King of Swords (Reversed)

King of Swords (Reversed)
Gears turning that no wrench can attack
Consideration or pause had their time come and pass
No gloves, bet you can’t get enough
Make a fine parade so the public sways in your wake

And I just thought that I would go till the money’s gone
I never wanted to fake it
Now I can’t stop till everyone who ever done me wrong
Knows I’m not willing to take it

Boy, you’ve got a hard time
Bring yourself to glory
You’ve got a hard time
Bring yourself to glory

I never wanted my name up in bright lights
But I think that I might be there soon
I owe it all to you (I owe it all to you)
Hey, I was never looking for fame or the limelight
But I think that I might be there soon
I owe it all to you

No one ever told me what it meant to be alone
I had to learn on my lonesome
Now every feigning flame I chance upon
I put the fire on
I keep my wheels in motion

Boy, you’ve had a hard time
Bring yourself to glory

I never wanted my name up in bright lights
But I think that I might be there soon
I owe it all to you (I owe it all to you)
Hey, I was never looking for fame or the limelight
But I think that I might be there soon
I owe it all to you (I owe it all to you)

You have a hard time
Bring yourself to glory
You have a hard time
Bring yourself to glory
Boy, you have a hard time
Bring yourself to glory
And here’s those spoils of war that you asked for

I never wanted my name up in bright lights
But I think that I might be there soon
I owe it all to you (I owe it all to you)
Hey, hey, I was never looking for fame or the limelight
But I think that I might be there soon
I owe it all to you (I owe it all to you)
Hey, hey, hey
Yeah, I owe it all to you
Hey, hey, hey
I owe it all to you
Hey, hey, hey
I owe it all to you

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Hunter, with the support of TP&P, runs to become mayor of the City. Hunter is shocked by the success of the campaign and the public favour he amasses, growing more and more ambitious as it becomes clear he will actually win.

What’s in a name?
‘King of Swords (Reversed)’ — a reference to the arcana, and one of the more solid places to tell us that arcana/tarot symbolism is present in the Acts. The King of Swords represents a structured, honest, moral, rational, and disciplined ruler. When it’s reversed, it represents an emotional, immoral, manipulative, and undisciplined ruler — basically, saying that Hunter’s methods to secure the Mayor position are selfish, impulsive, and corrupt, which is true. I mean listen to him.

Aka, ‘Running For Mayor’.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>Gears turning that no wrench can attack
Haha, this song. Man I love King of Swords. Hunter is putting his 110% into this run to become mayor, with nothing being able to slow him down or stop him. He’s fully committed.

>Consideration or pause had their time come and pass
He is also not pausing to think about how this could go wrong, or the weirdness of the Priest being the one to encourage this when the bait that inspired Hunter to pursue this role was the prospect that he’d be able to rout out the Priest, and other figures like him. He’s just got the idea in his head of being able to do something good as Mayor and is running with it, enthusiastically.

I know Casey has described this song as a montage where you can imagine him starting from nothing and then being the most powerful figure at the top of the world by the end (like mailboy to CEO montage), and you can really hear it, with this first verse being him cleaning himself up and getting the basic necessities in line to run at all (combing his hair, getting a suit, his first speech etc), then him going absolutely nuts with how much support he’s getting and how bold he’s being by the last chorus.

>No gloves, bet you can’t get enough
No gloves, so the gloves are off — Hunter approaches the campaign with a lust for victory and a real intention to win this, which Hunter reckons will appeal to the voters as well as being energising to him personally.

>Make a fine parade so the public sways in your wake
Hunter understands that showmanship is a part of politics — he is ‘working’ the citizenry, most likely taking a populist approach. He is making the political campaign that surrounds him, and the personality he represents, fun as well as authoritative.

>And I just thought that I would go till the money’s gone / I never wanted to fake it
Hunter did not expect to be actually doing half-decent in this mayoral run. He thought he would put up some advertising, do some lame interviews, and putter out without anyone really noticing him, but it’s not been like that at all. Somehow, he’s been able to secure more and more important interviews, be part of more and more important events, show up more and more prominently in local news, and get significant podium time in debates that have culminated into him being a serious and rather well-liked contender to the public. Now that Hunter is conscious he has a chance of actually going somewhere with this, he finds himself naturally reinforcing his investment into this run and this politician persona.

‘Money’s gone’ hints that he’s getting funding from somewhere — probably TP&P, maybe the Fiance.

Also note that he would have married the Fiance by now — you had to be married to run for office in these times.

>Now I can’t stop till everyone who ever done me wrong / Knows I’m not willing to take it
Hunter is obsessed with, or maybe even addicted to the notion that he’ll be able to clean out the City’s corruption, get some revenge on its criminals (largely TP&P), and punish its most malevolent actors once he gets a Mayoral seat. This obsessive purpose is the source of his massive drive and energy in this mayoral campaign.

Also, kind of like in The Lake and The River (but more positive and focused), he’s tapping into his vindictive ‘fire’ energy to rocket him so intensively into this. He loves the idea of being able to righteously punish everyone who has done evil or harmed him personally, and loves the idea of asserting himself in this manner as a defender (or sword) of justice.

Love the singing on this whole song, it’s just so fun hearing Hunter having this power trip where he’s like “YEAH!!! I’M THE GOOD GUY!! YOU CAN’T PUSH ME AROUND!! ALL YOU BULLIES WILL ANSWER TO MEEEEE YOU BETTER START COUNTING YOUR DAYS!!!!”

>Boy, you’ve got a hard time / Bring yourself to glory
Running for Mayor feels like the most positive thing Hunter has done with himself so far. Finally, after all the painful experiences he’s been through, he’s found something that not only makes his past sufferings worth it but shoots him into a position of power, which feels great and enables him to shape his life how he truly desires. He is driven like a madman to get this seat and secure himself as a powerful and positive influence.

(mirror Gloria; false glory).

>I never wanted my name up in bright lights / But I think that I might be there soon
Hunter’s campaign is becoming so successful that he’s not just a serious contender in the polls — he’s actually a celebrity. People are talking about him, the media are wild over him, and people overall are transfixed by him and rooting for whatever he’s going to do next. Hunter loves this.

>I owe it all to you (I owe it all to you)
Hunter ascribes his success and celebrity to the Priest. After all, it was the Priest’s idea that got him here in the first place, but he is probably also enjoying the continued support of the Priest when it comes to the financial, social, and logistical aspects of his campaign, too. Not that I think the Priest is running Hunter’s campaign for him, but his sway, advice, and money has given Hunter enough of an edge that it got him off the ground in the first place.

This is part of why I don’t think Hunter has realised the Priest is also the Pimp — it is inconceivable to me that he could give such a sincere sentiment of gratitude to the Pimp, even if he did have plans to ultimately backstab the guy later. It doesn’t sound like he’s thinking about that at all. It just sounds like he’s drunk on the campaign’s success and going, ‘wow, there is no way I could’ve done this alone — thanks Priest, love ya g.’ He’s probably hanging out with the Priest on a semi-regular basis now, too.

>No one ever told me what it meant to be alone / I had to learn on my lonesome
Hearkening to What It Means To Be Alone — Hunter’s realisation that he couldn’t rely on God to make things fall in his favour, so if he wants to get what he desires, he has to take action to claim it himself. So I hear this as Hunter expressing that he’s become… not quite immoral, but very very willing to put pressure on his competition, and not trust in them or their good faith. Basically that he’s not being a good sportsman about things and will decimate competitors whose approach towards him is too soft or mild, because he really is that hungry to win.

Might also be him literally appealing to the voters by voicing some of the hard experiences and lessons he’s had in the war.

>Now every feigning flame I chance upon / I put the fire on
Can read this two ways.

You can take the feigning flame as enemy candidates who are attempting to appeal to compassion, kindness, virtue and so on in a gentle and mild manner, but are ultimately do not believe in these principles and are only invoking them to look good for their mayoral campaign. You know, ‘we’ll make a grant to save the starving children’ and stuff like that. Hunter putting the fire on is then him kicking the teeth out of these people, mercilessly, by breaking them over his knee in debates and destroying their PR by challenging how much they really do want to save the children — Hunter’s energy (and information network) is overwhelming enough that these candidates uniformly break, back out, or fold. So he’s taking whatever chance he can to absolutely destroy opponents who leave themselves open as hypocrites or as being just not aggressive enough.

You can alternatively take it as, every time he sees a cause that ostensibly is a good one (you know, the save the starving children grants), Hunter adopts that into his campaign and encourages it (uses his ‘fire powers’ to stoke the flame into an inferno). This would be things like him making massive public donations to charities, sponsoring drives for disabled children, restoring failing hospitals, things like that, garnering him great PR while being stuff he probably wants to do anyway.

You could combine it too as like one guy wants to build campaign PR by making a big deal about how they’re supporting so and so drive and then Hunter just rolls up and styles on them by supporting the drive 50x harder and taking over the whole event lol.

>I keep my wheels in motion
In any case Hunter is doing a lot of stuff around the City. There isn’t a day that he slows down or vacations from this obsessive campaign; he always has a new event, interview, debate, speech, plan, so on and so on ready or in progress.

Verse probably works as a description of the platform he’s presenting to voters: he’s a war vet whose tough experiences have inspired him to take down corruption and encourage good, and he’s very proactive about it.

>And here’s those spoils of war that you asked for
Hunter is getting substantial money from donation drives or fundraisers during his campaign, and is giving a portion of the proceeds to the Priest. That Hunter is putting at least some of his campaign’s profits into the Church is actually probably getting him good PR too and establishing him as a good Christian to the public, though it’s really a consequence of how Hunter and the Priest are conspiring. Trust the Priest to be able to make a buck out of all this lmao.

‘Spoils of war’ specifically might be alluding to Hunter using his position as a war veteran to get all this support too, but a bit reachy.

>Hey, hey, hey / I owe it all to you
Getting the image of Hunter publicly announcing how the Priest has supported him, again earning good PR (linking Hunter’s campaign to the Church) while being a genuine sentiment. Get the image of him on stage with the Priest at an event, smiling and waving to a massive crowd as things wrap up.

>4:01 – 5:07 The Most Cursed Of Hands Reprise
Not totally certain of this but I think the birds used here are canaries. This passage would then be pointing to the danger of becoming TP&P’s pawn that Hunter is facing by continuing the campaign — something (maybe his gut or just ‘the universe’.) is trying to tell him that he’s in danger. I don’t think the mayoral race has finished just yet, though Hunter has basically won it already, so there’s still theoretically time for him to back out and save himself… but as we see, he won’t.

He might also literally be in a park or something where there’s lots of birds around, not totally sure.

The Bitter Suite VI: Abandon | Act IV | If All Goes Well

The Bitter Suite VI: Abandon

The Bitter Suite VI: Abandon
Strangers in the soil, so hide your enmity
Are you living up to ghosts or does virtue disagree?
Oh…

Use your gifts for good, rescue them from greed
Find a proper voice as a thistle in the wreath
Oh…

Move them to truth, far from ruin
And barricade the myth I made, the wolves at bay
I know that history fades and sympathy dithers away

The City’s Son living under my thumb

You couldn’t compromise, so keep playing with fire
Oh…

Move them to truth, far from ruin
And barricade the myth I made, the wolves at bay
I know that history fades and sympathy dithers away

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
The Priest encourages Hunter to run for a mayoral office in the City, so that he can rout out corruption and be a good influence on the citizenry. This prospect successfully entices Hunter, who fails to realise it is a trap — the Priest knows Hunter stole the Son’s identity, and can control him once he becomes Mayor with that bargaining chip as blackmail.

What’s in a name?
‘Abandon’ — not sure. Makes me think of the idea of ‘abandon’ as in ‘reckless abandon’ though.

Whose viewpoint?
TP&P. Crazy, right? You wouldn’t think a song this peaceful or gentle sounding would be him, but this is what he’s like when he’s manipulating people under his Priest guise. Pretty scary.

🌲🌲🌲

>Strangers in the soil, so hide your enmity
‘Keep your distance in this instance, you’re a stranger in the weeds.’ The Priest knows that Hunter does not know he is the Pimp. Further, because the Priest knew Hunter as the Pimp, he is able to recognise and identify Hunter as being Hunter, not the Son. He needs Hunter not to realise that the Priest already knows about the identity theft — thus, the Priest must act as if he does not know who he’s talking to, and rather that he’s regarding this as his first time ever meeting the ‘Son’.

(It’s also occurred to me that the Priest may have been familiar with the Son as well, with him being a congregation member, which would further explain how he sniffed out Hunter).

The Priest has enmity towards Hunter because Hunter almost busted his indulgence racket during the sermon, and suspects Hunter inclined to contest or undo his schemes potentially even to the point of revealing him as the old Pimp, but an upstanding Priest would naturally not have a problem with a follower ‘just asking questions’ about sacraments. The Priest will pretend to be genuinely concerned about Hunter’s moral plight and accepting of him as a person. (This is likely the manner in which he first interacted with Ms Terri).

