Aaand here’s the transition track out. I don’t want to call any song a pure transition, but I can’t imagine what this track would be narratively apart from confirmation that Hunter and Ms Terri stayed at the cabin. Image is like the camera zooming out while a montage of peaceful domestic scenes unfold inside the cabin… like them doing dishes or Ms Terri knitting, things like that. Time passes peacefully albeit with a slightly gloomy undertone, the sun sets, fade to black.
>3:00 – 4:03 Audience & Overture The prologue of the story is over and the narrative proper can begin.
What’s in a name? ‘The River North’ — because we are south of it, at the lake.
The Pimp and The Priest (Take me to the river Take me to the river)
The pimp and the priest pounce on quickened cats’ feet For the freshest young blood, innocence for the feast The book will then brew what the sinful commit While the pimp and priest prey quietly where the precious sinners sit
Confess, oh, confess In the chapel or brothel where we suffocate stress We’ve got the time if you’ve got the scratch (We’ll conquer your sins while she screams on her back)
Faster, save me How the sins remain hostage Harder, I can’t breathe
Now the priest and the pimp are already equipped With an enigmatic frontage posts “we welcome walk-ins” So we corner our pace and make quick for the door To be pardoned and passed from the bed to the floor
Confess, oh, confess In the chapel or brothel where we suffocate stress We’ve got the time if you’ve got the scratch (We’ll conquer your sins while she screams on her back)
Take me to the river Take me to the river
Faster, save me How the sins remain hostage Harder, I can’t breathe
Sing softly, sing ’em to the lake Sing softly, bring ’em to the lake
Faster, save me How the sins remain hostage Harder, I can’t breathe
🌲🌲🌲
What happens? While Ms. Terri continues working at The Dime, we are given a glimpse of the establishment’s proprietor and the story’s main antagonist, The Pimp and the Priest, whose greedy MO is divulged.
What’s in a name? The Pimp and The Priest. Here’s our main villain. But isn’t that two people? No! It’s yet another single character with a dual persona, as is prolific in the acts.
Whose viewpoint? Omniscient and/or Ms Terri.
🌲🌲🌲
>0:06 – 0:23 Instrumental SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAZE!! That’s the word to describe TP&P whenever his little theme here comes up. This is not an honest person or an honest environment that we’re going to be dealing with, here…
>(Take me to the river / Take me to the river) After a hard day of work at the Dime, Ms Terri makes the same miserable request of TP&P that she always does: arrange me transport back to the river, so that I can go home to the lake and to Hunter.
Or taken more generally: ‘get me the hell out of here!’, a sentiment likely shared among many workers of the Dime.
Though she goes, we stay at the Dime, to get a peek at its scummy proprietor.
>The pimp and the priest pounce on quickened cats’ feet / For the freshest young blood, innocence for the feast Great lyrics and singing from Casey all through this song. Just getting that out of the way first.
Anyway, so here’s our villain, and aside from his dual professions, here’s the first thing to know about him: he is an opportunist who thrives by exploiting the innocent. The more innocent they are, and hence more vulnerable and exploitable they are, the better. Given the way he pounces upon such marks, with sly grace and initiative, we surmise he’s extremely practised at what he does and more than happy to do it. The specific aspect of soiling the pure, too, seems to give him a kind of satisfaction, like a pig gorging on delicacies. In other words, he’s a conman, who targets those who’ll trust him.
But before getting ahead of ourselves. He’s a pimp and a priest… geez, not a very coherent resume. But there is a thread of commonality here. These are both fields that give an individual incredible authority over others, with the Priest guise able to shape a congregation’s moral character (and self-worth, and trust, and guide ‘righteous’ action), and the Pimp guise able to lead the vulnerable or desperate to ruin themselves for ‘easy’ money. Someone who’d pursue both professions is a moral hypocrite and a two-faced Machiavellian, drifting naturally to positions where they have the power to destroy and control others.
There’s more to say about TP&P being a priest specifically as opposed to say, a generic life coach or a politician, due to the weighty element of religion. But I’d principally take it as a warning that immoral people can and sometimes will place themselves as moral authorities, to enable their immorality.
>The book will then brew what the sinful commit / While the pimp and priest prey quietly where the precious sinners sit Aaand here the dual meanings begin! Hokay!
