Music Video (Includes intro/credit segments)
Gloria
Open-eyed oversight led me to here
Looking for an avenue to simply appear
One too many steps into the wrong direction
Leading me to throw up my hands
Soon, I’ll know exactly where I stand
Found in a flood of incendiary plans
Oh, I’ve been falling fast into the rhythms without rhymes
I won’t be giving up again
Yeah, I’ll be getting up again
I heard a voice; it said: “e dolore magna gloria
Bring me your heart, and then you will awake
In a state of surprising euphoria
But don’t tell anyone”
I was in love with inner ambiguity
Then I learned to turn emotions into weaponry
One too many words said with the wrong inflection
Leading me to throw up my hands
Am I giving up the ghost again;
Surrendering, so that my evils will amend?
Oh, I’ve been falling fast into the space between the lines
But I’ll be getting up again
I won’t be giving up again
I heard a voice; it said: “e dolore magna gloria
Bring me your heart, and then you will awake
In a state of surprising euphoria
But don’t tell anyone what you saw here”
Now, I’ve never heard that sound before
I am nothing but an infant wave stuck in a savage ocean
Soon, I’ll know exactly where I stand
Found in a flood of incendiary plans
Oh, I’ve been falling fast into the space between the lines
But I’ll be getting up again
I won’t be giving up again
I heard a voice; it said: “e dolore magna gloria
Bring me your heart, and then you will awake
In a state of surprising euphoria
Don’t fear the words that I say”
I heard a voice; it said “e dolore magna gloria
Bring me your heart, and then you will awake
In a state of surprising euphoria
But don’t tell anyone what you saw here”
🌲🌲🌲
What happens?
More confident in himself and primed to make an imminent move against TP&P, Hunter returns to the opium den and has another encounter with the Apparition. The Apparition encourages Hunter’s present course, and assures him he will be venerated by shedding the Son persona and allowing his true heart to predominate again.
What’s in a name?
‘Gloria’ — Glory. Hunter will be glorified by shedding the Son persona and returning to his own heart. Also contributes to the framing of the Apparition as a divine or angelic force that can and will defeat evil.
Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.
🌲🌲🌲
>0:00 – 0:16 Instrumental
God! This song is great. Gloria marks the turning point for Hunter, a shift out of darkness and confusion into certainty and light, a release and reversal of all the pressure that has been building since Red Hands and especially the pressure that has been building since The Moon. Hunter is finally in touch with himself again and coming to his state of his greatest power, being both true to himself and having the lessons of everything he has experienced revealing themselves to him in a positive fashion.
Musically, this sounds like it’s echoing the beginning of 1878 but I can’t put my finger on how exactly. That it would be makes sense though — this song is about Hunter returning to his roots, and bringing in the brightness and purity of 1878 hammers that in while also expressing incredible power and hope for Hunter personally.
>Open-eyed oversight led me to here
Man!! Hunter’s intonation, the lyrics, the bass… great stuff.
First of all: setting. Hunter’s in the opium den again, but as we can hear, his mindset is a lot more purposeful and positive. He’s once again thinking back on the chain of events that got him into his present situation — as we’ve heard before, he’s blamed his immaturity, his need for comfort, his arrogance, his unchecked ambition, so on, always these terrible personal flaws that he runs from and tortures himself over. But this time he’s hit on the true root cause that really, actually got him into all of this mess.
It was his innocence.
Hunter did not know any better of how bad the world could be when he left the Lake because he was innocent. He did not understand Ms Leading’s profession because he was innocent. He could not know how badly the war would hurt him because he was innocent. And he did not know to rebuff the Priest’s manipulation, again, because he was innocent. Had Hunter been more savvy to how rotten or wicked the world was from the outset, if he’d been exposed to corruption and knew what it looked like, he likely would’ve been able to preempt how things would go wrong and avoid these mistakes. ‘Euphorically floating on wax wings, where is the sun?’.
At the same time, it’s not like his innocence was itself a flaw. It’s one of the most, if not the most, positive aspects of Hunter — so him identifying this as the factor that set everything into motion is him finally accepting how his life wound up like this without necessarily grinding himself into the dirt as an inherently foolish, bad, or doomed person, though he obviously accepts he messed up.
>Looking for an avenue to simply appear
This is the other half of how Hunter wound up in his situation: he was extremely reactive and impulsive in how he approached problems, and in how he generally navigated his life after losing Ms Terri. He would drift along then latch onto whatever looked like it could be a solution, or a serviceable life course, without really knowing where he was going or thinking about where he wanted to go (’Sturdied up boulders and loosened the river / to fork where it finds the best / passage’), to try and get out of the darkness.