‘Sleep now in the soil, the dust and the debris’ -> A reprise pointing to the core of Hunter’s moral anxieties right now; the Priest has already sniffed out that Hunter has stolen the Son’s identity and has some kind of sinful complex about it, making it his weak point to zero in on.

>Are you living up to ghosts or does virtue disagree?
The Priest accurately and precisely hits to the core of Hunter’s anxieties: he asks Hunter if he feels if he’s doing enough good with his life. Obviously this kind of question massively affects Hunter — because no, he does not feel like he’s been making the best of the identity he stole, and in fact has been slipping so hard with it that he feels he’s been a worse person than even Hunter. Which gives him questions like, why did he even steal this identity? Why did he kill someone for this? He committed so much sin and for what? You know.

‘Living up to ghosts’ also carries the implication of the Son still being a superior person to Hunter, despite contrary suggestions in The Squeaky Wheel.

>0:32 – 0:38 Instrumental
Hunter takes the bait. He confesses some of his anxieties that, no, he doesn’t feel like he’s doing enough.

>Use your gifts for good, rescue them from greed
Seizing this chink in Hunter’s guard, the Priest eagerly presses the advantage. He tells Hunter that he actually has the potential to do a lot of good in the world — he has a strong moral sense, and he’s a war hero, so people will love him. The Priest also capitalises on the disgust Hunter expressed during the sermon (shown by the specific reference to ‘greed’ as something to save people from), telling him that he has the capacity to save the Congregation from the influence of such malevolent actors as the Priest. Of course, I doubt the Priest phrases it like that, (’Hey Hunter, I know you hate me, but you can destroy me as the Mayor!’) but that is the idea that he is carefully seeding in Hunter’s mind. If Hunter’s able to get into a position of influence… say, a local political body…

>Find a proper voice as a thistle in the wreath
The Priest goes further, this time presenting the mayor position as a solution to Hunter’s identity crisis. Rather than the uselessly broad and so far inactionable concept of ‘better person’, Hunter should mould the Son persona into the kind of person who can win, hold, and use a public office for virtuous ends. Such is not the kind of path he would have ever naturally chosen as Hunter, nor is it one Hunter could have succeeded on — you need to be married, you need funding, you need drive enough to be two-faced and vicious, and you need a lot of support to succeed in a mayoral campaign.

Unsure of the specific significance of ‘thistle in the wreath’ using those symbols, though it’s a really nice line. Maybe just saying for to be this thorny and aggressive force that disrupts the City’s uniformity (which is corrupt).

>Move them to truth, far from ruin / And barricade the myth I made, the wolves at bay
‘HEY HUNTER! If you were the Mayor and you had all this influence, you could save innocents from being exploited by people like ME! Wouldn’t THAT be a nice thing to do with your life?’

‘Barricade the myth I made’ -> love the phrasing but oblique so just zeroing in to say, the ‘myth I made’ is all the lies TP&P tells using Christianity as his basis to manipulate his Congregation, ie, he’s telling Hunter to ban corrupt readings of scripture or religious practitioners who predate on their followers, and probably extends to scams and false promises in general.

>I know that history fades and sympathy dithers away
Tricky.

‘History fades’ -> He sure does know. ‘Her history is left behind’. Probably TP&P nudging Hunter to the idea that yes it is totally possible to escape from your past, you just have to focus on building something as your future, while himself knowing that losing your history is a good way to lose yourself — ie, pursuing this course will make Hunter weaker.

‘Sympathy dithers away’ -> And on top of that, people will easily lose regard for Hunter as soon as he stops being a moral person or stops continuously doing good things — and guess who is the City’s arbiter of whether someone is doing a good thing or not, and can absolve a wrongdoer of sin? That’s right, it’s the Priest. People will easily forget the good Hunter has done which will make him dependant on the Priest to maintain his public goodboy points.

Pretty cynical sentiment in general. Would wager it’s one the Priest actually does hold.

>The City’s Son living under my thumb
TP&P’s plan is stated: He is going to elevate Hunter into the position of Mayor, then control him with the blackmail of his identity theft.

>You couldn’t compromise, so keep playing with fire
‘You couldn’t compromise’ -> Hunter resisted TP&P during the sermon. More than that, given how furious TP&P is about the whole thing, Hunter might have actually asked ‘why?’ when the offertory bag was going around (explaining why that verse in Sermon gets so intense and angry too, Hunter dissented just a little too much and maybe made other Congregation members question things for a moment). TP&P can probably also sense that Hunter will continue being resistant and antagonistic towards TP&P’s plots if he continues attending church.

‘So keep playing with fire’ -> You’re going to resist me? Bring it on! Irony in this statement as Hunter eventually does start playing with real fires, and TP&P will be very not happy about it, but for now Hunter is just a babbin when it comes to using his ‘fire powers’ to put pressure on evil (looks like TP&P’s blatant corruption in Sermon made them come out a bit). Either way TP&P thinks he can more than whoop Hunter down.

>2:41 – 3:21 Instrumental
Not sure what this passage is, but it’s something. Reprised somewhere?

>3:21 – 3:33 Instrumental
Hunter leaves the confessional?

>3:34 – 4:01 Instrumental
This is a bit ‘go take another life’-y. Bad decision for Hunter to be making/course to be pursuing. Same for rest of it to the end really.

The Bitter Suite IV & V: The Congregation/The Sermon in the Silt | Act IV | King of Swords (Reversed)

The Bitter Suite IV & V: The Congregation/The Sermon in the Silt

The Bitter Suite IV & V: The Congregation/The Sermon in the Silt
They come in crowds to hear him speak
And he will greet them in a smile that sticks like Vaseline
So do your best to keep your distance in this instance
You’re a stranger in the weeds, some things are better left unseen

Commanding listeners to believe
Manipulations of narrations: “Anno Domini”
Not with a whimper, but a bang, he’ll take the stage
And leave their jaws upon the floor, begging for more

So Father, won’t you tend your flock and save us now?
Won’t you save us now?
Come and save us

I hear you’re looking for God
Well I can show you the way just as long as you can pay
But the price is going up
And like a prayer to the air we deliver you to glory (pay up)
I swear you’ll get what you need
And we can lead you to salvation with the right denomination
It all lies in your hands
Or in your pocketbook to be more demanding

Don’t you tread too close to the line this time
Don’t get lead too close to the light this time
You went far too close to the line this time, the line this time

(Hey! hey kid! hey kid, get a God!)
(Hey! hey, hey, hey! hey kid, get a God!)

So you committed a sin?
Well, we can rid that with a remedy
The bidding starts at $70—sold to one and all
Now get your hands ready to make a withdrawal
You’ve got no other way to find what you want
If it’s a saving that you’re craving and your confidence is fading
Be calm, the Doctor’s in
I got the cure, because I know where you’ve been

Don’t you tread too close to the line this time
Don’t get lead too close to the light this time
You went far too close to the line this time, the line this time

If you wanna get up, reserve a room on high
Put your coins in my hat and don’t ask why
If you wanna get up, reserve a room on high
Put your coins in my hat and don’t ask why
If you wanna get up, reserve a room on high
Put your coins in the hat and don’t ask why

Don’t you tread too close to the line this time
Don’t get lead too close to the light this time
You went far too close to the line this time
The line this time, the line this time…

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Hunter attends the Church service with the Fiance. He tries not to draw attention while cynically regarding the proceedings, figuring the Priest to be a manipulator who exploits his Congregation. Hunter is right to hold this view, as the Priest proceeds to con exorbitant funds from the Congregation by pressuring them to buy indulgences. The Priest then singles out Hunter, who did not buy any, to speak with him privately.

What’s in a name?
We’re back in the Bitter Suite! Man, it’s been a while. Nice to see it come back. We have a structural mirror to Bitter Suites I and II, too — IV and V are also in one song, with the first suite introducing a character to Hunter, and the second being TP&P conning the knickers (dollars, rather, and less literal this time) out of people.

The Bitter Suite IV is The Congregation — not complicated, as it’s introducing us to the character of the Congregation plus Hunter’s impression of them and all this Church business.

The Bitter Suite V is the Sermon in the Silt — trickier. The central idea of ‘silt’, though, is gold panning. The link there to TP&P sifting through the congregation for money there is pretty clear. Secondary idea is how Hunter and TP&P are both trying not to be noticed by each other, so it’s the incognito aspect of what TP&P is doing by talking up these massive indulgences while not wanting to be caught as a conman. You could probably find a third idea in the link between sifting around in the ‘dirt’ and ‘sinfulness/heedlessness’ (’give yourself to the dust and the dirt where you stand’) but eh it’s already hefty enough.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter (IV), then TP&P (V).

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:26 Instrumental
Man how scuzzy this already is. Some shades of TP&P leitmotifs already but can’t put a finger on which. Hunter does not like this place, viewing it as deeply corrupt and the congregation members essentially as cattle allowing themselves to be misled.

One big question with this part of the story is, does Hunter know that the Pimp is also the Priest yet? And I would say no — surprisingly, he actually doesn’t. He has only interacted with TP&P in his Pimp guise and has never once gone to the Church, and his relationship with Ms Leading broke down before she would’ve been able to tell him that the Priest and the Pimp were the same (it would require Ms Leading coming clean about being a prostitute, and things after Red Hands were too messy for them to possibly be casually talking about the Pimp and the Priest).

Which BY EXTENSION means that all the dismissive and spiteful sentiments Hunter has towards the Church right now? Entirely a product of him being a super cynical sod who doesn’t trust authority figures after Cauda, the goodness of the world worth being innocent in as of This Beautiful Life and the Horrors, and in the presence of a loving just God as of WIMTB and Mustard Gas. Maybe some influence from Ms Terri as well, if her struggles with Catholicism ever came up and Hunter recognised those as also hurting her (or at least not helping her) in retrospect.

Rather, Hunter can probably see his younger self’s idealism in people who are willing to accept what the Church tells them, and is deeply uncomfortable with it because he dislikes his younger self and knows that idealism/innocence wound up screwing him over. He is probably figuring these people, naturally, will also get maliciously exploited as they get attached to comfortable promises the Church preaches to them. Plus, like, Hunter doesn’t consider himself a great person right now, and being confronted with that on an existential level of ‘you could go to Hell, you know’ is uncomfortable even if it’s subconscious. I would figure Hunter is basically atheist now and from that lens every kind of appeal to scripture feels bunk.

Anyways, point being Hunter really doesn’t like the Church and it’s not even because the guy running this one is the Pimp that indentured his mother, lol.

>They come in crowds to hear him speak / And he will greet them in a smile that sticks like Vaseline
Man Hunter hates the Church. Hunter can already imagine the cloying, pious, and welcoming attitude the Priest will use to address the congregation (similar to how the Pimp greeted him in Smiling Swine, hmmm) and the thought of being the target of it makes him sick.

>So do your best to keep your distance in this instance / You’re a stranger in the weeds, some things are better left unseen
Hunter decides the best thing to do is keep his head down so as not to draw the Priest’s (or anyone else’s) attention. He wants to be so much of an irrelevant ‘background character’ in the pews that nobody even notices he attended this or could possibly bring it up to make a relevant thing of it — this is how deeply adverse to the Priest he is, already assuming him to be a dangerous figure. Rightly, too.

>Commanding listeners to believe / Manipulations of narrations: “Anno Domini” / Not with a whimper, but a bang, he’ll take the stage / And leave their jaws upon the floor, begging for more
The thing that bothers Hunter about the Church is the power the Priest has to manipulate people’s worldviews, sense of moral right and wrong, and sense of whether they are a good or bad person (then controlling them with promises they can become good — they just have to do what he says), without necessarily being a good person or even a devout believer himself so much as an extremely smooth or charismatic talker who knows how to bend scripture to suit his points. Hunter does not think the Word itself carries any legitimacy, either, so if the Priest is in any way competent he must be this breed of sociopath.

That’s the kind of person he anticipates the Priest to be: a manipulator and a showman, who doesn’t only not practice what he preaches, but uses his position to dominate people for his own motives or ego.

And the people love him for this!

>So Father, won’t you tend your flock and save us now? / Won’t you save us now? / Come and save us
The Congregation speaks — they are entirely reliant on the Priest to guide them and assure them of what’s right, what’s wrong, and to keep them above water morally. These are very desperate and anxious people, not secure in themselves without the ‘compassion’ of the Priest, begging him to take the pulpit.

>1:35 – 1:48 The Bitter Suite II Reprise
MAAAANNN!!! YES THAT’S IT CASEY THAT’S IT THAT’S WHAT I’M HERE FOR!!!!

Yeah we’re in Bitter Suite V now, and holy moly it is good. What can I say TP&P is just super super fun whenever he’s doing his thing. You go you horrible horrible slimly little conman.

So, TP&P is here now! Boom! Not with a whimper, but with a bang he takes the stage! The energy is extremely high as he comes out of the wings and to the pulpit, the entire Congregation invigorated by his presence and more than ready to lap up every word and accept every offer the Priest is giving them.

>I hear you’re looking for God / Well I can show you the way just as long as you can pay
Ahhh it’s so good. I don’t think the lyrics need much explaining but figure to note them where I can anyway.