‘The book’ is both the Bible and a pocketbook — the Bible determines the actions of sinners by codifying what are sinful acts, while the pocketbook determines the actions of sinners by how it guides TP&P. That is, TP&P is motivated by profit, and has found substantial profit to be made in selling vice. Thus, he has entered the sex industry, and will drag others into it, too.
TP&P both ‘prey’ and ‘pray’ in the church, as he both has a predatory nature and… well, is a priest, but is also dependant upon the existence of these victims to sustain himself. Were he to lose the veneer of legitimate authority that leads people to fundamentally trust him, he would quickly be destroyed. That’s his vulnerability, and that’s the one thread of weakness that might lead him to pray. I don’t imagine he’s much of a believer in what he preaches, otherwise.
Hence, sinners are precious to him, as he is only able to get away with his con, and sell his product, when the moral character of the society he victimises is weak. By the fact he is the city’s Priest, though, he himself is the one able to dictate whether visiting the Dime is morally excusable, and encourage the demographic that should most loudly call for its closure (those concerned with doing the morally right thing) to say nothing at all. He quite actively uses his position as Priest to encourage his followers to act sinfully, and excuse sin, while strengthening his own position.
Also note that he doesn’t see his congregation as misguided people of virtue, but as sinners, zeroing in on their flaws. If he’s devout about anything, it’s probably about being judgemental.
Can envision this shot as him standing at the pulpit, hands in prayer amid a sermon, as he looks analytically over his congregation.
>Confess, oh, confess / In the chapel or brothel where we suffocate stress TP&P calls for you to confess to him. He very desperately wants that — to hear your most intimate secrets, your most wicked thoughts, your most shameful deeds, your most sensitive doubts… so that he can use them against you, of course. He’s a blackmailer.
Why on earth would anyone tell their deepest secrets to someone as sleazy as the Pimp! Well a lot of people do, routinely, and there’s two good reasons they would.
One: he’s the Priest. Moreover, he’s a Catholic priest. That is to say, his church practises the sacrament of the confessional. He naturally accrues overwhelming blackmail on his congregation from the things they confess to him in the confessional. This is the confession in the chapel.
Two: he’s the Pimp. People are much more liable to say (and do) compromising things when they figure themselves in equally compromised company, or when they’re bedding their favourite mistress and their guards are dropped to zero. Such information then filters to the Pimp. This is the confession in the brothel.
‘Suffocate stress’ — great phrasing. A visit to a brothel or a confessional principally is meant to feel good, as a release from the burden of holding on to a sin, or as a release in a more physical sense. But since the confessional is really a blackmail booth, and TP&P doesn’t guide those who have sinned to stop, visiting it is really a way to get a cheap hit of moral rectitude before you sin again and inevitably wind up back in the booth. Equally, visiting a brothel feels good, but isn’t a long-term solution to whatever discontents may be going on in one’s life, and rather adds the baggage of knowing you’ve done something bad or shameful. The stress in either case is never resolved, just suppressed.
This is the principle of how addictions work. The high initially feels good, but eventually one’s body becomes so accustomed to the aroused state that the hyperarousal becomes ‘baseline’. The actual baseline, which is your body in absence of the arousing stimulus, then feels wrong. It’s escaping this wrong feeling of unease, withdrawal, or stress that drives the addiction, and though probably not as intensively (or even intentionally) as would a proper drug, TP&P has set up a cycle to yank people in and out of stress states in a similarly self-perpetuating manner.
Finally note how carelessly he appends ‘or brothel’ on this line — whatever method suits you suits him, as long as he profits from it.
>We’ve got the time if you’ve got the scratch ‘We’ll tend to your needs if you pay us’. The framing of TP&P offering an exclusive service, as though it’s so desirable you need to be booked into it, begins here with the implication that said service is greatly beneficial. Simultaneously, it’s callous: TP&P won’t waste a second on your ‘needs’ if you won’t front up and pay him. ‘Got time, got time’.
>(We’ll conquer your sins while she screams on her back) Through your sin you will be a saint! That’s the kind of backwards world TP&P is selling. Specifically, go rail a whore in the Dime, come be absolved in the confessional, and know in the end you’ve made your effort and have your licence to do it all again tomorrow. If you hadn’t committed the sin, you wouldn’t be absolved now, would you?