>One too many steps into the wrong direction / Leading me to throw up my hands
And at some point, at many points really, Hunter just gave up and let the downward momentum of his pain and missteps take him, rather than fight against them and assert himself more positively as his heart truly would like to. The breaking point probably was This Beautiful Life, though, where Hunter did give up on himself as being able to have a happy life at all.
>Soon, I’ll know exactly where I stand / Found in a flood of incendiary plans
That all said, any questions has about the type of person he is or how true to himself he can be will be answered, as he is now actively conspiring to burn down the Dime. He is finally resolved to contest TP&P.
Nice juxtaposition on ‘flood’ of ‘incendiary’, too. Incendiary evokes both the literal aspect of the arson, the symbolic aspect of the flame/fire dynamic, and the emotional aspect of his plans being outrageous and liable to offend.
>Oh, I’ve been falling fast into the rhythms without rhymes
Alluding to how Hunter has a consistent pattern of experiencing hardship -> running from it, killing and remaking himself in the process -> experiencing worse hardship -> running from it, killing and remaking himself in the process, etc etc, without thinking through where he’s actually winding up. Like the purpose of him running from hardship is that he will not have to experience more hardship, but because he doesn’t approach things with a level head, he always gets himself in a worse situation, which makes it insensible (’without rhyme’).
>I won’t be giving up again / Yeah, I’ll be getting up again
But this time, Hunter is resolved to stand up and do something about the bad situation he’s gotten into. Love this line! YES HUNTER! GO HUNTER! He sounds so strong and confident!
>I heard a voice; it said:
This intonation is NUTS hello? My lord. So soft it’s like a prayer, but so quietly strong and calming and transcendent.
Hunter shoots up on the opium again. The voice he hears is that of the Apparition of his younger self speaking to him.
>“e dolore magna gloria / Bring me your heart, and then you will awake / In a state of surprising euphoria
Superb!
E dolore magna gloria = From pain comes great glory.
The Apparition tells Hunter to shed the Son persona, and all the fear and anxieties he has about perhaps doing so, so that Hunter’s true self, the version of him that was cared for and doted upon and nurtured by Ms Terri’s selfless love, can predominate and take decisive action against evil for himself and his loved ones. There are obvious reasons why Hunter may fear doing this, and may fear revealing and acting by his true identity, but the Apparition is assuring him that doing so will not simply be liberating, but will venerate Hunter with unmatched, unquestioned strength, happiness, power, rightness, truth and glory! The pain he suffered and will suffer is a building block towards his absolute victory and salvation; it was not pointless, it is what gives him the footing to make this decision now.
‘Then you will awake’ -> Alluding to awake as in The Moon / Awake; Hunter will break through the shadows and confusion and be reconnected to his self and to truth.
Massive framing of the Apparition as an angelic force, guiding Hunter towards right and ultimately towards God; the ‘essence’ of God distinct from the false and empty paths to God that TP&P sells.
>But don’t tell anyone”
Hunter must not tell anyone where he’s getting these ideas, since they’re coming from a drug-induced hallucination of his younger self and he’d sound absolutely insane if anyone knew that.
>I was in love with inner ambiguity / Then I learned to turn emotions into weaponry
YESS HUNTER!! GIVE ME THIS ENERGY GET MADDD! MAN! It’s been so long since Hunter has been like this, this is all the way back to stuff you’d hear in The Lake and The River. Feels so good. The boy is back.
‘I was in love with inner ambiguity’ -> ‘When the world beckons your approach, it swallows you whole’; ‘Euphorically floating on wax wings’ — referencing Hunter’s adoration of his own potential upon leaving the Lake. He is saying that he was too attached to the idea of making something grand of himself, and all the thousand great ways his life could perhaps turn out, once he had the agency to choose what his life would be on his own.
‘Then I learned to turn emotions into weaponry’ -> Red Hands, Dear Ms. Leading. Probably other stuff too but those are the main ones here; his rejection of Ms Leading. (’Crimson hands brandish wounds which masquerade’).
>One too many words said with the wrong inflection
SEE I SWEAR I’M NOT CRAZY TO BE FIXATING ON ‘INTONATIONS’ AND ‘INFLECTIONS’ AND ‘OH THIS LINE WAS REPEATED A BIT DIFFERENT’. Hunter was aggressive and angry (with Ms Leading, towards the General’s story, when being goaded into the Mayoral run and towards his old self in general in Act IV) when he should have let himself be honest and vulnerable.
>Leading me to throw up my hands
And with the inflection change (har har!), this is now saying that Hunter got combative and aggressive at junctions and towards people he shouldn’t have; throwing up his hands as if to start punching people, that he got aggressive without thinking. Beyond Ms Leading now, probably references his Mayoral run.
>Am I giving up the ghost again; / Surrendering, so that my evils will amend?