Okay, so, first thing to note: the Dime has actually closed down. Wh—? Yeah, the laws around brothels tightened considerably in this period (you can see it also in how Ms Leading isn’t a prostitute anymore, though maybe she would’ve quit on her own initiative after meeting Hunter anyway), not to mention the war taking away all the punters, so TP&P has had to adjust and find other ways to make the big money. The poor man. It’s okay though, he’s found something sufficiently lucrative that he can still do as the Priest!

And that is, INDULGENCES!

That’s right, indulgences, plenty here, plenty for all! Step right up, get your indulgences! Those pesky sins getting you down? Wipe those nasty suckers away with just one easy course of INDULGENCES! Come now, don’t be stingy, heaven for your immortal soul is surely worth more than that? There we go, there we go…

>And we can lead you to salvation with the right denomination
Exquisite my lord. Denomination has the meaning of a religious denomination, especially a Christian one (Protestant, Catholic, Lutheran, etc), but also refers to the monetary weighting a single coin or bill is worth (ie, $10 bills are $10, $50 bills are $50, so on). Really well written line that also drives in how careless TP&P about the actual faith aspect so much as it being a means to make money.

>Don’t you tread too close to the line this time / Don’t get led too close to the light this time / You went far too close to the line this time, the line this time
TP&P doesn’t want people questioning this sacrament or why giving him money is enough to become a good person in the eyes of God. Though he’s doing a fine job of working the room, he does still have that fundamental… anxiety, I guess I’ll call it, of being unmasked as a conman.

Further, he is actively guiding people away from God and virtue so as to protect the little racket he has going here. If people manage to actually find God and virtue, they’ll stop being sinners, which leaves TP&P firstly with nothing to sell them and secondly at risk of being denounced as a corrupt priest, which he doesn’t want happening, though he is secure enough in his position to be this brazen about peddling indulgences. Still, he really, really, really does not want these people feeling confident about themselves or for them to even have an inkling of what virtue means — that is crossing ‘the line’.

So, TP&P is identifying which members of the Congregation are at risk of becoming self-assured, suspicious, or virtuous, so that he can put in proper countermeasures against them and single them out to be blackmailed. I imagine this is harder than it used to be when you don’t have a brothel at the ready to generate that blackmail, meaning TP&P might actually be feeling kind of pressured now that he’s lost one of his guises to support him, but I figure he’s canny to these things he’ll work it out.

>(Hey! hey kid! hey kid, get a God!)
Love it. The audaciousness of selling God like this too, wow.

>The bidding starts at $70—sold to one and all
Sold sung like ‘souls’ — you are quite literally selling your soul TP&P by taking part in these transactions.

>I got the cure, because I know where you’ve been
Great line. On the face, it’s him being empathetic to the suffering of his Congregation and assuring them they aren’t doomed. Simultaneously, it’s him threatening them with blackmail — he knows you’re not a good person, and knows what sins you’ve committed, because he does his research.

‘So is there anybody here / Who can tell me where I am / Or at least where I have been?’. Yes, and here he is, Hunter 😉

>Chorus Repetition
I think this one might be TP&P noticing Hunter — Hunter fails to adequately conceal his disgust with the proceedings here, though it isn’t like he’s making a scene about it. Maybe he pointedly doesn’t make a donation when the offertory bag comes around, or join the line for the indulgences, or something.

>If you wanna get up, reserve a room on high / Put your coins in my hat and don’t ask why
There is an offertory bag going around around the pews — Hunter doesn’t make a donation.

>Final Chorus Repetition
Having noticed and recognised Hunter, and seen his refusal to do as the rest of the Congregation does, TP&P is concerned. He knows who Hunter is and that he had relations with Ms Leading some years ago — though TP&P seems secure that Ms Leading did not in fact tell Hunter that the Pimp is also the Priest (’led too close to the light’), it’s not inconceivable that Hunter could put the dots together, and be dangerously outspoken about it, if he keeps showing up here. Or hell, if he gets together with Ms Leading again — that is also a concern.

Rather than let this potential problem fester, TP&P gets an idea to nip it in the bud and turn it to his advantage.

>4:50 – 5:10 Bitter Suite IV Reprise
As the service wraps up and people begin shuffling out, TP&P singles out Hunter (the big sting at 5:02 is Hunter’s fear/shock/alarm at being noticed), inviting him to speak in the confessional. I figure the invitation probably goes something like ‘I can sense GREAT TROUBLES from you, young man. Is there nothing you wish to get off your chest?’. Or, you know, more insistent and smooth than that but basically that vibe.

>5:10 – 5:30 The Pimp and The Priest Reprise
Unable to really turn down the invitation, Hunter begrudgingly joins the Priest and settles in the privacy of the confessional.

The Squeaky Wheel | Act IV | The Bitter Suite VI: Abandon

The Squeaky Wheel

The Squeaky Wheel
There’s my suitor, struggling to find his footing
Lost, awoken, alone, after sleeping off inebriation
I forget that I’ve been holding my tongue for so long
Cause we had a run, so don your Sunday best and wake up

You went missing, never mind the life I was wishing for
Cause you’d had enough – but at least you got enough to fake it
I’ll keep smiling, optimistically denying what I feared the most
That you disappeared and leave me wondering

Was I just a playful pawn, a trophy you had won?
Someone who could lift you when you’re low?
Innocence to prey upon, or allies in the sun?
Heaven sent, or just hell bent on love?

Darling liar, always running through the brier
What, the cuts aren’t enough? Just an aggravation you’d forget
Like promised patience, politic alleviations of
What I should’ve known was a sign of future expiration

Was I just a playful pawn, a trophy you had won?
Someone who could lift you when you’re low?
Innocence to prey upon, or allies in the sun?
Heaven sent, or just hell bent on love?

So will I marry a myth?
Or is there room for second chances?
The lust lives in the dark and may never show

Well, the battle ended years ago
Now this is how you say hello
Well where’d you take your leave?
Or would you rather keep another trick up your sleeve?
Do you remember love?
How you said you really never could feel enough?
Well, did you give it a try?
Why don’t you open your eyes and let me know?

Was I just a playful pawn, or a trophy you had won?
Someone who could lift you when you’re low?
Innocence to prey upon, or allies in the sun?
Heaven sent, or just hell bent on love?

What will happen to us?
Do you think we’ll make the cut?
Should we give it a try?
Give an eye for an eye?
Give ourselves to the lie?

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
The Son’s Fiance comes upon Hunter, who is still rather hungover. She gives him a hiding for disappearing on her and divulges a ton of problems her and the Son’s relationship has had, but comes to realise Hunter isn’t the Son. All the same, she and Hunter agree to continue the relationship on the off-chance they can make something of it. She takes Hunter to Church for its Sunday service.

What’s in a name?
‘The Squeaky Wheel’ — hard to see this and not think, ‘stopped by the squeaky wheel, a smiling swine’. It does mirror Smiling Swine in that SS is where Hunter’s relationship with Ms Leading is established, and in this one Hunter hooks up with the Fiance, but the relation on that alone feels kinda wobbly. Since it’s from the fiance’s point of view it might be more singling out Hunter as the Squeaky Wheel, alluding to how she realises Hunter isn’t actually the Son.

Have seen people mention the Squeaky Wheel as the name of the bar where Hunter got drunk (so in it or around it is where the Fiance finds him), but not sure on the source of that.

Whose viewpoint?
The Fiance.

🌲🌲🌲

>There’s my suitor, struggling to find his footing / Lost, awoken, alone, after sleeping off inebriation
So here’s the Fiance’s voice and world, and wow is this a really clear description of the situation we’re in and the things she’s seeing. She strikes me as a very direct, intelligent, observant, and matter-of-fact kind of person, but also one who is fine with just doing things by routine without expectations of personally getting much good out of it, who will tolerate a lot of nonsense.

So anyway, probably after being told by the Friends that the ‘Son’ is back in town and exists, and from extension of that where they were last night, the Fiance of the Son goes to pick him up and confront him about where on earth he has been the past few years. As expected, she finds him doddering around outside the bar, left there by himself and plainly still hungover. She is not surprised to find him like this, and rather seems somehow accustomed to it, being empathetic yet practical at the same time — the first of many hints, and outright statements we’ll get, toward the idea that the Son was kind of a slimeball, or at least the kind of person who would drink himself stupid after a night with his friends on a semi-regular basis.

As we’ll see, the Fiance has a lot of contentious things to say about the Son. Just as much as this reveals more points of the Son’s character to us, the audience, it will reveal this information to Hunter — telling him that this ‘higher hand’ he idolised was maybe kinda inferior from the outset, and not as hard to match up to as he thought.

>I forget that I’ve been holding my tongue for so long / Cause we had a run, so don your Sunday best and wake up
The Fiance is fundamentally angry with the Son. She has a lot of discontents with their relationship that she has always opted not to confront him with, and this time now that he’s ghosted her for several years and counting after the war, she reckoned that the first thing she would’ve done upon finding him was dress him down and chew him out. Upon actually seeing him, though, she momentarily forgets about this plan to instead focus on getting Hunter in shape to be out in public and specifically in shape to attend today’s Church service. Despite the gap, she fundamentally doesn’t consider them to have broken up and does still basically care about the Son even though he apparently neglects her and engages in terrible dumb antics.

>0:28 – 0:40 Instrumental
The Fiance brings Hunter back to her house to get him sobered up, cleaned up, and with a change of clothes.

>You went missing, never mind the life I was wishing for / Cause you’d had enough – but at least you got enough to fake it
Now that they’re in a more private environment, the Fiance begins voicing her discontents with the relationship to Hunter, questioning his disappearance among other things.

Hunter spent several years living in seclusion with the Mother after the war. From the Fiance’s perspective, though, he just disappeared without any notice or word — even though she and the Son had plans for him to move in with her after the war, or to find a house together, start a family and so on. Since Hunter didn’t know about the Fiance, we can figure she didn’t show up in any of the Son’s postcards, but the Fiance naturally interpreted this period of radio silence as the Son trying to escape from a future with her.

‘Cause you’d had enough’ -> There was tension in their relationship even before the war. The Fiance had some level of expectation that the Son would want to ditch her.

‘But at least you got enough to fake it’ -> Despite that tension, the relationship still offered enough positives to the Son that he made an effort to keep it going and stay with the Fiance. He pretended to love her, at the very least. (‘We couldn’t fake it, so why even try?’)

>I’ll keep smiling, optimistically denying what I feared the most / That you disappeared and leave me wondering
The Fiance could never be sure of whether the Son actually loved her or not. Despite that, she tried to keep a positive outlook that said ‘sure he did, I might not know where he is right now, but when he shows up again it’ll probably turn out he got himself into some weird business again and he just couldn’t reach me or didn’t want to get me involved in it’, or something in that vein where the possibility of him loving her was still open, over the period of Hunter’s absence.

Realistically, she knew he had probably just ran off and dumped her, but she was never able to confirm that because she didn’t know where he went or what happened to him. Further, she was massively fearing that he had simply died in the war, and so she would never get an answer to her doubts about his intentions.

>Was I just a playful pawn, a trophy you had won? / Someone who could lift you when you’re low?
The core contention of the relationship for the Fiance — she was not certain that the Son truly loved her. She couldn’t help but suspect that he only gravitated to her as a romantic date friend and trophy wife, and that he enjoyed the thrill of having conquered someone with her beauty, wealth, status, or difficulty (we can figure she has at least one of these) that he could brag about to his buddies.

Further, he leaned on her significantly as an emotional support, and though she consistently gave that support, she also had to wonder whether that was all he really liked her for. Points to the Son as a far more troubled person than Hunter initially suspected.

>Innocence to prey upon, or allies in the sun?
Was the Son an exploitative predator who took advantage of the Fiance’s affection for him and used her, or were their feelings both honest attempts at mutual support with no secret hostile motives or underbelly?

>Heaven sent, or just hell bent on love?
Really nice line. The Son was someone who desired love profusely — in that way, he sounds a lot like Hunter.

Let’s pause on that thought for a moment. Going to the ‘Hunter and the Son are Twins’ idea, these parallels would be intentional. What’s the major difference between how Hunter and the Son would’ve approached love, though? Well, Hunter was taught how to love by Ms Terri, while the Son’s role model was the General. Poetically it would make sense that the Son’s relationship prospects would be uncertain on whether the Son really loved them, if he doesn’t have that basic sense of what love’s like, while Hunter does know what love is and beelined to it in Ms Leading.

>Darling liar, always running through the brier / What, the cuts aren’t enough? Just an aggravation you’d forget / Like promised patience, politic alleviations of / What I should’ve known was a sign of future expiration
‘Darling liar’ -> The Son had a tendency to lie and be dishonest with the Fiance. The Fiance’s sureness in saying this suggests she has caught him in unambiguous lies before.

‘Always running through the brier’ -> The Son tended to resolve his problems by taking the most difficult and protracted route, the thorny path, as it were. He could never seem to just address an issue or solve a problem in a straightforward and simple way; it always had to become some pointlessly roundabout or dramatic thing.