>Faster, save me Great juxtaposition. This line gets reprised a lot, and for now probably represents Ms Terri back at another day at work, while also generally representing the contradictory, whirling cycle of the Church and the Dime. ‘Save me from sin, quickly, hallelujah’ but also, ‘Fuck me faster big boy! (Oh my god, get me out, let it end!)’.
>How the sins remain hostage The sins people commit at the Dime will never be absolved because there is no legitimate Priest who could do so. Instead, there’s just TP&P, who enables and encourages people to continue in their vices, then controls them with addiction and blackmail. Equally, once he has led someone into vice, it’s extremely unlikely they’ll ever get away from sin or corruption. A ‘hostage’ is how it feels to be in TP&P’s orbit.
>Harder, I can’t breathe Same as faster/save me, but harsher. The strength Ms Terri had in Inquiry has broken down considerably by now, especially when she’s mid-work. TP&P’s whole regime is suffocating. First appearance of the breathing motif around sex.
>Now the priest and the pimp are already equipped / With an enigmatic frontage posts “we welcome walk-ins” The position of ‘priest’ and of ‘pimp’ is now flipped. Call him a Priest moonlighting as a Pimp or a Pimp daylighting as a Priest, either way’s arbitrary.
‘Enigmatic frontage’ alludes to like four things at once. One: when acting as the Pimp, TP&P wears a mask, concealing his identity. Two: even when he’s acting as the Priest, and not wearing a mask, his true thoughts are hard to read. Three: The outward facade of the Church conceals the corrupt nature of the Priest. Four: The outward facade of the Dime does not make it immediately obvious that it’s a brothel.
Same for we welcome walk-ins. Referring to TP&P, it means he projects an accommodating, friendly demeanour to basically everyone he comes across. Referring to either establishment, it simultaneously means he doesn’t turn anyone away (welcoming everyone as a potential mark/patron), while also inviting passersby to try either establishment as a therapeutic option for solving what ails them.
>So we corner our pace and make quick for the door / To be pardoned and passed from the bed to the floor TP&P’s MO is stated explicitly: he encourages people to patronise the Dime as the Pimp, then forgives them for doing so as the Priest, so there is no moral safeguard against indulging obsessively in vice. This, of course, gives the Priest great blackmail and makes his profit margins shoot up.
>Take me to the river / Take me to the river This repetition is likely more than Ms Terri going home: everyone caught in TP&P’s schemes is thinking, ‘get me out of here!’.
>Sing softly, sing ’em to the lake / Sing softly, bring ’em to the lake A general plea for those caught in TP&P’s schemes to find a better future, and for a good end of the story with TP&P defeated, but maybe also Ms Terri mentally soothing herself in the midst of (and after) getting railed by detaching herself from the scene and reminding herself that this is for Hunter’s future. Sounds a bit like a lullaby, and given that Hunter reprises it later, she may have sung it to him.
1878 We’ve got a way we got away and survived Stunned by the shock and fearing what’s behind
Everything you thought you’d live and die for Every reason leading you to hear all of the sounds That trickle past your introspective ear An attempt to discover what’s behind
Branches twisting reaching for the sky Hands extending reaching for the…
Fell in another hole (For the knife, for the knife) Loss of control (For the knife, for the knife) I’m in another hole (For the knife, for the knife) Bleed myself dry (Save my life, save my life)
The river The lake…
Fell in another hole (For the knife, for the knife) Loss of control (For the knife, for the knife) Hands conflicting clearly point their way Stunned by the sign and fearing what it says
Everything you thought you’d live and die for Every reason leading you to hear all of the sounds That trickle past your introspective ear An attempt to discover what’s…
Fell in another hole (For the knife, for the knife) Loss of control (For the knife, for the knife) I’m in another hole (For the knife, for the knife) Bleed myself dry (Save my life, save my life)
The river The lake…
Fell in another hole (For the knife, for the knife) Loss of control (For the knife, for the knife) I’m in another hole (For the knife, for the knife) Bleed myself dry (Save my life, save my life) The river The lake…
Fell in another hole (For the knife, for the knife) Loss of control (For the knife, for the knife)
🌲🌲🌲
What Happens? Hunter, having discovered there are things Ms Terri isn’t telling him, considers leaving the Lake up the River to find answers. He goes to the bounds of the Lake, but ultimately turns back, intimidated by vastness of the world outside.
