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

Rebirth

Rebirth
A sinister slide resounds
From the fountainhead found
When fortune aligned

The roots that ripped had run too deep
Left to dig in the weeds
And climb up the vine

Your mind is only echoing
What your heart wouldn’t say:
“I’ll be me, in time”

🌲🌲🌲

What happens?
The Oracles again advise Hunter to his missteps. They note that Hunter can’t escape his past by assuming the guise of the Son, nor does he truly want to, but again, Hunter doesn’t listen.

What’s in a name?
In assuming the identity of the Son, Hunter has killed himself so as to be ‘reborn’ as the Son. The album will follow his attempts to distance himself from his old identity and establish himself on a new course with this new identity.

I think there’s also a somewhat meta shade to this, as there was a 6-year gap between Act III and Act IV and stylistically it shows. Both musically and lyrically, songs here are much more intricate than in the first three acts, and though probably unintentional, it works astoundingly well to convey how Hunter himself has matured between Act III and Act IV aside from Casey maturing as a musician.

Whose viewpoint?
Oracles.

🌲🌲🌲

>0:00 – 0:10 AaaaAAAAaaaAAaaaaa
AaAAAAAAAaaAAAAaaaAAA yes hello Oracles. Once again, they are here to establish the themes of this chapter and tell Hunter where he’s going wrong.

>A sinister slide resounds / From the fountainhead found / When fortune aligned
woah woah woah these LYRICS! Yeah, in that six year gap, Casey got a lot stronger when it comes to conveying ideas through lyrical imagery — which makes understanding them significantly harder unless you really sit down to think about them. Even then I don’t think anyone would have figured out what certain songs meant had Casey not explained what they were. They’re beautiful but man does this make reading them, especially the ones in Act IV, hard.

‘A sinister slide resounds’ -> taking ‘slide’ to mean a change of note on a violin, this is pointing to how Hunter has discarded his old identity for that of the Son’s. Metaphorically, the ‘note’ he is has changed, this being a sinister change both because it will bring Hunter to ruin and because he committed murder to achieve it, compromising his own morals and doing away with his principles of love.

‘From the fountainhead found when fortune aligned’ -> ‘fountainhead’ being the Son, who Hunter encountered and recognised to be his brother (from the General’s story) by total chance in the War. Hunter will be reliant on things downstream of the Son to guide him in this new life (ie, who the Son was close with, where he lived, what kind of person he was).

>The roots that ripped had run too deep / Left to dig in the weeds / And climb up the vine
‘The roots that ripped’ -> Hunter’s past, which he has tried to disassociate himself from.

‘Had run too deep’ -> Hunter is not able to actually disassociate himself from his past, however, as it runs too deep. The roots have survived and the plant will regrow. Also saying that the pain Hunter has suffered is too much for him to totally ignore it — rather, he’s only taking the actions he is because the pain was so much, which is an extremely Hunter thing to do.

‘Left to dig in the weeds / and climb up the vine’ -> Though Hunter has turned away from his past, it’s still there and will continue to have implications and effects on his life while he occupies himself with ignoring it. The past is tenacious as a weed and its implications span as high as a vine.

>Your mind is only echoing / What your heart wouldn’t say: / “I’ll be me, in time”
The real whammy, contesting Hunter’s core motives for having stolen the Son’s identity. Hunter has devised this plan because he thinks he can be a better person as the Son than as Hunter, and Hunter likes to consider the ‘real’ him as a basically good person. Consider, ever since he was a child sheltered by Ms Terri, Hunter has felt constrained about who he can be. Now that he has the opportunity to Not Be Hunter, he paradoxically thinks he’ll be more free to become a person who embodies the things he wants to be.

But his heart, which he’s ignoring, wants to go back to the principles that make Hunter be Hunter. Chief among those is love. He wants to learn to love again, but after the ferocious pain of the war and Ms Leading and This Beautiful Life especially, he is too terrified to trust in love and cynical about its worth in regards to him. Maybe it’s also like he’s still too mortified about having ‘betrayed’ Ms Terri’s love by leaving the Lake in the first place, and no longer feels able to associate himself with love? Or rather, he’s unable to trust himself as being strong enough to deal with the world while also being himself, and his heart, if he listened to it, would assure him that he would be able to learn and stabilise without totally disavowing what matters to him? But in essence the Oracles are telling Hunter that he’ll get what he wants simply by being true to himself, which he won’t do.

>1:16 – 1:25 Instrumental
Echoes of the end of Oracles on Delphi/end of The Church and The Dime/end of BSB? ‘Wandering around town’ music though I don’t think Hunter is at the City just yet.

>1:26 – 2:00 Instrumental
Wowww! No idea what this is, but it’s cool!

>2:00 – 2:49 Instrumental
Unsure again, but still cool.

>2:49 – 2:51 The Procession ‘Drums’
Hunter prepares to leave Europe.