‘What, the cuts aren’t enough? Just an aggravation you’d forget’ -> The Fiance pressures Hunter again, challenging why he would do all this stupid stuff and make choices that would just make the core problem more difficult to resolve. Furthermore, when the Son did have discontents, he would typically suppress them and not address them straightforwardly.

‘You’d forget like promised patience, politic alleviations of what I should’ve known was a sign of future expiration’ -> The Son promised he would marry the Fiance after he returned from the war, though she strongly wanted to get married and start a family before it. In retrospect, she should’ve have figured his hesitance to commit himself to her or give her a child before going into such a serious and life-threatening situation meant he wasn’t really serious about staying with her, and would’ve broken up with or divorced her eventually.

>2:35 – 2:47 AAAAaaaAAAaaaAAAAA
A bit revelatory? The Fiance figures out that Hunter isn’t the Son? Yeah, that’s it. I think she sees how Hunter genuinely doesn’t know about this promise to get married, and that’s what twigs her to it.

>So will I marry a myth? / Or is there room for second chances? / The lust lives in the dark and may never show
The Fiance considers her prospects.

‘Will I marry a myth?’ -> Basically, ‘are we ever getting married at all’? Ostensibly the Fiance questioning if the image of the Son who loves her is just something fake she made up in her head, in which case she’s attached to an outcome she’ll never get, and even if they do get married it won’t be to the person she wants to marry. Carries a lot of tenors and layers though — the Son’s literal death elevates the idea of marrying him into a myth, and to marry Hunter’s impersonation of the Son is also like marrying a myth, ‘the myth I made’. She has also realised Hunter isn’t the Son by now, and is coming to this exasperated question like, great, now what do I do!? Go marry my dead fiance?

‘Or is there room for second chances?’ -> The Fiance also questions the possibility that maybe they can go ahead and get married anyway. I mean I’m sure this isn’t the most ideal straits for the Fiance, but given how strained the relationship was already, maybe going along with Hunter will be fine. Or at least fine enough to be on par with marrying a man who didn’t love her in the first place and didn’t give her a family before ditching her and dying — supposing that is what happened — and otherwise at least could fulfil the promise that the Son wasn’t able to keep and maybe turn out kinda okay or even good as he becomes the Son for her. She hints to Hunter her openness for him to pursue her by opening the topic of ‘reconciliation’ as a prospect at all.

‘The lust lives in the dark and may never show’ -> Not sure on this. Probably her recognising that Hunter, having his own private life, probably will keep a lover, but deeming that an acceptable compromise as long as he focuses on maintaining a proper family and relationship with her at the same time and keeps the personal business to the side.

>Well, the battle ended years ago / Now this is how you say hello
The Fiance begins testing Hunter. If she is going to be entertaining the prospect of inviting this stranger into her life, she is going to want to feel him out and make sure they’re on the same wavelength first. It’s almost like a little game of 20 questions where she throws him a hardball like ‘c’mon, you need to be able to answer this,’ then signals her willingness to collaborate by instantly undermining this fair question with an ‘out’, subtly advising Hunter of how to answer such questions (and what the Son was like) if he ever were thrown such hardballs in earnest, and establishing for Hunter the foundational blocks of their relationship.

We’re hearing it as a song but it’s probably more basically structured as the Fiance first signalling she won’t probe into Hunter’s story before ‘reminiscing’ to him about how their relationship ‘used to be’ and then subtly asking Hunter if he’d be willing to collaborate with her.

>Well where’d you take your leave?
‘So you show up hungover doddering around the bar after years of no contact — where were you the whole time?’

>Or would you rather keep another trick up your sleeve?
‘Then again, it’s not like you ever tell me these things.’ Subtext being, ‘I’m willing to help you with your cover story, you don’t have to tell me everything’.

>Do you remember love? / How you said you really never could feel enough?
‘The person you’re impersonating wasn’t very loving to me.’

Shades of ‘prayers from above, never answered quite enough’.

>Well, did you give it a try?
‘Can you be loving to me?’

>Why don’t you open your eyes and let me know?
The Fiance signalling to Hunter that she knows he’s not the Son but she’s okay with that since she thinks they’ll be able to build something better. Hunter probably realises at this point that she knows, too, but is nonetheless willing to go along with him and not even backstab or out him if he says no (she has framed the whole conversation in a way that doesn’t endanger the Son persona even if he rejects her — he just has to accept her premise that the Son was unloving to her as his reasoning). She’s laying it on pretty thick that she wants him to recognise the nature of her offer as a positive one.

>Chorus Repetition
Stronger this time with the Fiance’s knowledge that the Son really is gone, she’ll never get these answers, and the guy is dead. Probably also works in reference to this weird thing she’s building with Hunter.

>What will happen to us? / Do you think we’ll make the cut?
Very blatantly asking these questions to Hunter as Hunter — he has passed her vibe check and she seems satisfied that he’s not a rotten man who will totally mistreat her, or anything, but she still has to seriously wonder if a relationship between a spurned fiance and the identity thief who waltzed into her life can really work out to become something as worthwhile, loving, and intimate as she hopes. Note the ‘we’, she’s conscious of Hunter’s prospects and satisfaction in this relationship too. She seriously does want it to be a good one, she’s not just toying around with Hunter because she wants a husband and kids.

>Should we give it a try? / Give an eye for an eye? / Give ourselves to the lie?
‘This is nuts, but should we do it?’

‘Give an eye for an eye’ -> Carries the connotation of ‘woah, we both got burned in love, maybe we can get one over on our exes by making this relationship work out’. So as much as she’s wondering if the Son loved her and thinks she might be able to build something better with Hunter, Hunter’s also contemplating the idea that a successful relationship with the Fiance will be a good answer to the Ms Leading problem. He and the Fiance do have at least some common ground on that point.

And as for the main questions, the answer is yes — Hunter and the Fiance agree to pursue a relationship. We can figure the Fiance will help Hunter adjust into his role as the Son and cover for him if he ever badly misses information the Son should know from this point.

>4:34 – 4:36 Instrumental
Such as this point: she and the Son are churchgoers. With an important service going on today, she brings Hunter with her to the Church to attend.

Is There Anybody Here? | Act IV | The Bitter Suite IV & V: The Congregation/The Sermon in the Silt

Is There Anybody Here?

Is There Anybody Here?
I lay my body down
To rest my weary head
I think I left someone there
I left myself for dead

So is there anybody here
Who can tell me where I am
Or at least where I have been?
Because I fear I’m lost, and I cannot be found again

I left my soul exposed to frail hands who hold
My fate up in the air
And through their fingers fall the meaning of it all
Down to the floor it goes

So is there anybody here
Who can tell me where I am?

Waking in the afternoon, a captive in a passive tomb
Moments turn to long Decembers, stoking fires from dying embers
I try to move a limb, but there’s a disconnect within
A devil in the alchemy, a phantom staring back at me
It’s you

So is there anybody here
Who can tell me where I am
Or at least where I have been?
Because I fear I’m lost, and I cannot be found again

Just waking in the afternoon, a captive in a passive tomb
Moments turn to long Decembers, stoking fires from dying embers
I try to move a limb but there’s a disconnect within
A devil in the alchemy, a phantom staring back at me
A pain I simply can’t express, from troubles I have long repressed
And then there’s you…

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Hunter wakes up groggy after his drunken bender, and in this state, finds himself questioning who he is. He has been trying to be the Son, but his encounter with Ms Leading last night has reminded him of the core values, which he is neglecting, and left him confused as to what he’s doing.

What’s in a name?
Kind of mirroring What It Means To Be Alone — Hunter is in such a state of confusion he doesn’t even know if he can rely on himself, much less who his ‘self’ is that is driving his present actions.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>I lay my body down / To rest my weary head
‘Move your body to the bed’, ‘I brought my body to the altar’; Hunter has awoken from his drunken night out with the Friends, suffering from a severe hangover that is clouding his mind and making it hard for him to move. Exhausted and aching, he lets himself slump across whatever surface is nearest for him to slump over. Given that last we saw him he was in the bar Ms Leading works at, I’d figure he’s either still there and it’s the morning after (but nobody kicked him out?), or either Ms Leading or the Friends had him moved somewhere he could nap it off after he passed out.

>I think I left someone there / I left myself for dead
Hunter drunkenly reflects on his experiences the night prior, but especially his encounter with Ms Leading. Hunter is groggily realising the way he behaved that night was massively contrary to the way he would typically and naturally act — lying, manipulating, getting smashed drunk, being curt with and rejecting Ms Leading… why did he do any of that? If part of Hunter’s goal in becoming the Son was to enable him to reach heights he couldn’t reach as Hunter, why is he being an even worse person than Hunter…?

Who is he actually, at this point? Is his behaviour reflective of this persona of the Son or Hunter?

>So is there anybody here / Who can tell me where I am / Or at least where I have been?
Hunter asks for a guide to tell him who he is. The nature of these questions makes it kinda hard to break them down smoothly but you can get what the vibe here is, right? Hunter is totally wrecked and questioning if this commitment to life as the Son has erased the very existence of Hunter, if all those bases and morals and experiences he had as Hunter are just gone in the wake of his devotion to maintaining the ‘Son’ persona… but to maintain this persona means doing things he wouldn’t naturally do as Hunter and citing the importance of experiences he didn’t have as Hunter, so is the Son persona a breathing entity in itself that doesn’t really count as Hunter?

‘Where I am’ -> What my position is, morally, right now, and where I could conceivably go from here.
‘Where I have been’ -> The major experiences that have affected me and had implications on my moral and personal development.

Can also imagine him sitting there and having a moment of actual literal confusion over whether he’s known the Friends for years or a day, and other things in that vein, just mixing up the details of his actual life against information he’s had to memorise to maintain the persona of the Son.

>Because I fear I’m lost, and I cannot be found again
Basically just continuing the above ideas, Hunter feels the unnaturally corrupt behaviour he’s exhibited as the Son is making him lose touch with the person he truly is, and his motives for even assuming this persona in the first place feel cloudy. Simultaneously feels he has crossed the line too far to reel back on any kind of ‘good person’ route or to even just drop the persona, worsening his confusion around what this says about him or where he can possibly go except down.

‘Lost and cannot be found’ carries an ecclesiastical shade, evoking the idea of the prodigal son (Luke 15:24) and the idea of being lost until you find salvation through Jesus. He needs some kind of major moral intervention for him to stabilise his self and identity. This is subtle foreshadowing setting up how Hunter will come to find purpose and stability in this Son identity through the manipulative guidance of TP&P.

>1:11 – 1:26 Instrumental
No particular ideas on this representing anything specific but man is it cool. Love how dark this is.

>I left my soul exposed to frail hands who hold / My fate up in the air
Hunter realises his behaviour isn’t being dictated anymore by what he wants to do; it’s being dictated by how he has to conform to the responses people who know the Son expect, or how he has to misdirect them to brush suspicion away from him. He has lost his sense of agency in how he’s able to shape himself under this identity.

>And through their fingers fall the meaning of it all / Down to the floor it goes
…Which makes this whole exercise pointless. If he has to conform to others’ expectations and desires instead of his own, then obviously he’s lost that capacity for maturation and growth that he desired in The Old Haunt and Waves, and especially for maturation or growth into a better person. He’s just bouncing off of one person to another and saying whatever he has to say not to get caught. Plus, beyond the inherent scumminess of deceiving people like this, if the people and expectations he has to conform to are scummy, that’s doubly shooting himself in the foot. Hunter almost sounds to be laughing at himself for how stupid it all is.

>1:55 – 1:58 aaa a a aa a aaaa a aAA AAA AA aaaa
Just highlighting these aaas because I love them. I like envisioning them as a little chorus of demons around Hunter.

>So is there anybody here / Who can tell me where I am?
A little less emo, a little more optimistic. Probably a legitimate call for some kind of anchor point relationship or guidance.

>Waking in the afternoon, a captive in a passive tomb
Things are a little brighter as Hunter has napped off the worst of the hangover, though he’s still pretty out of it. It’s afternoon by the time he seems to collect himself.

‘A captive in a passive tomb’ -> Referencing the passive nature Hunter has been forced to adopt to keep his Son persona going; he has to go with the flow and nod along to what others are saying about him, because they know the person Hunter’s trying to impersonate better than Hunter does. Hunter feels trapped in this predicament with his soul functionally dead. Might also be a literal description of him waking up in the bar or whatever building he’s in and still being so wiped out he can’t really move, plus there’s nobody else around, so it’s like he’s confined in this empty tomblike spot.

>Moments turn to long Decembers, stoking fires from dying embers
Really hard lines. I think it is mostly following on from the idea of Hunter waking up at the bar all alone and being super out of it — time feels to be moving slowly (’moments turn to long Decembers’, might also be pointing to it being literally December and him seeing the snow outside, following on from the ‘there was some kind of service going on at the church’ idea? Like it’s near Christmas time. Or a timeskip?) and Hunter is struggling to snap himself back into proper lucid consciousness (’stoking fires from dying embers’, also shows how weak Hunter’s sense of self is after that night, if the inherent ‘fire’ that he is has become so dull and weak as to just be an ember that he has to consciously stoke).