AKA, ‘Hunter Tries To Figure Out Everything About The Dime (The Source Of These Troubles), Without Knowing Anything About The Dime (Including That It Exists)’.
Whose Viewpoint? We’re in Hunter’s head now! First of many times that’ll be true. He’s finally old enough to be having some independent thoughts and opinions about things, hence why we’re able to hear his narration, though he’s still a child.
🌲🌲🌲
>We’ve got a way we got away and survived So! To begin, Hunter’s figured out some things about where he came from. Whether he’s put clues together on his own, or whether Ms Terri let something slip (feels more likely this, as the intonation feels like someone repeating information told to them), Hunter now knows that he and Ms Terri relocated from elsewhere to escape from some kind of troubled situation. (He might specifically know the ‘elsewhere’ is the city, as he beelines to it on the Delphi Express, but I’m not certain).
>Stunned by the shock and fearing what’s behind Of course, this information is a shocking revelation to Hunter. Up until now he’d have no reason to think he was born anywhere except the lake, and the idea that there’s some kind of darkness to his and his mother’s life, and what exactly it could be, scares him.
>Everything you thought you’d live and die for Now here’s a tricky line that gets reprised a bit. Not diving into any particularly involved rumination, my basic kneejerk thought is ‘Hunter does things for his mother’, that is, Hunter loves his mother and will do whatever he can to support her and make her happy. Though he may have figured that (or not had to consider that) the things he does for her — hunt, grow, be happy, and play — are already enough, it seems that’s not quite true. He may need to make a more concerned effort, and go out of his comfort zone, if he’s to help his mother with the darkness she faces.
It might also be like, ‘you can’t know the purpose to anything you do if you don’t understand yourself’, and Hunter is realising that maybe, he doesn’t know himself.
>Every reason leading you to hear all of the sounds / That trickle past your introspectiveear / An attempt to discover what’s behind Hunter is paying attention to the subtle cues Ms Terri unconsciously gives that things are not entirely right — maybe a sigh, a stifled groan, any offhand allusions to foreign places. Though he’s scared of the darkness and secrets, he’s also curious, and eager to know what exactly it is that’s troubling his mother, so that he might fix it, and for clues to his own identity.
>Branches twisting reaching for the sky / Hands extending reaching for the… Hunter stands before the Tree that marks the northern bound of the lake, gazing up at its sprawling branches. Going past this tree will bring him towards the city, in the direction Ms Terri goes every time she leaves, but she’s forbidden Hunter from crossing this boundary. The great size of the tree, too, is so awesome as to be intimidating to young Hunter, and in itself feels to tell him to turn back, which he cannot help but heed.
Hunter considers the vastness of the world outside his little corner, stricken with a desire to reach out and claim it. However…
>Fell in another hole / (For the knife, for the knife) Every time it feels Hunter is coming close to the answers he seeks, he finds himself at a dead end. Any direct questions he asks of Ms Terri lead nowhere or are smoothly deflected, and any other clues he could follow don’t particularly cohere into anything. Though he’s pursuing as many leads as possible, he feels stuck in a state of ignorance, and his inability to resolve answers out of the clever tracks that he pursues with hope only underscores to him how ignorant he really is.
When he actually does leave the lake, this principle still holds true. His overwhelming ignorance of the world’s evils leads him to get more and more deeply stuck in difficult situations.
The knife here is two things: first, the knife works as a symbol of Hunter’s ability to provide for Ms Terri. He is in part pursuing these answers out of concern for Ms Terri. Second, the knife works as a symbol of Hunter’s ability to provide for himself — his self-agency. Hunter is thirsty for more independence and to take more control over his life.
The constant repetition of this line (with variations, and this verse in general) illustrates Hunter’s obsessive pursuit of answers, continuous preoccupation with these thoughts, and repeated attempts and failures to find the truth. It also makes for a very nice song.
Also depicted in the comics as Hunter literally falling into a trap-hole after dropping his knife into it.
>Bleed myself dry / (Save my life, save my life) Less sure about this line. Does Hunter feel his life (or ‘self’) is in danger if he can’t achieve more strength and agency? He might be feeling like he’s not able to be who he wants to be, and a bit helpless.
>The river / The lake… Hunter imagines himself at the junction of the river and the lake. He looks up north, along the river, then back south, to the lake, weighing each as an option.
