Cascade

Cascade
I heard a call in my sleep again; I brought my body to the altar
But a good man said that I raised the dead
I’m seeing forgotten forms from a different age
Half-hearted truths hanging in the air with the Holy Ghost
I’m singing hymns with the devil in confessional

I’ve been running through the night again
Trying to find where the wild things wouldn’t go
But I’m keeping it in
Hate the sinner, never hate the sin

I keep waking in the strangest states, and drawing lines around my body
To recall my place; I feel the heat of a thousand breaths upon my neck
And the gaze of a thousand eyes burning holes into my back
And now I’m stuck between alive and after

I’ve been running through the night again
Trying to find where the wild things wouldn’t go
But I’m keeping it in
Hate the sinner, never hate the sin
I’ve been searching for a remedy
Hands to guide where the shadows never show
I’ll never know

I keep looking for a quicker fix
But I’m afraid of finding what it is
I know that I just need a quicker fix
Hate the sinner, not the sin
I keep looking for a quicker fix, but
I wouldn’t know just what to do with it
Hate the sinner, not the sin!

I’ve been running through the night again
Trying to find where the wild things wouldn’t go
But I’m keeping it in
Hate the sinner, never hate the sin
I’ve been searching for a remedy
Hands to guide where the shadows never show
I’ll never know

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Summoned by TP&P, Hunter goes to the Church. On the way there, he contemplates the difficult situation he’s in and how he cannot see a way out of it. He arrives at the Church.

What’s in a name?
‘Cascade’ — Basically, ‘The Consequences Of All The Actions I’ve Taken Until Now Are Hitting In Full Force’. Hunter has been backed into a corner where he feels lost, trapped, and miserable as a result of the actions he’s taken cascading upon each other. By the nature of having nowhere else to go and nothing to even possibly fall back on to get him out of this, he’s presently in the ‘bottom’ of that cascade with no way to escape those consequences.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:19 Instrumental
A bit brighter than where we left off in Moon / Awake. Hunter has cleaned himself up into a presentable enough state to exit the opium den and is now outside. It’s a nice, sunny day out as he sets out to walk through town to the Church, but of course Hunter’s thoughts are elsewhere.

>I heard a call in my sleep again; I brought my body to the altar / But a good man said that I raised the dead
Hoo these lyrics are massive. Hokay where to start.

‘I heard a call in my sleep again’ -> Firstly, pointing to how TP&P has summoned Hunter for a meeting in Moon / Awake (’in my sleep’ = ‘while I was tripping’). This is why Hunter is presently setting out to Church — it’s to see what TP&P wants. This is a somewhat typical occurrence for him, being at TP&P’s beck and call. We can also see that TP&P is aware of how low Hunter has fallen, since he knows to contact the opium den to get in touch with him. (You can envision it as someone knocking at the door and Hunter being unresponsive because he’s busy being high until the sudden crash at the end of Awake, snapping back into reality and realising someone’s there calling for him). It’s not surprising to TP&P that Hunter spends his free time there, and not surprising to Hunter that TP&P knows either. Though corrupt and underhanded, they seem to be in agreement as far as the terms of their ‘collaboration’ go, and broadly understanding of each other’s business even though they hate each other.

Which makes sense, since a few years have passed since Act IV with this being their status quo. They have had time to build a rather sturdy, if dark relationship where they both know each other’s identities and don’t need to restrain themselves from being scummy around each other. Not to imply Hunter gets much out of that but I get the image of TP&P getting a kick out of tormenting Hunter by dragging him along to functions or events then treating him like a confidant (or even protege?) as far as scumminess goes.

Note also that Hunter is likely at the opium den a lot — it’s one of the more reliable places to find him if he’s not out in public doing something as the Son.

Next, it suggests all of the life Hunter lives under the Son persona is a ‘sleep’, that he is ‘sleepwalking’ and ‘not really there’ while living it. He hears the call while not in a state of lucidity, but this is because of his identity dissociation rather than because he is high. He moves like a puppet in his day-to-day life and only comes to attention when his master jolts him out of his routine.

