Remembered

Remembered
Left your face on a map
Sturdied up boulders and loosened the river
To fork where it finds the best
Passage

Met your life before us
Left them your necklace and brandished your ashes
Like stars peaking out in the gloam
Envy

Every choice that you made
Lost before cause had effect found in Babel
Like pieces of puzzles belong
Shackled

Gave myself to the war
Damned if I didn’t demand that they sing
Such a sensible baring of you
Mystery

The flame might be gone but the Fire remains
And I’m stuck on a path to my own ruin

Did you see me behind the wheel?
Did you see me behind the wheel?
And the flame might be gone but the fire…

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Inspired by the similarly comfortable life he’s found with the Mother, Hunter finds himself thinking of Ms Terri. After some contemplation, he makes his final peace with her and releases her from his self-concept, replacing her with the Mother, and taking another step into transforming into the Son.

What’s in a name?
It’s Hunter thinking about Ms Terri — it’s been ages since she’s been the focus of his contemplations (like not since The Lake and The River, or maybe even HHMHT. This Beautiful Life she was more like the focus of his traumatizations), and now that he knows more about her, he’s returning to the subject.

Also I said that Black Sandy Beaches is the most abstract song in the acts I was wrong I was so wrong it’s this one.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:12 Instrumental
Really calm and contemplative song, this one. Well it’s about the most important subject in the world for Hunter: his mommy, and he’s in a peaceful enough mindset to not be freaking out about some massive bawdy revelation or her death the last weekend, this time. Nice to finally have a song where he’s able to think about her more collectedly now that he knows a little more of who she was.

>Left your face on a map
Thanks Casey. I’m clueless. I’m figuring this is a reference to his leaving of the Lake? ‘I still see her face, her beauty her grace / transfixed like a light in front of me’?

>Sturdied up boulders and loosened the river / To fork where it finds the best / Passage
Not sure about sturdied up boulders (just going by vibe is like, emboldened himself, got himself in the mindset to face the world without her), ‘loosened the river to fork where it finds the best passage’ is more obviously referencing him following the River away from the Lake, but also his general approach to life after leaving the Lake. He was following whatever course he wound up on, and when he came to a decision to go one way or another way, just went with whatever one seemed more natural or easier. Not in a negative way here more like just flowing, sailing, panta rhei.

Basically Hunter telling the memory of Ms Terri what he’s been getting up to ever since she passed away.

>Met your life before us / Left them your necklace and brandished your ashes / Like stars peaking out in the gloam / Envy
Okay tricky.

‘Your life before us’ -> This is…? The most obvious answer here would be The Dime, though it’s rather grim to be calling that her life. ‘A home removed, a life resumed’, though, so fair enough — it’s prrrrrobably The Dime. That said, why would he give Ms Terri’s necklace to anyone at The Dime if he didn’t yet understand the significance of it? (Ms Terri wore a silver circle necklace, the symbol of the Dime, as a reminder of the commitment she made to raise Hunter). In what manner would Hunter brandish Ms Terri’s ashes at the Dime? Since there’s a physical description of it, you could probably rule out this being pure metaphor and argue there is a literal element, and I personally don’t remember any point where ash-brandishing happened during the whole Ms Leading business. But then again wasn’t she buried in the first place? So then it flips around and you can take the entire thing metaphorically.

I’ll present the total crack theory reach of it referencing the Lake People (who I swear exist okay) and that period of streetwalking that she did (that I swear happened okay) without further comment, and conclude it probably is just the Dime and a really really oblique way of referencing Act II that has this beautiful imagery but on my life I couldn’t tell you what actions the metaphors specifically point to.

Even in death Ms Terri is as beautiful to Hunter as always, though.

>Every choice that you made / Lost before cause had effect found in Babel / Like pieces of puzzles belong / Shackled
This one is basically Hunter saying that he still doesn’t quite understand Ms Terri’s motives in doing what she did. Obviously he knows she wanted to keep him away from being influenced by the Dime, and by the City, and by the sin of her prostitution, but he doesn’t see what the ultimate pattern here was — that is, the significance that we know of her attempting to burn down the Dime.

Since Hunter is forfeiting his life as Hunter, whatever ultimate end Ms Terri could’ve reached through him is also being forfeit. The ‘cause’ of her pure love for Hunter driving her to try and burn the Dime will not be able to achieve its ‘effect’ of Hunter instead burning the Dime, though Hunter naturally has the more general perspective of, ‘Ms Terri’s efforts to raise me in a pure and loving environment did not ultimately lead to the lessening of the corruption of the City she fled, because I was not able to stick by those principles to incur any positive change’. Or even something more broad as ‘I was not able to stay a good person once I faced challenges outside the Lake, undermining Ms Terri’s sacrifice.’

>Gave myself to the war / Damned if I didn’t demand that they sing / Such a sensible baring of you / Mystery
Now he’s recounting Act III, and his extreme reaction upon learning that Ms Terri was a prostitute. For once it’s pretty clear but I want to zero in on the word ‘sensible’ — it’s being used here in sense of, ‘a presentation of you that adhered to my existing conception’.

>The flame might be gone but the Fire remains
‘I’m still stuck here in this life all alone, without you’.

Really nice execution on this one. Poor Hunter.

>And I’m stuck on a path to my own ruin
‘…and I’ve locked myself into the course of destroying everything that makes me who I am; all I’ve done with my life since I got autonomy was ruin it.’ He also seems to be recognising here the inevitability that all the things he used to treasure or even like about himself have to go into the bin with everything else if he’s to live as the Son now, and given that he’s already visited the Mother and she knows who he is, he doesn’t have the option to back out, even though it sounds to be crossing his mind as maybe a good idea.

I mean, the very concept of Hunter giving up Ms Terri is heavy. That’s a deeply foundational and deeply positive part of himself to be surrendering, and at least some part of Hunter seems to know that parting from it will mess him up. All the same, he can’t not surrender it.

>Did you see me behind the wheel?
‘Did you have an image in your mind of what I might do after you were gone?’. Basically Hunter wondering what potential Ms Terri thought he had, or, going along with the Ms Terri suicide idea, wondering if she really was thinking about Hunter claiming more control over his life without her in the picture, and so perhaps being able to navigate himself to somewhere better that she wouldn’t have been able to manage. In that way he seems to accept that she killed herself — since it’s true that, as an adult, he couldn’t have been happy as a momma’s boy in an isolated cabin forever.

>And the flame might be gone but the fire…
…is also gone. The big build up to the ‘remains’ that we expect, only for it to putter out in silence, is Hunter surrendering his tie to the part of himself that regards Ms Terri as his mother and carries the innocent lessons she taught him. He has come to as complete, comprehensive, and as comfortable a conclusion as he could with this relationship before letting it go.

If you think of Waves as Hunter surrendering Ms Leading, Remembered is basically the same process but with Ms Terri. Honestly a super sad song.

>3:34 – 3:44 Piano
Just one nice last little recognition of Ms Terri as Hunter nods and turns away.

The End Of The Earth | Act IV | A Night On The Town