>Hands conflicting clearly point their way Shaky on this, but Hunter knows that the only way to get proper answers will be to leave the lake and go north. Maybe he’s looking at a signpost, with lots of different directions coming off the pole.
‘But the right hand hates the left,’ maybe it’s also that he can see what his two choices are: stay or go, and the broad implications of each. He can stay coddled in safety and ignorance with Ms Terri at the lake, or go into danger and truth all alone up the river, and is torn between these options.
>Stunned by the sign and fearing what it says Unsure on this too. If it is literally a signpost, I’m not sure why it would scare him. Maybe he’s intimidated to learn that so many places exist outside the lake, how large the world is, and how small he is in comparison. I think there’s more here but can’t figure it. (’There was a silver circle sign?’).
>4:06 – 4:42 Instrumental Unsure but interesting. Sounds nice too. Same for the next instrumental passage to the end.
Lots of stuff on this song gets brought up again in the Lake and the River — this song is setting up that’s he’s considered the option of leaving the lake, but didn’t, so when he does finally do that, it’s nice to see the same images come up again.
City Escape Please, what happened to the flame? (It burned down the sides) With a fondness for cooking history Revealing thoughts of Ms. Terri
In the heat of the night A woman wealthy of a parous plight erased a harlot’s life
(With the moon at her back, unaware of what could be)
Plagued by practical and a mercenary lust, they tear at her skin (Oh, the trouble began, but it never ended) Clawing at her throat with a smell of desperate and a lack of regret (Oh, the trouble began, but it never ended)
Free, pardoned by the flame (That burned down the sides) Her feet began to bleed between the seams But she persisted to the streets
In the heat of the night The river rendered the chance she surely needs to stay alive
Plagued by practical and a mercenary lust they tear at her skin (Oh, the trouble began, but it never ended) Clawing at her throat with a smell of desperate and a lack of regret (Oh, the trouble began, but it never ended)
Oh, but her breath escapes her Oh, but the pulse remains Oh, but her breath escapes her Oh, but her pulse remains
Places, People, the stage is set Places, People, the stage is set
Plagued by practical and a mercenary lust they tear at her skin (Oh, the trouble began, but it never ended) Clawing at her throat with a smell of desperate and a lack of regret (Oh, the trouble began, but it never ended)
Plagued by practical and a mercenary lust they tear at her skin (Oh, the trouble began, but it never ended) Clawing at her throat with a smell of desperate and a lack of regret (Oh, the trouble began, but it never ended)
🌲🌲🌲
What Happens? Ms Terri sets her room in the Dime ablaze and, following the river to the lake, escapes the City with Hunter.
What’s in a Name? You tell me.
Whose Viewpoint? Omniscient
🌲🌲🌲
>0:00 – 0:13 Instrumental The flame is started, and Ms Terri goes to exit the brothel.
>0:13 – 0:24 Instrumental Ms Terri quickens her pace, putting distance between herself and the flaming brothel, only to glance behind her and see…
>Please, what happened to the flame? …the flame is gone, and the brothel’s not burning! She no longer has such a potent distraction to cloak her and Hunter’s escape from the City.
>(It burned down the sides) We get a description of Ms Terri’s room in He Said He Had A Story: ‘Our pace was quickened to her floor / There was a single feigning light / And there was silk all on the walls’. Unfortunately for Ms Terri, real silk doesn’t burn that easily, and this is before the advent of polyester. The silk curtains on the walls of her room smother the flame before it can spread to the building’s foundations, or anything else more vitally flammable.
Note, also, that Ms Terri’s room is above ground level, and this is before the advent of fire escapes, too. She had to go downstairs and use a back exit, hop out the lowest window she could find, or traverse the main floor where the patrons and TP&P hang out.
>With a fondness for cooking history Burning the brothel was more than just a distraction: Ms Terri wants to erase her life as a prostitute entirely, and sever any tie from it that could catch up to her in the future, so she can be reborn as only Hunter’s mother. Cooking history has a bit of a double meaning too, as cooking is a creative process. She looks to burn down the past, but also create a future.
We have some references from Ms Terri about history in He Said He Had A Story: ‘This life has not been good, you see / It’s hard with such a history / Buried in misery’. Her life at the Dime has been hell, but I’m getting the impression that whatever was happening before wasn’t rainbows, either.
