Where The Road Parts

Where The Road Parts
It’s ironic how I’d fall just to get back up again
A fix to cure this ailing bitter agony
Meet me where the road parts
You remember where we first met
So tongue-in-cheek with stale irony
If it pleases you, it pleases me

Just an innocent call, a telephone call
Just an innocent call

Now, if you were in bloom I’d pluck your petals clean
Although it won’t seem so, I can promise you, my ego’s running me
Then I’d be cold, you were the only one that didn’t fold
But I just broke right down for you in an attempt to gain control
Maybe I’m a waste of time waste of time, waste of time
Sacrifice another life, sacrifice another life

You were the only one that didn’t fold
You were the only one that didn’t fold
You were the only one that didn’t fold
You were the only one that didn’t fold
You were the only one that didn’t fold
You were the only one that didn’t fold

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Left with mixed messages on Hunter’s feelings towards her, Ms Leading invites Hunter discuss the future, or non-future, of their relationship. Though she recognises things are slanting towards a break-up, she is eager to continue with Hunter. Meanwhile, Hunter considers the invitation, but is troubled on how to respond.

What’s in a name?
‘Hunter and Ms Leading break up’, basically. Technically they haven’t yet but the writing is very on the wall.

Ms Leading identifies ‘where the road parts’ as the place where she and Hunter first met, and is waiting there for him, but by the fact he doesn’t show up, he signals to her that he’s not willing to talk through what’s happened.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter? Ms Leading? Both? Really, really hard song to interpret on this front since most of the language carries Ms Leading themes, but the overall tone feels extremely Hunter.

In the end I went crawling back to the Dear Ms. Leading demos to see if that had any hints. Actually let’s pause a moment here to talk about those demos. The Dear Ms. Leading demos are the rough draft of ideas — mostly ones concerning Hunter’s relationship with Ms Leading — that would eventually become the starting point for the story of the Acts, with many of the later songs on Act II coming directly from the demos (Where The Road Parts, Red Hands, Evicted, Dear Ms. Leading, Black Sandy Beaches).

The world of the acts, with the Lake and the City and Ms Terri and TP&P, wasn’t fleshed out yet. From that, neither were the story’s central themes fully developed, and Ms Leading herself is presented as a much more antagonistic and foolish figure than she is in the Acts (and the tone overall is a lot more preachy). There is a complete story, and complete character arcs for both Ms Leading and Hunter however, which roughly goes like this:

Hunter is characterised as ‘innocent’, though he’s really kind of not, owing to him being just a nice guy/good person. He discovers that Ms Leading is a prostitute, but because he’s sensitive and vulnerable, stays with her while informing her that she’s doing herself an indignity by being a prostitute. Despite that advice, she continues doing sex work, and Hunter discovers this (Red Hands). The censure and love (?????!) she receives in Red Hands leads Ms Leading to realise Hunter was right and there’s better options than being a prostitute (Evicted). She decides to have more self-respect by making money through a more legitimate means, and becomes a photographer. This does not work to win Hunter back, however, as he is too wise to her manipulative nature (Dear Ms. Leading). Ms Leading is left to mourn the happiness that could’ve been (Black Sandy Beaches). FIN.

In all, in that story, Ms Leading is the author of her own misfortune because she prioritised money over herself and failed to realise how much Hunter loved her. It’s rough, is the word I’ll use. In the Acts, meanwhile, the one mishandling things is explicitly Hunter, and Ms Leading’s struggle away from a mercenary mindset is portrayed a lot more charitably (actually you’re really rooting for her to finally get out of that mindset/escape the city’s corruption, + she’d be a powerful ally in undoing TP&P. She’s also established to actually love Hunter before he flips at her for not caring about him enough in Red Hands, instead of Red Hands being the turning point of her realising Hunter loves her). So why bring up the demos when what the songs represent changes significantly once rearranged and contextualised in the Acts?

Because Where The Road Parts is the Battesimo Del Fuoco of those demos (first song, in media res, cyclical beginning, theme establishment) and that’s why it’s so hard to read. And over there, ‘you were the only one who didn’t fold’ isn’t ‘you didn’t fold to corruption’, it’s ‘you didn’t give up on me’. And it’s a Hunter line. So what is it here? For Hunter to say ‘you didn’t give up on me’ doesn’t make sense in the Acts, but to say ‘you didn’t fold to corruption’ doesn’t make any sense either. So did the song’s narrator shift in the Acts to be Ms Leading instead, and that’s why it smells Hunter-y? Is this Hunter recounting things Ms Leading has said to him? Is the narrator changing as we flip between Ms Leading waiting for Hunter and Hunter agonising over how to respond to her invitation? Is it both of them talking simultaneously?