‘Brought my body to the altar’ -> ‘Move your body to the bed’; ‘I lay my body down / to rest my weary head’; Hunter going to the Church is a coerced action. But, it also evokes the image of him slumping over the altar as a human sacrifice, which can be read two ways. First is the idea of Hunter’s self being sacrificed on the corrupt altar of TP&P, but here I think it’s more… Hunter wants to supplicate himself before a force of good, and in doing so kill the sinful thing he’s become, or rather let it be destroyed, but feels he’s too far gone to be granted such absolution, which turns going to the altar into an empty thing where he just gets corrupted by TP&P. Really complex sentiment but basically like that. Carries a bit of ‘I brought myself forward to be divinely judged’ also.

‘But a good man said that I raised the dead’ -> Hunter is not allowed his absolution, or to be a force of good, because he has trapped himself in the Son persona and TP&P holds this over his head. You can hear it as Hunter coming to church and standing before this altar, and in seeing it being forced to contemplate where he stands morally and his ethos on higher ideas of good and evil. From there the obvious good action would be to move against TP&P.

TP&P is quick to smooth away these thoughts. It sounds like TP&P frames Hunter’s adoption of the Son persona as a positive thing (like, ‘look at all the hope you bring these people! You’re doing such great things as the Son!’), but he really brings it up as a blackmail threat (’But if we’re poaching ghosts, you know I’ve got a few that I would raise’), and as a reminder of Hunter’s own flaws, ambitions, and desires that led to him getting into this situation. He’s aggravating Hunter’s identity issues by telling Hunter his false life is more valuable than his real one, so he should care more about maintaining it than his principles, and that the real Hunter committed a sin beyond redemption anyway, so he’s too corrupt for God to take his side. This rhetoric works to scare Hunter away from taking action. At the end of the day though TP&P has the blackmail and wants Hunter’s obedience so that’s all his word should be taken as, a reminder to just shut off your brain Hunter and say the words, that’s the consequence of what you’ve done.

Obvious irony in this line — TP&P isn’t a good man and Hunter’s resurrection of the Son was a sin, and Hunter knows this, though he’s being forced to masquerade otherwise. Really lovely intonation too, first time we hear Hunter being thoughtful in this forward-thinking way while being so in-touch with himself, conscious of his situation and accepting of his vulnerability. (Or maybe he’s just spaced out lol).

>I’m seeing forgotten forms from a different age / Half-hearted truths hanging in the air with the Holy Ghost
Unsure on these.

‘I’m seeing forgotten forms from a different age’ -> Probably alluding to the Apparition more than anything else; feels like there’s more going on there though. Hunter feels like he’s getting insight to the truth but also that he’s kinda just spaced out and losing it. Maybe something more about the nature of religion too? We’re seeing here in Act V that Hunter has much stronger and more nuanced ideas about religion, and good and evil, than he did in previous Acts — it’s just been on his mind a lot more.

‘Half-hearted truths hanging in the air with the Holy Ghost’ -> All this exposure to church and religion has made Hunter meditative on good and evil as serious concepts. He feels there does exist an essential essence of goodness, virtue, and divinity reflected at least in partially in the scripture, (and as we can contrarily figure, that there exists a fundamental essence of evil), but that the worshippers in this Church are not suffused with that good essence. They do not really believe in the aspects of the religion that are virtuous, or are nervous to devote themselves to them. Maybe more self-referential than that? Like he knows what the good action to take is but just winds up back at church feeling oppressed by the expectations he has to conform to, while still not doing the good thing?

’The puzzling façade steers pure from the divine’; ‘A breath left hanging in the air’.

>I’m singing hymns with the devil in confessional
BEAUTIFUL line.

You can parse this as ‘I’m singing hymns / with the devil in confessional’ or ‘I’m singing hymns with the devil / in confessional’. Tenor of the former is more like ‘I’m trying to find and do good, but it’s hopeless since an evil figure has subverted that process’, while the latter is more like ‘I’m a hypocrite straining to be virtuous while acting as Evil’s #1 agent, and if I’m honest I’m doing this while knowing it’s wrong’. Probably a mix of both but moreso the latter. Hunter feels ashamed, hopeless, and despondent about what he’s become as a tool of TP&P, and doesn’t like how going along with the Son identity means abiding/enabling the villain that is TP&P.