>Revealing thoughts of Ms. Terri We’re formally introduced to the character we’re following, Ms. Terri. And finally I can mention that yeah. It’s a pun on ‘mystery’. Mystery is our keyword to know when vaguer songs are referencing Ms Terri.
It’s unclear whether her name is genuinely Ms Terri or whether she assumed that name after going into sex work (though would she have referred to herself by such a name to Hunter?), but it doesn’t matter, since as far as Hunter cares, she’s always been Ms Terri – mystery. Most everything about his mother has left Hunter with questions whose answers he can’t grasp. But moving on…
>In the heat of the night Our setting is established a little: it’s nighttime, and we’re either in a region that’s hot for most of the year, or it’s summer. It could just be hot because there’s a fire going on, but the flame has already snuffed. (Or it’s just saying things are moving quick and chaotic, but)
>A woman wealthy of a parous plight erased a harlot’s life Here’s our first instance in the acts of someone ‘erasing’ their old life, and hence their old self, to be reborn as someone new. This line also establishes that yes, this is the mother mentioned in Battesimo Del Fuoco.
‘Wealthy’ of a ‘plight’ — what a complicated situation. There’s a lot of uncertainty, risk, and danger in Ms Terri’s motherhood to Hunter, but she’s decided that the positives are worth it. I also question whether TP&P would’ve even let Ms Terri keep Hunter for long. So her options were either: ‘stay and raise her child in a sleazy brothel/run away’ or ‘stay and lose her child/run away’. Personally I like the latter idea… it would seriously put pressure on the need for Ms Terri to make a choice.
>(With the moon at her back, unaware of what could be) oh boy it’s the MOON. Go away moon, I don’t want to think about you…
Taking the moon as a false persona, given that she’s turned away from it, maybe Ms Terri is looking toward being the ‘true self’ she might’ve been before joining the Dime, though it sounds like it’s been long enough that she’s lost touch with who that true self is. Either way, leaving with Hunter was an impulsive decision, she knows nothing of what to expect, and she hasn’t arranged anything in advance except that she go to the Lake.
>Plagued by practical and a mercenary lust, they tear at her skin A recount of what Ms. Terri’s life is like in the brothel: bad. Lots of double meanings here… but fundamentally, this is to tell us what life is like in the Dime. This establishment is a sleaze shop that does not care about the welfare of its workers; so long as the client pays, and the girl can still come back to work tomorrow, anything is fine. Customer is king, and all.
We’ll see that the proprietor of the Dime is an extremely greedy and cruelly judgemental man. These low standards, apart from giving him a wider customer base, have probably helped him drive out competition and situate the Dime as the brothel in the region. And I mean I’m sure there are rules, to make the place look legitimate, but in practice I’d figure they’re more like ‘suggestions’.
Practical and mercenary lust, yup, that’s the essence of the Dime. You’re paying? Then do what you want with her.
>(Oh, the trouble began, but it never ended) No kidding. Ms. Terri just tried to end the trouble by burning down the Dime, but instead of end anything, this has only set the seed for five more acts’ worth of unremitting troubles. Sort of the opposite of flame gone / fire remains, which promises a horizon.
>Clawing at her throat with a smell of desperate and a lack of regret sorry let me correct that assessment of Ms. Terri’s life at the brothel: REALLY bad. Given that the Dime allows basically anything, it’s probably where the worst punters wind up.
>1:24 – 1:35 Instrumental Not sure what this is, but it’s interesting. Some kind of realisation on Ms Terri’s part?
>Free, pardoned by the flame The flame is characterised as a benevolent force that momentarily severs the link to corruption. Though the distraction it offered was brief, it was enough to get Ms Terri and Hunter outside of the Dime uncontested. Realising she’s escaped her biggest obstacle, she refocuses…
>Her feet began to bleed between the seams / But she persisted to the streets …and, fearful of pursuit, runs so vigorously she cuts her (bare?) feet open, but keeps sprinting through the pain.
>In the heat of the night / The river rendered the chance she surely needs to stay alive If she can just get to the river, then she can follow it to the lake. She fears TP&P’s goons will kill her if they catch her.
>2:00 – 2:47 Instrumental Interesting but I’m clueless. The sound of Ms Terri flagging as search crews begin mobilising to find her? Lamps of carriages shining down alleyways…
>3:12 – 3:35 Instrumental Ms Terri has deftly avoided her pursuers, and in the moonlight, sights and approaches the river.
