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these adventures in solitude never done
Okay, so by line-by-line I think I actually meant verse-by-verse, for the most part. But for my contribution to the dying art of Verse Thursday I am doing the first stage of my liner notes of Robert soundtrack by going through the verses of the New Pornographers' Adventures in Solitude and describing how they suit one Robert Capio. Because they do.
The issue is that you have to take most of the words literally, which of course the artists didn't intend. But isn't that how most interpretations of songs skewed for characters work? No? Okay. Good point. Just keep in mind the wounded wing is real and hang on to the part of you, my musically-inclined friends, who want to say no, that's not what this song's about!
Of course it's not, because the song wasn't actually written about Robert.
Here goes, though. I am working from no notes, just memory and relistening and god I hope all the lyrics are actually right. I think they're easy enough to understand!
Keep in mind as I get into this that it is not chronological really. A lot of it is about today and now (current in the game) and some of it is about 2002 (it was bad). It doesn't suit his childhood but honestly that's not important. I can come up with other songs that suit his childhood fine.
Sooo okay. His wings aren't really wounded. Because they don't actually do that – you can mangle the fuck out of a wing and it heals. A psychopath tried to cut off one of Isabella's, and she's okay now. Physically, anyway. But he uses his wings as personal protection. When you upset him a lot, when he gets overemotional, etc, if he's in a situation where he can he'll bring them out no matter how cramped the room might get. It happened when he proposed to Alice. Mind you, because he got scared. It happens with joy and cheer too, but that's more of a happy flapping than wrapping them around himself.
But he uses his wings for comfort. He flies for comfort, too, when he can. And if he thinks that stuff is really bad and he needs a release or whatever he goes to fly. And his heart's wounded, both in 2002 and today. His feelings are. And his wings are a lot of how he shows his feelings. Am I extrapolating on crack yet? I might be extrapolating on every line but it doesn't feel that way to me. The song feels right to me so if you think I'm extrapolating ... oh well, I am happy in my extrapolating! I don't quite know what the neverending is in this instance, because I think the vanished marvels aren't neverending. But there's a lot of sad neverending in his life, and here he is using his figuratively wounded wings to protect himself from them.
Oh, and the vanished marvels? Dawn and Sully, of course. Once upon a time there was a fight between Robert and Sully that I need to write most of so Scout can come in at the end and I keep meaning to but I just haven't done it yet. It's explained anyway, so everyone important knows what happened. Someday it'll even be in his backstory. Anyhow. I never said this would be an intelligently written musical analysis, did I? Pardon my ridiculous lack-of-segue commentary and informal words. The pair of vanished marvels didn't quite gather inside the door of Comus House after the May 19th wedding, but they did show up inside the telephone. Things were rocky but by early June they were quite back to normal.
(For a standard on normal, there's this.)
This verse really won't have a lot of links, because I haven't written anything war-era (yet, and this might also be a "we," because Randolf and Anne and Rupert and Pierrick and Dragomir were there, though I think nobody knew Dragomir except Pierrick) but this is a decidedly war-era statement.
Wars, rather. I really don't think TNP (I think Bejar wrote the lyrics? I'm not sure and I can't find it on the Internet because I'm a fool) intended 'wars' to mean 'one person that was in multiple wars.' Most people aren't in multiple large wars. Robert was. He was in both World Wars (which he refers to as the Great War and the Second War) and a couple of smaller wars. He also had an emotional involvement with Irish independence, because of his childhood best friend, though it had been over a hundred years before the actual war. But he wasn't really all that involved because he was quietly sideless and busy, uh, being the descendant of a duke. I think he was the duke's "son" at that point, despite the fact the actual Duke then was Roland, his great-nephew. He proceeded to be his great-great nephew's son, too, and his great-great-great niece's twin brother. They were actually born on the same day. This is not about the song, this is giving backstory that everyone who's going to read this already probably knows. SO ANYWAY.
Robert's got a pretty good memory. He remembers a lot, very far back. There are obviously pieces missing and hazy details, but he even has vivid memories of his childhood and he's three hundred and forty seven years old as of when I'm writing this. Some of the things he remembers, though, include the wars – every one of them, and every patient he couldn't save, and every patient he fought for anyway. If he knew that Alice were named after a child who died in the war, which actually he might and I have to ask Scout, he'd only love Randolf more for it. Because the losses all took tolls on him. Each and every one. He watched people die and knew the only way he could save them would be to make them immortal, something he would never do to someone he didn't know, and something I don't think he has ever done, though he would have had Alice not already been. He's not as violently against making people immortal as Cecily is, it's just something he considers messy – and I'm tangenting again. He couldn't do anything and he will not ever let himself forget what happened there. The horrors he saw and the things he couldn't stop. And he does feel like he carries a debt – a debt to life, because he let so many lives go.