Love the poetry on this, contrast of the coldness of December to the warmth of stoking a hearth.

>I try to move a limb, but there’s a disconnect within
Following on from him having a hard time waking up again — his body feels sluggish and isn’t moving how he wants it to. Being in the weird state of mind that he is, he ascribes this not to alcohol but as another marker of how the Son persona feels to have taken him over; he can’t even operate his own body anymore because the persona has its own consciousness that he can’t control. (Or vice versa, maybe he is the Son and he can’t move the body because he’s fighting against Hunter as the one who dictates that).

>A devil in the alchemy, a phantom staring back at me / It’s you
Basically just continuing the ideas from the line above; Hunter feels the Son persona has become its own thing that is maybe more powerful and real than Hunter at this point. I would kneejerk ‘the phantom’ as being the Son (so he’s haunted by the behavioural expectations of the Son), but given how Hunter has also made allusions to himself dying, the phantom here could also be Hunter’s ‘real self’ and he’s become haunted and self conscious of how even the most minor actions he’s taking might not belong to Hunter anymore. Like he can envision himself watching himself and is terrified by the implications of this.

Really like ‘devil in the alchemy’ as a lyric (’a disruption in the conversion process (nervous system in this case as he struggles to move his limb if you’re going literal; the Hunter -> Son transition being metaphorical)’) and how it echoes ‘hymns with the devil in confessional’ but don’t have anything too specific to say about it.

>Chorus Repetition
Get the image of Hunter finally being able to get himself up and start wobbling his way out of the empty bar.

>A pain I simply can’t express, from troubles I have long repressed / And then there’s you…
Hunter draws everything in the song back into one thought: is his behaviour as the Son (and consequent identity issues) a result of the deep formative pain that Hunter suffers as Hunter (which would then make the Son persona be, by all intents, a Hunter thing), and this entire identity issue and poor behaviour he feels forced to engage in running downstream of him just repressing and turning away from his problems again?

‘And then there’s you…’ this time refers to Ms Leading. Hunter is thinking back on his encounter with her last night and wondering if getting more involved with her again might be a way of freeing himself from this identity crisis and un-repressing that pain, but at the same time he’s extremely conflicted on whether to actually do that because, well, un-repressing the pain will hurt and Hunter hates feeling hurt. I don’t think he actually thinks about it in such mechanical terms though so much as he’s been forced to consider that, yeah, just being around Ms Leading is enough for those old feelings and desires to well up again and the option to act upon them or embrace them instead of this persona is there, but it’s an extremely painful option so it scares him.

>4:08 – 4:59 Instrumental
Hunter considers the option of returning to Ms Leading, or at least of speaking with her again. Though initially comforted and attracted by this prospect, the more he thinks, the angrier he gets. Going back to the ideas he outlined in Waves, he indignantly feels that he will be forced to feign happiness or wellness around Ms Leading anyway, and that he’ll be forced to compromise and shape his self in deference to her as much as he has to do it to other parties (’I left my soul exposed to frail hands that hold…’ instrumental). Ultimately he decides not to mingle again with Ms Leading.

>5:00 – 6:03 Instrumental
Unsure of anything particularly but it’s cool. After all his thinking Hunter just returns to the same emo situation he had starting out with all this.

>6:03 – 6:42 Instrumental
Calmer now. Unsure.

A Night On The Town | Act IV | The Squeaky Wheel

A Night On The Town

A Night on The Town
I’ve been misplaced in so many ways
Broken battlegrounds, hiding veils of delicate deceit
Yet here I breathe
Teeth still gleam from holy water
While millions of lambs migrate to the slaughter
My head in a bag and my hands are bound to my feet
And voices sing

“Were we erased like common thieves?
Tossed in a cell to feast with the fleas
All because we never had written a word”

What will I see, tonight, in these eyes?
And what will I know when the morning comes?
What will I see, tonight, in these eyes?
And what will I know when the morning comes?

Must we remind of exchanges existing so long ago?
Would we arrive at agreeable musings?
Sentimental or just confusing?
We lost what we had, but we took it back
Friends in the gutter, enjoy one another
Just give yourself to the dust and the dirt where you stand

What will I see, tonight, in these eyes?
And what will I know when the morning comes?
What will I see, tonight, in these eyes?
And what will I know when the morning comes?

I’m not who you think I am
And even if I thought you’d known
I never would have told you so
And more alarming
I would have done the very same
Would have stole more than your name
Would have cursed and brought the world on your shoulders
I was in the wrong place at the right time

And what’s the worst I’d see
By giving myself to the earth below me
Not knowing how far I’d fall, by casting away the ordinary
Just how long can I stay in illusions formed here long before me?
And how long can I breathe this stolen breath here underneath?

There’s that subtle smile that did me in
She moves
An agony reminds where I’ve been
She breathes
“I’d never let this happen again.”
Where’s your heart?
Mimicking the patriarch
She’s naive

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Friends of the Son, who Hunter did not realise existed, take him barhopping across the City. Hunter successfully manipulates them into abandoning their doubts when they notice discrepancies between him and the Son, making Hunter reflect on the immoral person he has become. The group enters a bar where Ms Leading is working as a bartender, and after rejecting her concern about his situation, Hunter passes out drunk.

What’s in a name?
This is one of those ‘what is says on the tin’ song names — it’s recounting Hunter having a raucous night on the town, hanging out with the boys and getting piss drunk.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:15 Instrumental
Man! The energy on this. Sets up our setting too — it’s the roaring 20s, the City is bustling, and hijinks are imminently afoot.

>I’ve been misplaced in so many ways / Broken battlegrounds, hiding veils of delicate deceit / Yet here I breathe
Among all this bustle is Hunter, stricken by the fact that he’s not dead or busted yet. It seems now that he has time to pause and appreciate the grandeur of where he is, he’s realising he has no clue how things have managed to be so favourable for him. Like he sounded pretty convicted in Waves that this life as the Son would work out, but now that it kinda is, Hunter’s like, ‘wait, why is this working?’.

‘I’ve been misplaced in so many ways’ -> There are so many ways I should’ve broken/this should’ve fallen apart by now. Saying by itself there are so many situations he just fundamentally shouldn’t have been in in the first place, since they weren’t situations Hunter was in any way suited to.

‘Broken battlegrounds’ -> In retrospect it’s a miracle that I got through the war.

‘Hiding veils of delicate deceit’ -> It’s also a miracle that I’ve not been caught out for my false identity yet. Several years have passed since he’s started living with the Mother, with her being his primary social contact while easing himself into this identity. By now though he’s starting to branch out and go out more to do things, to the point that the Friends are able to know where he’ll be and kidnap him. These being ‘veils of delicate deceit’ also suggests that the character he’s been having to play, and lies he’s been having to remember, have gotten more detailed and intricate.

‘Yet here I breathe’ -> Hunter’s amazement first of all at his literal survival through the war, and at his continued success at subterfuge under the Son’s identity, but also a sort of amazement at the relative freedom he’s managed to secure. Hunter’s still able to (and does) fundamentally conceive of himself as Hunter — his inner conception hasn’t been subsumed by the stress of feigning the Son yet, so the world is like his oyster right now, if he wants to take it as such.

>Teeth still gleam from holy water / While millions of lambs migrate to the slaughter
Hunter sights the Church, which is still busy. Hunter isn’t aware of the Priest’s dual nature as the Pimp yet — his contempt for the Church in this line reflects a more general sentiment that the Church as an institution itself is corrupt or illegitimate, building off of Hunter’s general disillusion with God as of Mustard Gas.

The start of the characterisation of the Congregation as lamb and sheep — for the aspect that they are innocents easily manipulated by TP&P (hunter is being cynical and zeroing in on this aspect of what churchgoing represents — unsuspecting people kowtowing to malicious authorities), but also because that’s common terminology for faithful Christians.

I wonder if some kind of service is going on? If it’s nighttime and the City is bustling, that’s not the typical timeframe I’d imagine to be going to Church unless something was happening.

>My head in a bag and my hands are bound to my feet / And voices sing
While Hunter is distracted watching the lines of people entering the Church, a group of scoundrels abducts him!

>”Were we erased like common thieves? / Tossed in a cell to feast with the fleas / All because we never had written a word”
Psyche — it’s just the Son’s old friends, and they’re playing a prank on the ‘Son’. Enough time has passed that they’ve been wondering where on earth he’s been, since the war has been over for a while and still nobody has heard a word out of him (his life with the Mother must be quite reclusive). They’ve taken it upon themselves to stage a joke kidnapping to force him to remember they exist and to hang out.

The reason they were forgotten, though, is that Hunter just didn’t know about them. They didn’t write any postcards to the Son, nor were they referenced in any of the postcards the Mother had written to him, so Hunter didn’t discover them when he was rifling through the Son’s belongings.

That all said, it’s water under the bridge. The Friends release Hunter from this little interrogation and free him from his bindings, happy to see him again and keen to take him along on a wild night of barhopping.

>What will I see, tonight, in these eyes?
Hunter agrees to go barhopping with the Friends (it’s not like he has a choice). He is highly conscious of the mask he is wearing and unsure of what a typical day in the Son’s life actually looks like, so being around these people who hung out with him routinely is going to be a learning experience and a test. He opts to stay passive, just going along with the group, though curious of where they’ll be taking him.

>And what will I know when the morning comes?
This experience will also tell him more about the Son who he is trying to become. For how great Hunter initially figured the Son was, Hunter doesn’t actually know much about him.

Drinks and barhopping commence, Hunter and the Friends starting off their run.

>1:30 – 1:38 Instrumental
Hunter’s disguise begins to slip and the Friends begin to feel something is off — Hunter is failing to pick up on the group’s injokes, dynamics, and references to old conversations. The Friends begin to question Hunter.

>Must we remind of exchanges existing so long ago? / Would we arrive at agreeable musings? / Sentimental or just confusing?
Hunter attempts to get the heat off him by insisting that there’s no need to ask questions about him remembering or not remembering certain things, as it doesn’t give any particular benefit and tonight is a night to have fun.

>We lost what we had, but we took it back / Friends in the gutter, enjoy one another
Hunter insists that the Friends instead enjoy in the company and camaraderie of finally having their long-lost buddy back after that horrible war and having this opportunity to hang out, laugh, and go drinking together. The Friends are receptive to this argument.

‘Lost what we had, but we took it back’ -> ‘We can say that with these hands, we took it all back’. Hunter lying his butt off.

>Just give yourself to the dust and the dirt where you stand
Hunter drives the point in by insisting that the group continue barhopping, which they agree to do, distracting them from the issue. Hopefully, as they get drunker and become preoccupied with all the fun they’re having, they’ll forget they had suspicions about Hunter.

>Chorus Repetition
Hunter’s argument is successful, the Friends drop their unease, and another round of barhopping commences.

>I’m not who you think I am / And even if I thought you’d known / I never would have told you so
Oh my God it’s Hunter’s ‘normal’ intonation it’s been so long boy where have you been. But yes anyway while the group is having all this fun, and while Hunter himself is laughing along with them and chugging his pints, behind the mask he’s having a soberly introspective moment about how he is deceiving and manipulating these people.

He was successful at persuading the Friends not to suspect him and to in fact dismiss the issue entirely, but even if they had kept their guard up enough to figure that someone had stolen the Son’s identity, Hunter nevertheless would have kept silent on the matter and still pretended to be the Son. Further, we can figure that if the Friends accused him, he would have insisted that he is the Son and not come clean under the accusation. He is recognising his commitment to this persona has become strong enough for him to defend it with flagrant lies, and this devotion to the persona is stronger than whatever conscience against deception he still has. Hunter is just becoming a worse and worse person.

>And more alarming / I would have done the very same / Would have stole more than your name / Would have cursed and brought the world on your shoulders
But even more alarming than his willingness to manipulate others to sustain this facade, Hunter realises that he would actually be willing to kill the Son for it. It’s unclear if this is a hypothetical ‘if I went back in time and had to redo this situation knowing what I know now…’ situation or if it’s a ‘woah, if the circumstances back then had been just different enough that he hadn’t conveniently died in the Somme…,’ but whichever way, Hunter would have actually, without any hesitation, and in absolutely cold blood, murdered the Son for this.

I think it is the former more than the latter though, Hunter’s attachment to this facade has become so immense that it’s more than compromised his morals; it’s made it a joke to think he even has any.

>I was in the wrong place at the right time
Really nice line.

‘I was in the wrong place’ -> ‘I’ve been misplaced in so many ways’ — Hunter shouldn’t have been in the war in the first place, as he didn’t belong there.

‘At the right time’ -> All the same, what he got out of it in the end was positive enough that he’s satisfied with how it went. Really like how twisted this sounds. Hunter’s become quite corrupt.

>And what’s the worst I’d see / By giving myself to the earth below me
Kind of hard to explain but, it’s basically Hunter posing the hypothetical question of how negative his life could really get (so far his life as the Son has been peaceful) by continuing to embrace and commit to this sin. ‘Giving myself to the earth below me’ echoes ‘give yourself to the dust and dirt where you stand’ — where he was urging the Friends not to question things and to basically degrade themselves by continuing to go with the unsuspecting flow of getting super drunk, but the ‘earth below me’ more than just the idea of ‘don’t ask questions, just continue acting in the moment’ also evokes the idea of hell, and from there the idea of sin.