>Oh, but her breath escapes her / Oh, but the pulse remains She jumps into the river to cross it, rattled by its chill. But she successfully crosses, and travels a ways on its current, without drowning. On repetition, she reaches shore and pauses to look back. She’s exhausted and panting after all this running, but triumphantly realises she’s made it out of the city alive.
>Places, People, the stage is set ‘Alright! That’s the key circumstances set up, now to get the story rolling…’
>5:42 The Lake South Reprise Ms. Terri embarks for the lake, and reaches it.
Alright, here’s our first instance of a purely instrumental passage that sounds like just a transition, but isn’t.
Going to my second assumption in reading: all songs are in sequential narrative order. What’s just happened narratively is that Hunter was born, and what will happen next in City Escape is that Ms Terri sets her room alight. So why are we getting a song about the Lake? Here’s why: this song isn’t just describing the peaceful atmosphere of the lake, or transitioning out of Battesimo Del Fuoco; we’re hearing Ms Terri consider where she could go if she were to leave with Hunter. This song is Ms Terri fantasising about a better future for herself and Hunter at the Lake, culminating into action in City Escape.
Most of the song is just a description of the lake though, with calm clear water, fields of green grass, a valley…
What’s in a name? Why is it The Lake South? Because we’re north of it, in the city.
Battesimo Del Fuoco Believe you me: the price is clear A child born, the mother near To death and life as hand in hand A failed life exposed the man Who led her off into the flame To cast her back to hell again
But hear you me: the break of dawn Will wash away the sins thereof Unto the lake beyond the tree The child waits, alone is he
The flame is gone, the fire remains The flame is gone, the fire remains The flame is gone, the fire remains The flame is gone, the fire remains
The flame is gone, the fire remains The flame is gone, the fire remains
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What happens? Hunter is born. Information is given on his fate, grounding us with the central themes of the story that will unfold.
What’s in a name? ‘Battesimo Del Fuoco’ translates to ‘Baptism by Fire’ translates to ‘Hunter’s Life Is Arduous’. Our protagonist is going to hit many obstacles and be thrown into many painful situations, with little guidance of what to do.
It also denotes him as anointed with ‘the fire’, both metaphorically pointing to him as the fire in ‘the flame is gone / fire remains’, and reminding us literally that Hunter’s life starts with a burning building.
Whose viewpoint? Omniscient narrator? Oracles? I don’t think it really matters. Casey just wants us to have this information as a central statement of what the story’s about.
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>0:00 – 0:00 Instrumental WOAH WOAH WOAH is something hot in here? I think I hear burning! Oh nevermind it’s just Hunter’s fate. Tah hah hah. Foreshadowing. Alright where to start here.
But that’s getting ahead a little. So here we have a song that sounds like it’s a prophecy, sung in a church or before some force of providence or somesuch, though I don’t think it’s meant to have any specific setting (if any, it would be the room of the Dime where Hunter is born…) so much as simply existing to give information to the audience.
>Believe you me: the price is clear The only thing that’s happened so far is Hunter’s birth. What is the price of that?
Well, biggest the price would be the fated loss of his innocence. It’s somewhat inevitable he’d return to the city of corruption where he was born and get swallowed up. Simply by virtue of being born as product of rape to Ms Terri, who is deep in the thick of the beast, he is already damned to sin and corruption if he should ever learn himself at all.
This corruption is strong, evil, and heritable. It isolates Hunter and kills all the good things in his life, but it also is not something he can escape. Being that Hunter by the end of his life is a thief, a murderer, an adulterer, a crooked politician, a drug addict, and an arsonist at the very least, with powerful and evil enemies, his son may also be at risk of corruption if he gets wrapped in his father’s dealings, and the cycle of wicked fate continues… unless?
>A child born, the mother near A shot of Hunter and Ms Terri, grounding us with some characters and a frank description of the scene. The child is a newborn and the loving mother is keeping him close.
>To death and life as hand in hand A death is the trigger for a birth, or rebirth. ‘One life for another’. It is in the death and ending of one thing that a new thing may rise to prominence – our indicator that this is a story highly concerned with cycles, and the repetition of patterns across cycles.