I’m opting to say mercy, I have no idea who’s narrating this.

🌲🌲🌲

>It’s ironic how I’d fall just to get back up again / A fix to cure this ailing bitter agony
Alright I need to get the demos out of my head because they’re not relevant to what’s happening here. Not a cyclical beginning song just a good ol’ sequential event: Hunter has rejected Ms Leading on an incorrect basis almost to the point of raping her, but in realising the gravity of his error, is too mortified to face her. When we last left him, he was practically begging Ms Leading to believe him when he said he didn’t mean to hurt her, that yes he still loves her more than anything, and that he’d just been so overwhelmed with emotion he didn’t know what to do.

And it seems his begging worked, because he’s been given a second chance — Ms Leading has reached out to him via telephone, offering to meet him and talk.

These lines can work for either of them: Ms Leading ‘falls’ by being so aggressively rejected, but can get back up because Hunter rescinded the rejection and left room open for her to hope he still loves her enough to speak with her again, so there is maybe a chance they can work this out (the fix).

Hunter falls by losing his illusion of an idealised future with Ms Leading. But just as much as he fell and got back up after losing Ms Terri, tomorrow comes and he has to find something to help him move on and deal with yesterday. Hunter’s idea of a fix is more vague — I’ve seen someone read it as him drinking at a bar, which works enough (the next song is set in a bar, so this sets up the image of him already being there while contemplating Ms Leading’s offer, and the wording parallels with him using opium as a ‘fix’ later). I’m pretty happy to take it as that.

I think it’s also alluding to how his relationship with Ms Leading in itself was a ‘fix’ for the pain of Ms Terri being dead, and now he needs a fix for his fix: something that will take away the pain. (’I keep looking for a quicker fix / But I’m afraid of finding what it is’). In the short term, that would be an indulgence like alcohol, in the long term, that does mean addressing the problems of this relationship, which he proceeds to think about doing over the song.

>Meet me where the road parts / You remember where we first met
This is Ms Leading speaking, or at least, they’re Ms Leading’s words. Some time has passed since she spoke them, too. So this is one or both of them reminiscing on the offer, and hence the possibility of working out the bumps and giving this relationship another chance. Kind of interesting juxtaposition here; to meet where the road parts leans towards a future of a breakup, but the next line focuses Hunter’s attention towards the reasons they got together in the first place, implying a desire to return to that.

Note that ‘where we first met’ is ‘where the road parts’; Ms Leading and Hunter first encountered each other in a space with multiple paths coming off it, which is why I keep visualising the area of the city Ms Leading is in during The Church & The Dime as a square, though it could also probably be like, an intersection.

>So tongue-in-cheek with stale irony
The narrator comments on the manner that Ms Leading has given her offer, being self-deprecating if you take it as Ms Leading, and kind of exhausted if you take it as Hunter…

>If it pleases you, it pleases me
…which was this; these are Ms Leading’s words again. This is how she framed the offer to reconcile things with Hunter: ‘if you want to do it, I’m down.’

This is likely the exact same sentiment, and maybe even the exact same words, she presented to him when they first hooked up, which is where the tongue-in-cheek irony comes from. Back then, this was just the attitude she had to facilitate her work as a prostitute, that being the exact thing that’d led them to have this relationship breakdown in the first place, and the exact thing they’ll have to address if they do see each other again.

We know last time though, Hunter took these words at face value and wound up being burned for them. Reading the subtext, she does want to reconcile, but isn’t certain Hunter will. Either way, the ball’s in his court, and it’s on him to decide whether to take up the offer or just break up. Reconciliation will be difficult, however, and will require facing the mistakes and the extreme expectations he’s made across this relationship. Being that he’s still hurting from Red Hands, he’s hesitant about how to approach this.

>Just an innocent call, a telephone call
Two things going on here. Firstly establishing the manner in which Ms Leading has contacted Hunter to give this offer: by telephone. Some time has passed since Red Hands, and they likely haven’t seen each other in person since then. Hunter recognises that her offer is well-intentioned; Ms Leading hopes this sentiment of vulnerability communicates.