Also a literal aspect to this — Hunter and TP&P meet often in the confessional to have their confidential talks, and as an openly devout Christian and churchgoer under his Son identity, he’s often attending church and singing hymns.

>I’ve been running through the night again / Trying to find where the wild things wouldn’t go
Hunter feels trapped. He wants to find a way out of this situation, but everywhere he turns is dark. There feel to be enemies or potential enemies at every turn, with no space for refuge or inkling towards a supportive solution. He has probably had thoughts in this vein before but they appear to be stronger now more than ever.

May also be referring to his trip to the opium den — his opium usage has probably gotten heavier than it was before, too.

>But I’m keeping it in
Hunter is determined not to show how desperate he is, or what dire straits he is in, to anyone. The fact he is an opium addict is also likely a secret. Obviously this would be from his constituents, but I’m figuring he’s also not confiding any of this to his Wife or other ‘close’ relations as the Son. (Some of them don’t know about Hunter’s identity theft in the first place, and for the others it’s disruptive/dangerous for them to know).

>Hate the sinner, never hate the sin
Great line. Hunter expects to be abandoned and ground into the dirt as a bad person if he divulges the actual straits he’s in, but it also sounds like he accepts it. He doesn’t see himself as an average person whose dip into vice could be excused and forgiven — he sees himself as a total trainwreck who just can’t get away from always doing the wrong thing, so people would be justified to discount him as just that, a bad person who makes things bad by his influence and whose behaviour should never be modelled.

Thing is that people will say that in most cases where they see someone fallen to sin — they take their distance and remember them only as a lesson of what not to do and what not to abide, while not counteracting the sin itself. Like, you can hate a gambler, but that hatred is more from a disdain for his moral weakness than for the insidiousness of a gambling addiction or the wickedness of those who connive to draw others deeply into gambling. You figure that you would be able to see the warnings, be stronger, maintain control, and not fall on to that kind of path. In that way, it’s a self-esteem thing to say you’re stronger than those sins. The reality though is that everyone has a weak point and can be wheedled onto a dark path if exposed to enough malevolent actors or negative influences — you could theoretically fix a lot of sinners if you targeted those who propagate the sin rather than those who broke under it, but simultaneously sin is disgusting since the solution to it usually is saying ‘no’. It’s rarely unpreventable, so its occurrence speaks to the sinner’s contemptibly weak character. I might be running away with the ball here but that’s how I hear this line.

Because Hunter is, or was, that kind of person. He was the type who would look at a sinner and reject them, while proudly content that he was cut from better stock and wouldn’t fall into similar traps (Red Hands/Dear Ms. Leading/VVV). Then he did, again, and again, and again, and is cursing himself for how easily he does fall into these habits, well aware of how others would judge and receive him if they knew. Maybe he is imagining in frustration that people would want him ousted from the Mayor position, replaced with someone stronger and with more integrity who makes the same promises… but without even pausing to consider shoving a pitchfork through TP&P, who assuredly drives more sin than Hunter? Or cursing himself for being too morally weak to do something about the situation? Sounds moreso that.

Might also be in specific reference to his opium usage here, consciousness of himself getting even more desperate, degraded, and worse.

>I keep waking in the strangest states, and drawing lines around my body / To recall my place;
‘I keep waking in the strangest states’ -> Hunter has been having dissociative episodes. If not literally, then metaphorically, he’s been struggling to stay engaged through events in his false life as the Son, keeps randomly ‘clicking in’ to his Hunter mindset during mindless rote Son Stuff, and finds the dissonance between how he feels when ‘clicked in’ and ‘clicked out’ as unsettling. Could also be in reference to Awake and his opium use — he has to be in a weird state of mind to feel his Hunter mindset clearly. Like he’s in Hunter mode here and he’s definitely in a weird state of mind right now.

‘And drawing lines around my body to recall my place’ -> Hunter has to make conscious efforts to remember who he is, what he thinks, and how to behave. He can’t tell if his clothes are things he chooses because he likes them as Hunter or because they’re in character for the Son, if his mannerisms in speech are natural to him or things he contrived for the Son, if his beliefs are truly Christian or if he is actually more athiest, and vice versa so on that kind of thing. His sense of self is extremely tenuous and fractured.