Most of the rebirths are on Hunter’s part as he goes through different stages of identity. Ms Terri dies, Hunter gains agency. The Son dies, Hunter takes his identity. Ms Leading dies, Hunter’s true identity is freed. This works for Ms Terri too actually – Hunter is born, and Ms Terri the prostitute dies (attempted) to make way for Ms Terri the mother.
I figure Hunter’s death also makes way for his son to take the stage, while TP&P’s death gives way to Mr Usher’s dominion.
>A failed life exposed the man / Who led her off into the flame / To cast her back to hell again Which men get exposed? Thinking in terms of Act V… well, Hunter does, when TP&P reveals his stolen identity, but Hunter’s not casting anyone into hell (specifically Ms Leading. He lights the fire that burns her corpse but he doesn’t kill her or force her to work in the Dime, say). So my gut reaction is the man is TP&P, though TP&P’s dual identity is never publicly revealed. You could say he’s exposed in the sense that he loses his power, though. Probably just following Act V, this is foreshadowing Ms Leading’s death (’led’ her off…).
A failed life -> Hunter in the opium den/Moon Exposed the man -> TP&P grows nervous about his control over Hunter Led her off -> TP&P targets Ms Leading Into the flame -> as in The Flame (Is Gone), TP&P kills Ms Leading To cast her back to hell -> she’s dead and her body burns (TP&P also regards her cruelly, with hell being her place) Again -> working in the Dime is/was Hell. ‘It felt like heaven / but I’m sure she was in hell’
>But hear you me: the break of dawn / Will wash away the sins thereof ‘You were born with the sun / and you die with the moon’. What is the moon? A false reflection of the sun. Generally (and in tarot, which the acts do use symbolically at minimum for King of Swords), the moon is a symbol of deceptions and illusions, with the song titled for it being the one where Hunter is off hallucinating in an opium den after losing sight of his true self beneath his false persona. There’s a lot of dual-identities/personas in the acts, from Ms Terri, Ms Leading, TP&P, Hunter… but it’s when those false personas shatter that hope of an absolution comes. Hunter fulfilled this part of the prophecy by reclaiming his true self in act V.
Interesting choice of ‘wash away’ sins though, in what, maybe a lake? We get the theme of the Lake reprised at the end of A Beginning – paired with this prophecy, it maybe suggests that in the end, Hunter’s death didn’t damn him (or his son, as sins are hereditary, so he also retroactively absolved Ms Terri. Or to have a less literal view on afterlives, vindicated her).
>Unto the lake beyond the tree / The child waits, alone is he You think this is Hunter? Psyche, it’s his son. Or both. That they wind up in the same place is definitely intentional… (And Hunter’s Son’s mother winds up having to leave him behind also, like Ms Terri did Hunter).
Also I can update my map! The tree is between the lake and the city.
>The flame is gone, the fire remains And there it is! The whopper! Oh god I barely want to touch this.
Alright. To start, initially, the ‘flame’ belongs to Ms Terri. The fire she sets to the Dime is the ‘flame’ – which lets Ms Terri escape, but then fizzles out without destroying the Dime. The flame offers liberation from evil, but cannot destroy it. However, it’s this smaller initial act of pure love that allows Ms Terri to find a good place to raise Hunter, who eventually does become a force (the fire) that can destroy the evil. Note also that though Ms Terri undoubtedly wants to see the Dime in ashes (’reprise, two times, the Dime / burn it to the ground’), she doesn’t have a ‘fire’ (or warpath) to go back at any point and actually burn it down (she loves Hunter more than she hates the Dime).
To step back for a moment, it’s like ‘the force that initiates a path toward goodness may perish, but its influence will survive to oppose evil in greater turn’.
There’s also a valence to these symbols: The flame is loving, forgiving, nurturing, nonviolent, the fleetingly small but indispensable power source to something bigger The fire is angry, vengeful, destructive, impulsive, the dominant uncompromising purge of evil that simmers, overwhelms, and spreads. This makes the fire sound kind of like a jerk, but, well (and Hunter isn’t all these things all the time, but he does have the ‘power’ of the fire in him)
Anyway, it can be taken for now as ‘Ms Terri will die, but Hunter’s around to finish her business.’ Later it becomes ‘Ms Leading’s death triggers Hunter to act with total abandon’. There’s more to it, but, just for now.
Gravity of the last two repetitions impresses the importance of this information
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