Secondly this characterises Hunter as an ‘innocent call’; Hunter and Ms Leading can look back at how they met, and see that Hunter was just that, naive. Though he’s made a huge mess as of Red Hands, there wasn’t any malice or ill will in his intentions up until then, and he didn’t want to become malicious, either. Hunter probably wants to go back to how things were originally, and seems to recognise that in pursuing Ms Leading he’s fallen into a difficult world he wasn’t ready for. Quite a tone of sadness and pain on this.

>Now, if you were in bloom I’d pluck your petals clean
‘In bloom’ is a phrase that’s so far been exclusively used to reference Ms Terri and Ms Leading — we can figure the speaker here is Hunter. Equally, the way he uses it tends to be describing these women in a state of absolute exaltation and beauty. Basically he is saying that if Ms Leading were a less troubled person, and had actually been more like the persona she presented to him, he would be agonising over ways to stay with her (going full she loves me, she loves me not). He wishes to indulge himself on her positives. I think this might also be a very poetic way of Hunter saying he still wants to bang her? We know, Hunter. But fair enough.

Basically, he wants to accept the call, but is nervous that anything that isn’t sunny might hurt him again.

>Although it won’t seem so, I can promise you, my ego’s running me
Again this line sounds extremely Hunter. ‘It won’t seem so’? Hunter, it’s been quite clear that you got into this mess because your ego got battered. Hell, the reason he’s not accepting the call is because it means he has to admit the city he came to conquer got him in over his head. And he wasn’t smart enough to see the inconsistencies on his own. And he wasn’t stable enough to handing difficulty without snapping. And he messed up and he failed and to be confronted with a reminder of that is excruciating. He’s proud, and immature, and hungry for only good things.

>Then I’d be cold, you were the only one that didn’t fold
Now we do a 180 into Ms Leading territory. I’m going to read this again as Hunter quoting things that Ms Leading has told him. With that view, this suggests that when Ms Leading called him to offer they speak again, Hunter cited to her that he was a selfish prick as reason not to even consider continuing the relationship and probably went on to say that from his side of the relationship, it’s never really been about her, but about what he could gain from her. Ms Leading countered this by saying that if Hunter was really that terrible, she wouldn’t be so happy to be in his company, and notes that he’s the only one who’s ever made her feel this way or treated her like a real person.

It feels kind of weird that Hunter would actually confess all this to Ms Leading though. Maybe he’s just imagining (accurately) the kind of counter-argument she would make, off of things she’s said before?

>But I just broke right down for you in an attempt to gain control
Hunter considers her words and rejects them, instead noting his own poor behaviour and characterising his motives again as selfish. Not sure what he’s referring to specifically as his breakdown — there’s Red Hands obviously, but I think it can be taken more generally as how malleable/invested he became within like two seconds of meeting her to try and get some semblance of order back in his life, which is why he exploded as hard as he did in Red Hands.

I can also read this whole verse as being an active conversation between them (maybe Hunter does meet her where the road parts and this conversation ensues? Or maybe this is the telephone call?) that ends with them parting/hanging up here, but the idea of this basically being Hunter and Ms Leading worrying alone to themselves about whether the relationship’s worth it in general, with the offer of reconciliation sitting on the table, then pivoting into Hunter’s hard rejection in Dear Ms. Leading, feels way more appealing structurally than them having this little waffle moment where they talk to go ‘I suck’ ‘No I suck’. Like it’s one thing to think about your doubts and failures in private, it’s another to comprehensively address them in front of the person you hurt.

>Maybe I’m a waste of time waste of time, waste of time
This is both Hunter and Ms Leading talking. As Hunter has reflected, he’s an absolute prick that only cares about people insofar as they make him feel better about his life. As Ms Leading reflected, she’s a mercenary vampire who tried to hold onto this idea of innocent happiness that she knew was founded on lies. In both cases, they don’t think they’re worth the investment of the other.

>Sacrifice another life, sacrifice another life
Both of them are braced to forfeit the happiness they could have had with each other. They accept the ideal life they both wanted will never happen…

>You were the only one that didn’t fold
But all the same, the sentiment remains: Hunter made Ms Leading happy, and she didn’t leave Hunter. She even still wants to stay with him. Given how ashamed Hunter is of his missteps in Red Hands, and how injured he still is from learning of Ms Leading’s prostitution, this makes knowing where to go next extremely hard. There are still enough positives to make the case that they try again. But is this relationship worth its problems if it’s not going to be perfect? Could they still try to make something that maybe isn’t perfect, but is okay? Is okay really enough?

Can they even do it? Are they even worth it?

Red Hands | Act II | Dear Ms. Leading