Hunter knows that sinners generally do get punished, but is questioning when that punishment will happen and if it can really be anything so bad as to make this life not worth it. Really peaceful music behind this and leading up to this — Hunter is generally comfortable with the life he has as the Son right now, and has made peace with his lot as he considers it.

>Not knowing how far I’d fall, by casting away the ordinary
Follows up on the previous line; Hunter basically resigning that he’s already so deep into sin and was doomed to fall inescapably into sin once he left the Lake. If this sin is all he really has left it’s not like he has an alternative but to accept that he is just a bad, sinful person and make do with that. There is a kind of peace in accepting this. (Hunter does not realise how sinful he is going to get).

>Just how long can I stay in illusions formed here long before me?
Straightforward question — Hunter wonders how long this life will last and how long he’ll be able to mirror the charade. The fact he even asks it implies he is not confident it will last forever, something must surely come to a head eventually.

>And how long can I breathe this stolen breath here underneath?
‘Gasping for air, with the lungs of a lark’. Hunter is presently comfortable ‘breathing’, or ‘functioning’, or ‘living off of’ the Son’s life. He is conscious of the possibility that factors in the Son’s life could make it too oppressive or smothering for Hunter to continue feeling like he can function while living it — but it’s not like he has countermeasures of what to do if that happens, he is just wondering if and when it might.

Honestly I would figure that Hunter’s solution if he got to that point would be the same thing he always does, running away, but what throws a spanner into him actually doing it when things go south this time is that he holds a public office (everyone knows him) so the leverage of TP&P’s blackmail is too great (his reputation will inevitably follow him, not to mention criminal charges).

>4:37 – 6:06 Instrumental
a BUNCH of fun and raucous barhopping, with Hunter putting his emo existential contemplations aside and fully immersing himself in the moment of all this fun with the Friends. Naturally he is also getting super drunk.

>6:06 – 6:26 The Bitter Suite I Reprise
Hold up, who is that?

Oh my.

It’s Ms Leading.

>There’s that subtle smile that did me in
Yeah, turns out Ms Leading is working as a bartender now, and in their spree of hitting every joint in the City, Hunter and the Friends have rolled up into her establishment. All the raucous fun that Hunter has been indulging in shuts off instantly as he focuses on her, in fact unable to focus on anything but her in this moment. Hunter is both entranced by her presence and very drunk right now.

‘She had the summer’s smile with winter’s skin’. She’s smiling that same summer smile to the patrons, Hunter remembering the feelings this exact smile evoked in him years ago, and still softly is evoking in him now.

Exact intonation as back then, too. Aw Hunter.

>She moves
It’s exactly the same as when they first met — even now, her graceful motions transfix him. Maybe her bringing drinks to the table.

>An agony reminds where I’ve been
For all Hunter has tried to become the Son, this simple sight of Ms Leading is enough for his chest to ache and for the pain of his heartbreak to come welling back up. Hunter’s past asserts itself firmly in his heart and mind.

>She breathes
Again hearkening to Bitter Suite I — with the extra weight that the word ‘breathe’ has over Act IV and Act V, she seems to be doing alright, aside from her being alive and real. Maybe her breathing out long and slow in recognition of Hunter?

>“I’d never let this happen again.”
Hunter persuades himself not to accept the temptation of melting back into Ms Leading. The option to just let himself fall in love with her, throw away his prospects as the Son, and dive into a repeat of Act II is assuredly present right now.

>”Where’s your heart? / Mimicking the patriarch?” / She’s naive
Ms Leading recognises Hunter among the group of Friends and seems alarmed. She questions what’s happened to him (’Where’s your heart?’), but Hunter curtly rebukes her (’mimicking the patriarch’ — ie, he responds rudely, as the General would) and dismisses her as naive for being concerned about where he’s wound up — his life as the Son is obviously better, he has become more mature than he was in the past, and he’s not looking for a repeat of the mess and heartbreak that would assuredly happen if they got together or even associated again. He probably pretends to the Friends that he doesn’t know her.

>7:45 – 8:06 Mustard Gas Reprise
Drunk beyond his limit, Hunter passes out. You can kinda hear him already slipping out of consciousness on ‘she’s naive’.

>8:13 – 8:45 Wait Reprise
Not sure the specific significance of Wait here (though it is a Hunter and Ms Leading song, so maybe Ms Leading is doing something?), but Hunter does need to wake up at some point and this sounds a little bit ‘sun shining through the windows-y’ alongside it being Wait.

>8:46 – 9:00 Instrumental
This probably is just a transition into Is There Anybody There; the day might be bright but Hunter’s head is not, he feels horrid after that bender and probably has a hangover on top of a lot of questions and identity issues wrought by this night.

Remembered | Act IV | Is There Anybody Here?

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

At The End Of The Earth

At The End Of The Earth
I’ve waited so long just to hear you breathe
That your Voice could lead me
Back from the grave
From the slowing breath of a sleep like Death

Now morning comes
But I’m brokenhearted till we meet again
At the end of the earth

I never had known such a fragile hurt
Of a lover’s curse
And the Echoes of you
Rhyme like a distant verse on forgotten words

Now morning comes
But I’m brokenhearted till we meet again
At the end of the earth

I’ll keep moving on out of harmony
Until I see you again, at the end of the earth
(Someday she’ll be gone)
I lost my love down below and
I’d swear you’d never know
So give me death or set me free
Just return my soul to Me

Now morning comes but I’m brokenhearted
Till we meet again at the end of the Earth
I’ll keep moving on out of harmony
Until I see you again
At the end of the earth
Till we meet again at the end of the earth

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
Hunter, taking his first proper step into the life of the Son, visits the Son’s Mother. Though bereaved by the wartime death of her husband the General, the fact the Son has survived overjoys her too much to suspect Hunter, who she accepts into her life and dotes upon.

What’s in a name?
Not too much more than what it represents as a line in the song really… the Mother misses the General so much that she’s looking forward to their reunion come death.

My main question is whether this is Hunter simply ‘visiting’ the Mother, or going to live with the Mother. Actually in general I’m confused about the timeline of this early Act IV stuff, basically on these points:

1. When does Hunter return to the City? In The Old Haunt, or at the end of Waves?
2. Does Hunter ever live in the City away from the Mother, or did he move in with the Mother upon returning?
3. Hunter seems to see potential in the Son’s life in Waves but needs to be prodded by TP&P into doing anything substantial; is the potential Hunter sees the potential of living with the Mother as a new Ms Terri surrogate after learning of her through postcards?
   Because the storytime answers put 1 as “Old Haunt” but I hear more of a cue for it in “Waves” and the story progression feels more natural with it being “Waves” too… like Hunter sees the Son’s close relationship with the Mother at the end of Act III then goes into Act IV with ideas of stealing that relationship for himself, would make sense for him to beeline to the Mother in that case. It also tightens the structure of this segment by making Waves a travel song rather than two pure-introspection songs in a row. I think the storytime answers on Old Haunt must be paraphrased wrong.

Whose viewpoint?
The Mother. You can hear the different inflection in this song from the other songs so far but man did anyone get this one right before Casey divulged it? Also given the nature of this song I wonder if the ‘distinctive’ way to regard her would be more like, the Widow, kind of like how the General is the General though he’s also the Son’s Father.

🌲🌲🌲

>I’ve waited so long just to hear you breathe / That your Voice could lead me / Back from the grave / From the slowing breath of a sleep like Death
So we’re in the world of the Mother — and what a bleak thing that it is! The lyrics and the music both explain it; she has been in a dismal state for the whole of the war, barely living while waiting for her beloved to return. The thing that really throws me here (and most people I think while reading it) is the idea that the Mother would love the General as much as she does, since our only exposure to the General has been in the context of him bragging about raping a prostitute. We can figure that the General treated his wife at least marginally better than he treated Ms Terri, and that his wife is generally quite trusting and submissive before him, since even if you assumed his encounter with Ms Terri happened before he got in a relationship with the Mother, he’s obviously still scum enough to proudly recount such a tale if given the chance.

‘I’ve waited so long’ -> The Mother has been anxious over the course of the war to see the General return. With the setting of the port established at the end of Waves, I imagine her standing at the seaside with her hands cupped to her chest, squinting over the open water for a glimpse of the ships coming in, and then through the throngs of families for a glimpse of the General as the soldiers alight.

‘Just to hear you breathe’ -> That pesky ‘breathe’ again. I understand why it gets used so much since it is so powerful but every time it means like 5 things. Anyway, first of all, establishes the intimacy of the Mother towards the General — she has been yearning so much that even a breath out of him is enough to delight her. Further, she has been fearful that he could die in the war, hence her desire for him to be breathing and alive. Thirdly, she wants to see the General back in his usual routine and life with her, seeming to find him delightful when he’s functioning at his best.

‘That your voice could lead me / back from the grave’ -> Woah, power dynamic much!? The Mother does not seem able to live her life without guidance from the General; she feels dead without it. I don’t think he’s necessarily mistreating her, in the sense of yelling at her or forcing her to do things, but he does seem to have the authority in the relationship with her being a (probably naturally) more meek and submissive figure. You can also take this as her instantly brightening up at his presence because she loves him so much, but the way the Mother seems so absolutely lost without him reads to me like she also just doesn’t know what to do with herself if she’s left alone.

‘From the slowing breath of a sleep like death’ -> This one I read more as a full-on love-type sentiment; the General’s absence has worn at the Mother so much she can barely function. Her life over the wartime period has been one of sleepwalking, with no spontaneity or joy, dismally living day after day by the same decrepit routines in an empty house and waiting… waiting… waiting…

>Now morning comes / But I’m brokenhearted till we meet again / At the end of the earth
The war ends and the Mother sights the distant ships, giving her hope. This hope is instantly betrayed as the General is not among the returnees; he died in Europe. It does not seem the Mother was informed to this, either because the General died very late in the course of the war (Hunter murdered him just before things wrapped up) and there wasn’t time to forward this news to the Mother, or the information just got lost somewhere since the General’s death was rather atypical for a soldier (and likely hard to place, from the unaccountable Poison Woman weapon). Sort of nice to see the consequences of Hunter being so scummy there show up here in this song.

But since the Mother has basically been living through the whole war with the feeling that the General could die, and was already severely feeling his absence from her life, she seems able to resign herself smoothly to this news. Her solution though isn’t to move on — she’s actually looking forward now to the day that she dies, so that they can be reunited, and might be flirting with suicidal ideas to that end. Basically, she is living to die. She doesn’t see prospects of remarriage or happiness on her own or anything like that as attractive; she just wants to be with him again.

‘Till we meet again / at the end of the earth’ -> Really nice image; straightforwardly tells how she’s desiring to die and see the General again, but also gives that image of her standing at the seaside (like on a cliffy elevated part too) and waiting at the edge of the continent for ‘the world’ to end (death to come — I get the image of Death leading her to her destiny with a formal but amicable spin), just like how she was waiting for the boats.

>0:56 – 1:12 Instrumental
Positive uptick — the Mother has realised that ‘the Son’ is alive? Echoes of the ‘aaaa’s from City Escape.

Hunter comes to live with the Mother. I see this as the Mother frantically embracing him on sight before the sombre tenor comes in again.

>I never had known such a fragile hurt / Of a lover’s curse
The Mother has some positivity in her life again now that she’s living with ‘the Son’, since it gives her something to live for, but her mindset is still primarily one of sadness and bereavement. You could say she has things to live for and it’s true but she still kinda just wants the General back.

>And the Echoes of you / Rhyme like a distant verse on forgotten words
The ‘Echoes’ of you refers to the Son (aka Hunter) — the Mother is taking some solace in the Son’s presence largely because he reminds of her of the General, being his son (I mean, technically, this isn’t incorrect). Of course, things aren’t quite right (Hunter’s attitude is not in line with the Son’s natural attitude and he seems to inexplicably have amnesia), plus the resemblance between the ‘Son’ and the General is spotty, but that’s enough for the Mother to feel satisfied with what she has. She dismisses any oddities about Hunter’s demeanour and tends to him thoroughly just to have some living tie to the General still around, if not because she simply wants to believe a living tie to the General is still around.

>Chorus Repetition
Even so, even with Hunter living with her, the Mother still is looking forward to the day that she dies and can be with the General again. Warmer here so I would figure she’s not actively suicidal now, if she ever was, so much as pining for time to pass and her life to naturally reach its end.

>I’ll keep moving on out of harmony / Until I see you again, at the end of the earth / (Someday she’ll be gone)
‘I’ll keep moving on out of harmony’ -> The Mother will continue to live her life as the Son’s Mother, taking his presence as guidance of what to do with her life. Basically saying she won’t kill herself or try to disrupt the situation as it’s become now. Has a lot of strength behind her now actually.