Hunter questions if his plans to combat TP&P ultimately amount to another occurrence of his typical pattern, only this time discarding the Son identity, so as to make up for all the sin he has committed firstly in adopting it, then in propagating it. Questioning if he’s taking the easy way out in a sense, if it’s possible he could fix the wrongs he’s committed while keeping the Son persona. Probably, he feels too guilty to hold onto it while also wanting to do good, but also discarding it is the fundamentally right option for once.
One life for another, sacrifice another life, go take another life, so abandon a life from before, I’m prepared for a burial at sea, my identity was wasted on you — is shedding the Son persona another in a long line of Hunter throwing out one failed life course for something different?
>Oh, I’ve been falling fast into the space between the lines
Hunter’s true identity has been lost in a kind of freefall between all these different iterations of himself he’s committed to over the years.
>But I’ll be getting up again / I won’t be giving up again
But this time, he can say that he is standing up as his true self, not as a Soldier or a Boyfriend or a Mayor but as Hunter, and not getting lost or swept along courses that could sway him from the demands and desires of his true heart. Probably not conscious, but finally on the course to resolving the power Ms Terri gave to him. (Rescinds ’Lost before cause had effect found in Babel’).
>Chorus Repetition
YES GO HUNTER!!!!!!!!!! YES!!!
Music video has this chorus focus on the death of the Son — something to read into there?
>2:20 – 2:28 Instrumental
Love this little buildup. Hunter has a momentary break in the visions of the high to think? It’s like he’s floating on top of water.
>Now, I’ve never heard that sound before
‘That sound’ would perhaps be the sound of his own heart in such a powerful and exalted state; this conception of himself as Hunter before anything else?
>I am nothing but an infant wave stuck in a savage ocean
Bringing back the imagery from Waves — lovely way it’s done too. Wow wait oh no this is phrased way too elegantly for me to explain very well.
So, a wave is a ‘life course’. You can think of all the iterations of himself that Hunter has lived as a ‘wave’. However, the wave that Hunter truly is, the life course that is truest to himself, is not one he has been able to pursue; he is too easily knocked away from it by adverse events and difficulties of life, so he winds up moving by momentum along a different track, until another great wave with greater momentum crashes into that second track and sweeps Hunter along on a third track, etc.
So now it’s like, Hunter is this small, infant wave that is building to become something massive, but all these different life courses are battering into him and choking him down before he can swell — this time though, he finally is beginning to swell and surge before anything else can batter him off his path. His momentum is the one that will overpower other forces this time; his potential wants to be realised.
>2:44 – 3:19 Sick Guitar Solo
Unsure; music video segment for this part is pretty interesting though.
>I heard a voice it said…
Yessss…..
>…”e dolore magna…
Yeesssssssss
>GLORIAAAAAAAA
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
You can hear many voices on the buildup to this one. The depiction of it in the music video is also — Hunter goes from being in this bedroom, then is led by the Apparition to return to the opium den (set limitation?), but this time it’s full of people dancing and having fun including Ms Leading and the General. Hunter seems confused or out of place here. TP&P then shows up, burns into a blast of smoke and fire, and strikes Hunter, who falls into darkness.
Dizzy Dial in the Youtube comments makes an extremely good observation that this may be depicting Hunter’s dilemma as he imminently faces death in A Beginning — where Hunter considers where he will go or what will happen after he kills himself, and is initially scared of there being no afterlife, then comes to wonder if there could be an afterlife and he’ll be reunited with everyone he’s lost.
What these chorus repetitions would be depicting then is the Apparition telling Hunter not only to not fear pain, but not fear death, as even death will venerate Hunter massively. I mean the General is at the party, and that guy is definitely dead, and Ms Leading will be dead soon if she isn’t already. You can also read TP&P being the one that throws Hunter into darkness after showing up at the party as… well, TP&P doing his thing again, aside from the literal element of TP&P’s death shortly predating Hunter’s: Hunter doubting the existence of the afterlife because of charlatans like TP&P, even though his heart points him towards its existence and towards it being a nice place. (Remember that Hunter almost reunited with Ms Terri in Saved, too, though you can also read it as him just being extremely delirious while he dies — I imagine the ambiguity over whether there is an afterlife or not is intentional, but the final tone in A Beginning is extremely hopeful and suggestive of the possibility that Hunter does wind up going to Heaven, or something like it.)
God, I love Gloria.
>Don’t fear the words that I say
More angelic framing; ‘fear not!’, aside from the Apparition’s advice understandably being scary and intimidating to Hunter, but also filling him with this awe and power.
>4:30 – 4:56 Instrumental
Hunter comes down from his high and exits the opium den.
>4:57 – 5:17 Ambiance
Interesting, unsure, what’s that rattling around? Probably scene establishment for The Flame (Is Gone).
空劫罰 祟りネコ | JP -> ENG / TDH 