>I feel the heat of a thousand breaths upon my neck / And the gaze of a thousand eyes burning holes into my back
Self-explanatory — Hunter constantly feels the pressure of his constituents’ expectations. He is paranoid about slipping out of character even once and everything instantly falling apart from there, not only because he’s a public figure who holds an important office, which is pressure enough in itself, but because of his TP&P-enforced crookedness and identity theft. He feels constantly watched and cannot relax any time he’s in public, or any time what he’s doing could permeate into the public as rumours.

>And now I’m stuck between alive and after
Hunter has a pattern of discarding his current life to adopt a new one — one life for another. He wants to do that again, and destroy the Son persona, but is presently trapped in a situation where he can’t; he is too public a figure and TP&P’s blackmail is too strong. (He also has a wife and kid, but maybe he’s fine ditching them and being a deadbeat.)

This is a limbo state for him. That is, the Son persona is already dead owing to its corruption by TP&P, so he can’t embrace it as he wanted to in The Line, but he also can’t live or embrace himself as Hunter, since he needs to perpetuate the Son charade or else he’ll catch charges for identity theft. He can’t even call himself dead, it’s more like undead, predead, just kind of rotting.

>I’ve been searching for a remedy / Hands to guide where the shadows never show
‘I’ve been searching for a remedy’ -> Probably alluding to the opium again while also being what it says on the can; Hunter has been looking for something that can fix this situation.

‘Hands to guide where the shadows never show’ -> ‘Hands conflicting clearly point their way’; Hunter wants someone or something to present a clear path out of the situation, something secure and assured where he can anticipate the consequences and know he’s taking the right action. None are forthcoming though, rather TP&P is confounding and blocking him from even possibly nearing such an answer, so any vague idea he gropes is just more uncertainty, darkness, and shadow. (’Another shadow lost in the dark’, is where he is presently).

>I keep looking for a quicker fix / But I’m afraid of finding what it is
Hunter also has a pattern of needing to find immediate solutions to discomfort and pain. He has a persistently low tolerance for pain and does extreme things to avoid it, which we’ve seen since Act II. He is once again in a state where he needs some immediate solution to his pain, but he is terrified of finding it because so far he has been punished and gotten worse every single time he has caved to that desire. This is because he does not think things through so much as respond by impulse, and though he’s aware of this flaw, he also knows he’s not stronger than it. He anticipates that he’ll cave instantly to a pleasant enough temptation. So he’s terrified of murdering himself on impulsive antics again and in absolute anguish with the knowledge of how badly enslaved he is to his own comfort drive, because even now he STILL has never had to face a problem where the solution he chose wasn’t, in his mind, 100% perfect.

Aside from that, he is distracting himself from his misery when he can with basic hedonisms like sex and drugs.

‘A fix to cure this ailing, bitter agony’; probably yet another allusion to the opium and the fact of Hunter’s addiction to it, but it’s still not enough to fix things, so who knows what hole he could get into that’s deeper than that, if something sufficiently attractive presented itself.

>I know that I just need a quicker fix / Hate the sinner, not the sin
Driving in the obsessive nature of how badly Hunter needs things to turn around, right now, and again condemning and cursing himself for moral weakness. (These quicker fixes got him into this situation. Hate the sinner indeed).

Probably also a literal element of his addiction to the opium, and how he’s come to rely on it this much.

>I keep looking for a quicker fix, but / I wouldn’t know just what to do with it
Hunter confessing that he’s in such a state of confusion and low confidence that even if he did find something that looked like a solution, he would be too paralysed with indecision to actually commit to it. Further, what happens after he applies the fix? Does he just resign and ditch town? Does he continue being Mayor, but a proper one? Like what can he even do with himself now, supposing he did get away from this?

>Hate the sinner, not the sin!
Man, lovely verse. Hunter in anguish and frustration confessing how absolutely weak he is/feels.

>4:04 – 5:12 Instrumental
After his long and contemplative walk through the City, Hunter arrives at the Church. He joins the small crowd already there and settles tensely into one of the pews, as a service is currently in session.

The Moon / Awake | Act V | The Most Cursed Of Hands / Who Am I?