant to tell Hunter anything.

>Here lies unfinished beauty, wilting premature
Hunter stands at Ms Terri’s grave, resentfully contemplating her death. Hunter was and is convinced that Ms Terri had a good long life ahead of her, and the fact she’ll never experience the idealised life Hunter envisioned for her angers and depresses him. He may also be feeling a bit snide that the lake people would give her the formality of a proper funeral, eulogies, and headstone, but become disgusted when directly questioned about her.

Likely has a double meaning in ‘lies’ — the woman was full of them, chief of those being her happiness in the weeks or months before the suicide.

Also note how he has no spite towards the idea of Ms Terri being ‘unfinished beauty, wilting premature’ — though he’s touchy and hurt right now, he still adores, idolises, and misses his mom.

>You can’t be too sure / No, you can’t be too sure
Hunter questions if he was a factor in Ms Terri’s death. That is, if there was anything he could have done that would’ve prevented it, or something he should have noticed earlier that would have let him intervene before she was actively dying.

>Reserved, always playing the part of a boy left alone
Slight timeskip. Though Hunter is truly brimming with anger and spite, his outward mannerisms have become quiet, meek, withdrawn, and rather self-pitying. He feels pressured to behave in this way, either to conform to how the Lake people see him, as ‘the poor boy whose mother died’, or to conform to Ms Terri’s implicit desire that he stay in the cabin.

Hunter deeply resents this. Living in this way is emphasising thoughts that he’s been abandoned, that nobody can help him, and that the damage done is irreversible. It is bending his self-concept into something powerless, pitiful, and self-pitying in a way he can’t stand.

>He proceeds to the road beyond the home he’d learned to call his own
Dismissing the possibility of moving past Ms Terri’s death by integrating with the people of the Lake and leaving the matter be, Hunter instead decides the Lake holds nothing for him anymore, and sets out to leave.

‘Learned to call his own’ — Hunter’s awareness that he was not born at the Lake has been rekindled, and more than just find answers (with resentment for the fact Ms Terri never told him anything), he may naively be looking for somewhere where someone as ‘dark’ as him ‘truly’ fits in (or just for something that’ll take the pain away).

>2:27 – 2:33 Instrumental
Reprised somewhere? Main chorus rhythm sped up and isolated. Interesting but not sure what this is. Might just be Hunter being angry and emo, or thinking back and hating his impotence during Ms Terri’s death.

>One life for another
Ms Terri’s death facilitates a new life for Hunter, where he is the one calling the shots. It marks the end of his sheltered childhood and the start of his life as a self-determined man, whose identity will be shaped by his own actions and decisions. Hunter is declaring that he is free to start a new life as himself (and before that, find out who he is).

This cycle of death and rebirth is also a major general theme for the acts, hence why it’s repeated so much, aside from this moment’s extreme personal importance for Hunter. One thing dies, and a new thing can be born.

>Final chorus repetition
Hunter decides his first mission after leaving the Lake will be looking for the answers that Ms Terri never told him — Who am I? Who were you? What brought you to this? Could I have done anything? Why did you hurt me, and choose to leave, without telling me anything?

The Death and The Berth | Act II | The Lake and The River