Life and Death | Act III
Act IV | The Old Haunt

Act IV: Rebirth in Reprise

Act IV: Rebirth in Reprise

Song Index | Overview

What happens?
Hunter returns to the City under the stolen identity of the Son. He resolves to use this identity to become a stronger, better, and less flawed person, seeing opportunity to build himself with proper agency, without being hampered by his old baggage. He also decides not to return to Ms Leading, as he determines his feelings for her were rooted in trauma, hence, not real love, and merely part of that unhealthy ‘baggage’.

Hunter goes to the Son’s mother. She is overjoyed that her ‘Son’ has survived the war and accepts Hunter. Hunter spends several years being doted upon by her as he adjusts into this new persona. He grows more comfortable, and accustomed to feigning the ‘Son’, surprised at his own success.

Hunter goes out to town, where he is ‘kidnapped’ by the Son’s friends. Hunter did not know these friends existed, and they are curious why the Son has not spoken to them for so long. The group decides to reconcile by taking Hunter barhopping. But they soon notice something is off about Hunter. Hunter manipulates them into dropping the issue by pulling their attention back to the fun of barhopping, which works. The friends become too joyful and drunk to remember their suspicions towards Hunter.

It occurs to Hunter that he has become an immoral person, willing to lie and manipulate to sustain his Son persona. He resigns that this is simply his lot as he continues barhopping with the friends.

In the course of this barhopping, the group encounter Ms Leading, who is now working as a bartender. She is alarmed to see Hunter acting so out of character, and expresses her concern, but Hunter rebuffs her. Hunter passes out from heavy inebriation.

Hunter awakens hungover. In this odd state of mind, as he thinks about last night, he suffers a severe identity crisis. He assumed the Son identity to become a better person, but his behaviour last night was worse than how he would act as Hunter. Further, he has lost his agency in how he may shape this persona, as its behaviour is now dictated by the testimonies, expectations, and routines of the Son’s associates. This is frightening, and the point of this persona is becoming hazy to Hunter.

While Hunter struggles with these thoughts, the Son’s Fiance comes to confront him. She is angry about the years of radio silence, but is accustomed to such hijinks and softens upon seeing him hungover. The Son was quite a troubled person, needy but unwilling to marry or settle down before the war, which bothered the Fiance. She could not tell if the Son truly loved her and seeks an unambiguous answer from Hunter.

The Fiance soon realises Hunter is not the Son. Exasperated, but curious of this prospect’s potential, she offers that Hunter become the Son for her and they enter into a relationship. Aware that she has seen through him, but is not hostile towards him, Hunter accepts the offer. He hopes the relationship will give the persona purpose and distance him from his frustratingly persistent feelings towards Ms Leading.

The Fiance brings Hunter to church, as she and the Son are churchgoers. Hunter dislikes this environment, and especially dislikes the Priest, who he pegs as a conman. Hunter’s intuition is correct, as the Priest is secretly also the greedy Pimp who runs the Dime. The Dime, however, has been closed due to tightened legislations, and the Pimp must now rely on his Priest guise for his moneymaking schemes.

The Priest pressures the congregation to buy indulgences and make offertory donations. Hunter tries not to draw attention, but refuses to give the Priest money. The Priest notices his resistance and is concerned. He recognizes Hunter from his time with Ms Leading, and thinks he could become a problem, but also that he presents an opportunity.

The Priest invites Hunter to the confessional. By aggravating Hunter’s insecurities around not having done anything worthwhile with the Son persona, he manipulates Hunter into running for Mayor. Hunter is told he will be able to rout out the City’s corruption as Mayor and act as a force of good against evil. The prospect thrills him and fills him with purpose.

Hunter proves outrageously popular and wins the mayoral race. Elated that he has finally found a good use for himself, Hunter discards his old identity and commits fully to being the Son. Some months pass as he adjusts into his new role with wholehearted commitment, which includes more routine visits to church.

This heightened exposure to church forces him to reconsider himself morally. He realises that, overall, he has not been a good person, and that his attitude towards Ms Leading has been unjustified. He reconciles with her and takes her as a lover, even though he is now married to the Fiance. This failure to commit leaves him uneasy about his choices, and nervous about his future.

Hunter attends church. The Priest ushers him into the confessional, reveals he knows about Hunter’s identity theft, and reveals his own identity as the Pimp. Hunter is shocked and despairing as he realises he has been set up. The Pimp and The Priest threatens to publicly reveal Hunter’s true identity if Hunter does not do what he demands, securing control over him with this blackmail.

Hunter is crushed and defeated. As the Mayor of the City, he has not become a saviour, but a slave, trapped under the thumb of his enemy and twisted into an agent of corruption…

…with seemingly, no escape.

What is the purpose?
fake life big fat no running hunter

What’s in a name?
ay tone you ever notice this casey fella, he got a thing for circles?

Song Index
Rebirth
The Old Haunt
Waves
At The End Of The Earth
Remembered
A Night On The Town
Is There Anybody Here?
The Squeaky Wheel
The Bitter Suite IV & V: The Congregation/The Sermon in the Silt
The Bitter Suite VI: Abandon
King of Swords (Reversed)
If All Goes Well
The Line
Wait
Ouroboros