‘Someday she’ll be gone’ -> Calling back to HHMHT — there it was young Hunter’s recognition that he would one day have to grow to fend for himself, here it’s more like… really I see it as backing to scenes of the Mother doting on Hunter, calling back those similar memories, though grimly since through the Mother’s lens she’s actually looking forward to this arrangement being done so she can be gone. Not that she resents Hunter just that she doesn’t have much outside him to live for.

>I lost my love down below and / I’d swear you’d never know
‘Heartache buried down below’. The Mother is feigning happiness so effectively that you wouldn’t think she was a widow in mourning. Similar to Ms Terri, she is presenting a happy facade to Hunter. Twinge of determination or anger on this line, like she’s proud of how convincing she is but at the same time it’s like… on one hand, she wants to be a widow whose grief and devotion to her lover defines her, but on the other, if actually it turns out she’s so good at faking being alright, then why not do more with herself than pine after the General?

>So give me death or set me free / Just return my soul to Me
‘So give me death or set me free’ -> INTERESTING. So the Mother’s soul returns to her on death because she gets her wish of reunion with the General (going so far in his importance to her as to call him her ‘soul’, with this reunion aligning with her self-concept as a widow), but she’s also saying that she feels enslaved to the fake routine she’s come to engage in with Hunter. She doesn’t feel like she can abandon Hunter since, duh, General’s son, but the obligation of looking after him is feeling to eat up whatever other things she may wish to do with her life. I still wouldn’t say she resents him, but the Mother does feel trapped by him.

Kind of an interesting conundrum to have, where you really really really want to die but can’t, but since you can’t die you prove yourself maybe able to live, but the thing stopping you from dying is also stopping you from really living. It’s like she’s mad she could be betraying her love to the General by even flirting with such an idea as living happily without him, but frustrated by her inability to pursue this possibility at the same time.

I think you can read that as support for the Mother not being the birth Mother of Hunter and the Son if you’re a fan of the ‘Hunter and the Son are Twins’ theory — like if this was her bio-son she was talking about would she really be this extreme to call the father her ‘soul’ but her own son, like… not? ‘Break and bind yourself to me’ — She seems to think there are things she could be doing if she weren’t tied to the General through Hunter.

Could also be a simpler thing that’s just like, ‘let me die or let me stop loving him so I can move on and stop thinking about him’.

>4:02 – 4:45 The Poison Woman Chords
Okay there’s a lot going on through this whole passage that I have no idea what it is, but we also have a ton of chords from the opening and ending of The Poison Woman showing up here that I also have no idea what it is. Maybe something about how the Poison Woman’s poison is what killed the General, so relating to someone’s feelings on that?

>4:44 – 5:16 ooooooooooo (Smiling Swine Reprise?) aaaaaaaa
Some ooos and aaas to close us out — things at the house seem to be calm and Hunter is happy with the peaceful environment here. Kind of wondering if this is like, we have the Poison Woman chords in that chaotic sequence, chopping in and out, maybe to show the Mother’s… what’s the right word for this, consternation over the General’s death (and the manner of it being poison, hence murder, if she ever was told that information), then we get the ‘camera’ shift and transition to the murderer sitting peacefully at her own dinner table, heedless to her grief and thinking happily of other things.

Waves | Act IV | Remembered

Waves

Waves
I thought that I knew love
But it was just a wave crashing over us
And in the breaths between the ones we meant to breathe
I had my head under my feet

You knew the way things were
You knew the way they would be
We knew exactly how it’d end

Strays on a stale sea
I’ll anchor the engine to a canyon far beneath
The water rushed up from the boards below
So I started slicking my hair with the kerosene

You knew the way things were
You knew the way they would be
We knew exactly how it’d end

And I’m preparing for a burial at sea
But I can see the lighthouse
Yeah I’m praying that these waters don’t take me
Cause I can see the lighthouse

I was screaming that the ship was sinking
But you were telling me to just keep drinking
Quartered into parts again
Arms and legs at the bottom of the ocean
And the thing that made it so much harder
Was the fact that you were someone’s daughter

I knew the way things were
I knew the way they would be
I knew exactly how it’d end

And I can see the lighthouse

And I’m preparing for a burial at sea
But I can see the lighthouse
Yeah, I’m praying that these waters don’t take me
Cause I can see the lighthouse

Yeah, I can see the lighthouse

I thought that I knew love
But it was just a wave crashing over us

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
“Waves” is Hunter saying goodbye to love as a possibility and committing himself to his newfound persona and his ambition. Having determined his dependence on love as a massive character flaw, Hunter disavows it as a solution and resolves to become a stronger person as the Son. Specifically, he decides not to pursue Ms Leading as he returns to America.

What’s in a name?
‘Waves’ — we’ve encountered this keyword just in the last song. There’s a massive temptation to read this as literally recounting Hunter on some kind of boat, to mirror VVV with him coming back from Europe, but if he’s already back in the City as of The Old Haunt, then it’s for the metaphorical read of ‘life course’. Basically Hunter talking about how he was overwhelmed and swept along in his relationship with Ms Leading.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>I thought that I knew love / But it was just a wave crashing over us
Hunter 😦 Looking back on his relationship with Ms Leading, Hunter dismisses the feelings involved from either party as ‘true love’ and rather more as ‘dependence.’ Rather, since the relationship didn’t survive, obviously it wasn’t true love. It came and went with a wave’s ferocity, sweeping them along in a way neither of them could control, and ended as soon as the wave passed.

Since that experience was Hunter’s reference point (alongside Ms Terri) for what ‘love’ is, he is now clearly confused as to what constitutes love, though a jaded kind of pretentiousness tells him that whatever love is, it isn’t that. This is an extremely unfortunate view to take because younger Hunter’s innocent affection for Ms Leading was like the single thing he got right. Hunter is too busy dismissing all of his past self as an unreliable idiot to recognise this, though.

A lot of the beats on this song are ones we already got in The Old Haunt (Hunter rejecting his old values so he can reform himself as the Son), but with love being the most important value to Hunter, it gets a whole song to itself in how Hunter talks himself into dismissing it so he can become the Son.

>And in the breaths between the ones we meant to breathe / I had my head under my feet
Wowow Casey slow down. Okay.

‘Breaths between the ones we meant to breathe’ -> We have the sex motif around breath already from Acts I and II, but Acts IV and V focus on ‘breath’ more in the sense of, ‘life’ or ‘essence’. The thing that gives you life, your fundamental essence, pneuma. The breaths they meant to breathe would be the life or energy they found empowering (their happy relationship), so the breath or ‘life’ between those would point to how the rest of their lives weren’t so happy, and that unhappiness was still influencing them (or something they had to live — think of Evicted as one of these ‘between’ moments, where Ms Leading is introspecting on something outside of the happy relationship) in the background.

‘Head under my feet’ -> Not entirely sure, it evokes the idea of ‘head over heels’ while technically being the opposite of that, but basically conjures the idea of Hunter not thinking or of him subordinating his sense beneath his body (and his feelings/heart as being above his head, by extension). Super pithy.

So — Hunter is saying that he was irrational in how he approached this relationship, when considering it beyond the false frame of them being happy unproblematic lovers who both had no baggage. He was neglecting to confront any of his issues by instead immersing himself in the relationship and preoccupying himself with more dreams of Ms Leading. He also did not know how to deal with the prospect that Ms Leading would have baggage herself. In retrospect, Hunter seems to take it as a marker of immaturity, insecurity, and lack of control that he latched on so hard to the relationship as a solution. Simultaneously, it sounds to be Hunter recognising how and why he exploded so hard in Red Hands, and being… really complex emotion, but somewhere between resigned and exasperated that he did, again finding his past self an idiot but not like in a totally mean way.

>You knew the way things were / You knew the way they would be / We knew exactly how it’d end
Ms Leading knew from the outset that Hunter would be scandalised to learn she was a prostitute, and that the relationship would break down once this truth came out. Again, this is Hunter’s evidence against it being true love, as it was unsustainable and required lies to function.

Really like the singing/intonation on this. It’s not accusatory (Hunter’s long moved on from that — he was already not-accusing Ms Leading as of VVV, though he was still spicy about things), but does carry that sense of inevitability to it, like, ‘yeah, we were both desperate.’

>0:44 – 0:56 Instrumental
Just wanted to single this out for being so nice. Not sure if it’s pointing to anything but it does have that kind of nautical flavour to it which again tempts me so hard to say he’s literally on a ship as well as illustrating the ocean metaphorically.

>Strays on a stale sea / I’ll anchor the engine to a canyon far beneath
Really sad lines again.

‘Strays on a stale sea’ -> This is Hunter characterising himself and Ms Leading. If you can imagine Black Sandy Beaches as people stranded on distant, deserted islands communicating by message in a bottle, then this line is a similar sentiment where the people are instead stranded from each other on small, tiny specks of boats dwarfed by the expanse of flat ocean. The sea is so wide and so empty that it would be a miracle for sailors to bump into each other, even if they believe kindred spirits are out there and could conceivably navigate into each other’s presence. Hunter is saying he and Ms Leading were both alone in the world at the time. (’We are broken, alone’).

‘I’ll anchor the engine to a canyon far beneath’ -> Hunter used his pain as his foundation to get him moving. Wow explaining the read here is really hard but that’s basically it. He wanted stability (anchor) after Ms Terri’s death, his response to Ms Terri’s death was emotional (the engine = Hunter’s heart), and his emotional response to Ms Terri’s death was one of extreme deep pain (canyon far beneath), so anchoring his ‘engine’ to a canyon far beneath = him taking his emotional pain as his foundation. Hunter saying that the driving force behind his relationship with Ms Leading was his emotional pain.

>The water rushed up from the boards below / So I started slicking my hair with the kerosene
‘The water rushed up from the boards below’ -> The relationship with Ms Leading began falling apart, and the underlying pain rushed up to overwhelm (drown) Hunter. The old sentiments he was trying to suppress came out violently when the relationship failed.

‘Slicking my hair with the kerosene’ -> Kerosene is an old lice treatment. It’s also an extremely combustible fluid. I think it’s basically pointing to Hunter’s arrogance in how his panicked solution to the relationship failing was to set everything on fire (get aggressive towards Ms Leading) and dump her from his life (removing ‘lice’). This is obviously a desperate and not very helpful response to being on a sinking ship, though it gave Hunter the illusion of control. As with everything else in this song, Hunter is explaining the flaws in how things were handled in the relationship.

>And I’m preparing for a burial at sea / But I can see the lighthouse / Yeah I’m praying that these waters don’t take me / Cause I can see the lighthouse
‘I’m preparing for a burial at sea’ -> Though he desperately hopes against it, Hunter expects that these underlying pains will overwhelm and ‘kill’ him into choosing an inadvisable life course again, before he can properly ground himself.

‘But I can see the lighthouse’ -> But Hunter sees hope! Forging a life as the Son gives him the chance to build something more positive, and founded on the Son’s assumed values rather than on Hunter’s pain, that could prove itself happier and more resilient.

>I was screaming that the ship was sinking / But you were telling me to just keep drinking
Odd to imagine Hunter as the one with knowledge that his relationship with Ms Leading would fail — perhaps pointing to things around the period of Where The Road Parts, with Hunter showing himself to be unbalanced but Ms Leading still desiring to keep the relationship. Hunter was massively struggling around that time about how to deal not so much with Ms Leading’s supposed cheating but with his own emotional response to that ‘cheating,’ and even back then Hunter seemed to regard his own behaviour as so bad as to not merit ‘inflicting’ himself on her anymore (’but I just broke right down for you in an attempt to gain control’).

Which if right, makes these lines super interesting. Hunter would be basically calling himself too dysfunctional back then to be able to sustain a relationship, or at least this relationship, and that Ms Leading was in error to even imagine it could be salvaged, because the problem wasn’t the ‘cheating’, the problem was Hunter himself. ‘Just keep drinking’ is such a good line for this, gives you the image of Ms Leading trying to convince him to go back to pretending everything’s happy or alright (getting drunk) while also telling him to do something as impossible and terrible as drink the entire ocean (suppress all his pain every time it manifested) to keep the relationship afloat. Not that I think Ms Leading would’ve dismissed Hunter’s pain, but that’s how Hunter seems to be reading her intentions.

>Quartered into parts again / Arms and legs at the bottom of the ocean
Of course, it didn’t work. Hunter split apart from the pressure of everything and instead did the whole Dear Ms. Leading shtick.

>And the thing that made it so much harder / Was the fact that you were someone’s daughter
Emphasising that his feelings in Dear Ms. Leading weren’t his real feelings so much as him being stupidly reactive; he doesn’t regard Ms Leading as a whore or a slut or a ‘black widow’, he knows her more intimately than that and fondly regards her as the whole person she is. This makes the whole situation even worse because he can’t just dismiss her as a misleading hooker and leave it at that.

>I knew the way things were / I knew the way they would be / I knew exactly how it’d end
The rhythm from ‘in spite of you’ from Dear Ms. Leading shows up here under ‘I knew the way things were / how they would be / I knew’. You can take that as Hunter having suspicions that Ms Leading was ‘cheating’ from the outset, but I think it’s more like, in spite of himself for this one.

Since Hunter obviously did not know that Ms Leading was a prostitute — the ‘way things were’ would have to instead point to Hunter having some insight to his own mental state, consequently to his inability to keep a serious relationship going.

>And I can see the lighthouse
But it’s alright! Now that Hunter knows that his old pain was what made him so volatile, living as the Son should offer him something more stable that he can build from. You can hear how much of a hopeful and triumphant song this is despite the majority of it being Hunter saying that he absolutely messed up his past relationship, because he’s decided not to put stock into the things that led him into that relationship anymore. He feels like he’s becoming a stronger person with more consciousness of his own flaws and what can be done to avoid them.

>Chorus Repetition
‘I’m preparing for a burial at sea’ -> This time reads more like Hunter resolving to indeed bury himself at sea; that is, let the old Hunter be dead and float off into the ocean so the new Hunter can proceed unburdened to the ‘lighthouse’ of this ambitious and positive new life.
‘I’m praying these waters don’t take me’ -> And this time reads like Hunter hoping to God he doesn’t slip into the temptation of letting himself be Hunter-esque again, and getting caught up in the emotions that dragged him down in the first place, since he can see the lighthouse away from all that drama. You know, since Hunter is going to the City again it does open the possibility for him to find Ms Leading and potentially hook up with her (ala his plans at the end of Cauda), and this might be him praying furiously that he doesn’t accept that temptation.

>Yeah, I can see the lighthouse
Hunter’s insistence and conviction in how positive the Son’s life will be for him suggests he already has some concrete ideas of its potential — probably with the Mother, at least.

>I thought that I knew love / But it was just a wave crashing over us
Hunter concludes that his relationship with Ms Leading was not love. Hence, it was not meaningful, so he can soberly close that aspect of his life and not invest in that feeling again. Simultaneously, this line’s pretty sad — Hunter is not exactly happy to be forfeiting this, but seems resigned to it being too dangerous for him to hold as his core desire if he wants to get anywhere.

>3:55 – 4:12 Ambiance
Okay, this is establishing our new scene… and we hear ship-horns, horses, birds twittering, people chatting… I’ve decided that whatever source says Hunter is already back in the City by the Old Haunt must be paraphrased wrong or something, because this sounds like him disembarking a ship and grounding us again with City scenes.

The Old Haunt | Act IV | At The End Of The Earth

The Old Haunt

The Old Haunt
Hints of a higher hand, lost on the Somme
Past deeds would never lead the mischief to a christening and
Gears twist and grind away, sped up to speed
While echoed silhouettes deliver to an early dream

Held out of love but gripped too tight
A breath left hanging in the air

You want to leave your home
But you don’t want to lose control
And there’s far too many ways to die
Far too many ways to die
You want to keep your soul
Above the ocean floor
But there’s far too many waves to try
Far too many ways to die

Take a tip from me, I swear I’ve seen it all before
The fear of what could be will keep you from wanting more

Held out of love, but gripped too tight
Left up, hung In the air

You want to leave your home
But you don’t want to lose control
And there’s far too many ways to die
Far too many ways to die
You want to keep your soul
Above the ocean floor
But there’s far too many waves to try
Far too many ways to die

Never could we keep these things from happening
Never found a way to keep the love in me
Took too long to speak, and never stopped to breathe, to breathe
We read the risks hand in hand
A ruined rest, but now we wake up
We cut our teeth on foreign plans
Then cursed the air, but now we wake up

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
As Hunter prepares to disembark Europe and return to the City, he cements his action plan in transitioning from being Hunter to being the Son. He is determined to throw away his life and identity as Hunter, thinking he can secure both a better life and be a better person as the Son.

What’s in a name?
‘The Old Haunt’ — aka ‘The City’. I know there’s a storytime answer saying that this SONG represents Hunter’s return to the City, but I think that has to be paraphrased wrong or something because there’s no way you can convince me it doesn’t happen at the end of Waves. So this song being called Back To The City would be more in the vein of ‘Hunter Thinks About What He’s Gonna Be Doing In The City’, or ‘Preplanning For A New Life’, pointing to how he’s going back to the setting of Act II now that he has significantly changed as a person.

Act IV takes place in the 1920s. Age-wise we can estimate Hunter to be in his mid- to late- twenties.

Whose viewpoint?
Hunter.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:25 Instrumental
Unsure for both of these passages, but they’re cool. Contrast of how aggressive the intro here is after Rebirth drives home how chaotic/dark Hunter’s mind/life is right now.

>Hints of a higher hand, lost on the Somme
Oh no calm down Casey. That’s going to be my response every line, now, isn’t it. ‘Stop shoving so many ideas into what look like simple lyrics! But actually keep doing it!’

Okay, ‘hints of a higher hand’ -> higher hand being in the sense of a poker hand: Hunter deduced from their time together (and from those postcards he peeped) that the Son had a better life than Hunter. Going further, with hands representing deeds as well, Hunter thinks that the Son is a better or superior person to Hunter. Trying to assume his life means trying to model himself as a better person, and playing the ‘hand’ effectively.

‘Lost on the Somme’ -> The Son died in the Battle of the Somme. Hunter has taken his ‘hand’ now.

>Past deeds would never lead the mischief to a christening and / Gears twist and grind away, sped up to speed
‘Past deeds would never lead the mischief to a christening’ -> A really, really poetic way of Hunter saying that his actions up until this point have been bad, immoral, sinful… not in a sense of being purposefully evil (it is just ‘mischief’ after all), but in the sense of never thinking things properly through and impulsively responding to things with dumb reflex. He is dismissing his old self as immature and does not think anyone who knew of his past would think he was a good person. So if he wants to play the Son’s hand properly, he needs to stop doing the kind of stuff he kept instinctively doing as Hunter.

‘Gears twist and grind away’ -> ‘Gears turning that no wrench can attack’, ‘look at that toymaker, grinding his gears’… gears are a new keyword. They seem to represent working, but working in the sense of doing something strenuous (if they are ‘grinding’) but worthwhile; action, things happening. That said, in Hunter’s case here, I wonder if it’s more representing his ‘machinations’ of how he’s planning to assume the Son’s life, gears in his mind graunching and turning.

‘Sped up to speed’ -> Hunter has come to the conclusions on how he’s going to proceed forward; he does not feel ‘stuck’ anymore and things instead feel to be moving.

>While echoed silhouettes deliver to an early dream
Ok ok ok. ‘Echoed silhouettes’… Kneejerk would be in reference to the Son’s Mother. Hunter knows from peeping postcards the Son received from home that he had a good relationship with his mother (‘she always loved her son’), and Hunter is fantasizing about securing that good relationship for himself and reclaiming some of the safety and security he had with Ms Terri. Basically fantasizing about being able to reclaim the same, or a similar dynamic to what he had with Ms Terri, only with it being him as the Son and the Son’s Mother.

This is an early dream, though, so it’s a bit premature. He has these ideas about how his life could turn out so much better now, though in reality he doesn’t know how the Mother would respond to him or how effective he would be as the Son, and he hasn’t done anything yet that substantially defines this new life as better, either. He is just thirsting and anticipating what he could get if he plays things right.

>Held out of love but gripped too tight / A breath left hanging in the air
‘Held out of love’ -> Hunter’s primary motive for all the actions he’s taken so far. Hunter opted not to dig into Ms Terri’s secrets in Act I out of love, then devoted himself to Ms Leading out of love; these fonts of love and prospects of love are what kept him stable.

‘But gripped too tight’ -> So when those fonts of love failed him — largely because of his own over-attachment to this love — he became unstable. Hunter is saying his approach to love has again, been immature and moreso desperate. His dependence on love ruined him and his need to attach himself to love is self-destructive.

‘A breath left hanging in the air’ -> Really nice line. ‘So take all the wind from my lungs, if you’re out of air’; Hunter’s fundamental self is not able to function (breathe) without love and he broke himself irreparably by dismissing Ms Leading, though it’s maybe not as specific as that as much as, Hunter is conceding that he (being as Hunter) is too weak to function without others babying him. I mean that’s a crude way of phrasing it, given how elegant the line is, but basically.

>You want to leave your home / But you don’t want to lose control
‘You want to leave your home’ -> Hunter doesn’t want to be sheltered. As in 1878 and The Lake and The River, he has always wanted to become… well, his own person. He wants to grow and mature outside his strict comfort zones.

‘But you don’t want to lose control’ -> At the same time, Hunter only feels stable and in-control when he is in a sheltered environment. ‘But I just broke right down for you in an attempt to gain control’. We know what the consequence of him losing that control is: he threatens to rape his girlfriend, runs off to war, steals identities, and does other impulsive dumb antics.

>And there’s far too many ways to die / Far too many ways to die
You can take this literally as his experiences with death in the war, but it’s moreso a ‘death’ on the metaphorical level. That is, it is far too easy to do things, and get stuck in patterns, that are contrary to your ‘true self’. Hunter sees that his ‘self’ is easily challenged and often feels forced to compromise his thoughts, opinions, worldview, principles, so on in ways that corrupt who he is and that he can’t take back. For example: Hunter leaving the Lake was a death, Hunter sacrificing his life with Ms Leading was a death, Hunter becoming a soldier was a death, and his taking of the Son’s identity is a death.

‘Betraying yourself is too easy’, basically.

>You want to keep your soul / Above the ocean floor
Hunter wants to be a good person.

>But there’s far too many waves to try / Far too many ways to die
A ‘wave’ in this sense represents a ‘course’, specifically a ‘life course’. Since Hunter’s methods of choosing what to do with his life have so far been impulsive, he feels easily swept into making massive changes in his life that heavily challenge his self-perception and effectively turn him into a new person. Well, kinda. He’s still Hunter at the end of the day.

Hunter is considering the options of where he could go from here and feels overwhelmed. He is terrified of picking a course that just ends up harming him again, or that leads him to betray himself again.

>Take a tip from me, I swear I’ve seen it all before / The fear of what could be will keep you from wanting more
But Hunter chastises himself for these timid thoughts. ‘The fear of what could be’ is the fear of dying or in other words messing up again/destroying himself further, but if he doesn’t allow himself to have some kind of hunger, then he’s just wallowing in a miserable life that doesn’t satisfy his desires.

Phrased like a shoulder-devil temptation kind of deal too since this ambition is coming from a dark place and will like everything wind up kicking him in the boot.

>Held out of love, but gripped too tight / Left up, hung In the air
That entity you call ‘Hunter’ is already dead, yo. Probably more to this but can’t figure it.

>Never could we keep these things from happening / Never found a way to keep the love in me
Hunter resigns that he was powerless to alter his fate — the Oracles obviously offered him outs, but Hunter’s mindset was always such that he couldn’t take them, too determined to soldier on with the principles he thought were right. He also resigns that he has become jaded and lost most all of the love, hence joy, that predominated in his early life. Further, with love being Hunter’s driving principle up to now, you could figure that maybe he would have been able to keep ‘these things from happening’ if he had managed to keep the love in him — not left the Lake, not rejected Ms Leading, not been jaded by the war, so on. ‘This cold calloused heart in a cave of a chest’ — Hunter feels empty and incapable of giving love right now.

Probably also Hunter resigning that he’s only able to keep the love in him if it’s externally sourced; ‘the well has run dry and I with it’, which means that he doesn’t regard himself as an intrinsically loving person anymore.

>Took too long to speak, and never stopped to breathe, to breathe
Interesting. Hard to read.

‘Took too long to speak’ would imply that you were quiet for too long, but positioned against ‘never stopped to breathe’ gives the impression that Hunter was speaking too much. Not really sure. General impression I get though is that Hunter is regretting not being more calm and thoughtful in his past.

>We read the risks hand in hand
‘But the right hand hates the left’: Hunter reflecting on his decision to leave the Lake, knowing that he was going into dangerous territory.

>A ruined rest, but now we wake up
‘Sleep, sleep through your woe’: Hunter reflecting on his time with Ms Leading, but dismissing the experience, or rather what he wanted to get out of that experience, as illegitimate/unrealistic.

>We cut our teeth on foreign plans
Hunter reflecting on his experience in the war, where he truly came to experience ‘reality’ and lost most of his innocence — ‘cut his teeth’.

>Then cursed the air, but now we wake up
‘Scream at the sky and beg’ — Hunter reflecting on how much he hated all of life’s seemingly intrinsic suffering, and the figure that would allow it, but focusing now on his own naivety for expecting life to conform to his ideals (it’s a pretty silly thing, to curse the ‘air’). Hunter is resolved now to move forward in a more grounded and more realistic fashion.

Man, that strength on the ‘wake up’ is incredible. Probably also Hunter resolving to properly become the person he wants to be, under the Son’s identity.

>4:24 – 4:36 The Lake and the River Reprise
Hunter is setting out to open a new chapter of his life where he can become his own, more defined, stronger person. This reprise is much more grim than how it appears in The Lake and the River — Hunter is approaching this new life from an attitude of corrupt cynicism rather than of freedom or hope, and will ruin himself for it.

Rebirth | Act IV | Waves