The parts about spirits make sense to me in ways I don't think I can articulate. But he sure has seen them since – spirits of people who died, of people he'd known, run into again. Especially when he was in the afterlife, a time I can't talk much about because ... it's the afterlife. All I know is that eventually Randolf and Isabella forgave him when he turned up, and that is thanks to actually discussing it with Scout. Robert in a way though is someone who lost a lot to wars including his own sort of spirit, and so he's got even more of a need to protect people and save people. My articulation of the meaning in this particular verse is utterly failing. But I tried. I will probably even try again when I can make more sense of it, because this verse really screams out particular ideas and thoughts and images that will not translate to word form. It's very frustrating.
Finally, I can yell self-explanatory!!! In theory, they did lose him; he was gone, from spring 2002 to winter of 2008. Why? Out of character, a flub of OOC 'whatever' handwaving because we didn't think Robert would ever matter, same way Fabian and Alice didn't talk for ages. It turned out to matter a lot. In character, a death of a patient that was more a killing. That'll get covered in the next verse, linkswise, but his family sure lost him.
Messily, in fact – it didn't go so well for Alice. If I can continue linking amazing things that Scout wrote because without Scout there would be nowhere near the amazing amazingness of the Robert show, and I can go on and on about how she and Alice complete me and him but that's not really about the song, it continued to not go so good. Robert's point of view on his crossing has not been written, and I don't know if I could ever do more of a drabble on it because so few of his thoughts would make sense. Fabian's needs to be.
But he went away. His wife and son thought for sure they'd lost him – and then later welcomed him back. (Note that the reunions were kind of us jumping the gun,a nd need to be rewritten. Not super canonically accurate. I haven't even reread them, just blindly linked them – this is what happened as it is but they weren't well-developed yet and so there are things they might not have done. Or said. Robert wouldn't have used so many contractions, Alice probably would've hit him after jumping on him and clinging and crying, etc etc. That's my disclaimer.)
Sleeping for years is another self-explanatory. Robert was dead. For six years. Technically dead, anyway, because angels (another thing I could link and didn't, because I assume that's also self-explanatory but maybe just in case I should) don't really die, and he was still aware of himself, but the reason he crossed over – a move that was possibly intended to be temporary, but the truth of it is that it wasn't actually intended at all, he just went a bit madder than was entirely right and time had taken its toll over and over and over – was because of a deep secret.
And then he looked back (I wrote that so long ago it's dubious too, my Robert introspection these days is a lot better from first and third person and when I wrote that post I didn't know him at all) and wanted to go back. Wanted to be with them again. Hated that he'd left them.
So he did, and had to do what the lyrics say again: pick through what he had left of himself, gather the pieces back together, of him and of his family, and try.
But there was still the secret. Quite accidentally, Fabian found out. Confronting Robert about it caused a major storm. It wasn't so good. Telling Alice was hard, too – very, but at least it didn't entirely ruin Bess's birthday. (Bess is one of Robert's favorite relatives, after all.)
Now we're getting to the part where I won't ramble on and on and on as much, because a lot of the rest of the song I think is reiteration of points. Of the last war verse that I couldn't articulate properly.
His "adventures in solitude" were his time crossed over. He didn't chum with his dead friends much. He mostly spent the entire time alone, thinking, being sulky and sad in his own dignified graceful polite kind of way. He's not really emo but he's something. Thoughtful. He was very thoughtful.
And Robert's wounds all had names. Because they were all people. Pretty much every last one.
As for the same blood back from the wars? Could be taken two ways but the one I'm actually able to talk about because I'm finding the proper words to convey it is, again, simple. It's just Robert, over and over. Even if he's entirely made of magic he still bleeds. He wasn't sending sons away to war, be it the real wars or the emotional war with his family and himself and Cyrus' death and of course Iri Burton in her entirety. He just let himself go and fight it, over and over, and even the one time he pretended to die it was still him coming back.
See, I can't go on and talk about this one a lot, as I talked about the 'we thought we lost you' already. But it is all coming back, all right. Every mistake he's made that he ran away from his haunting him now. Not marrying Alice before. Not having more children before. Not saving lives the right way, not saving lives at all. Letting things go and letting other things stay.
He's trying to make amends for it all, as now his head is clear in ways it even wasn't in the 1960s (because let's face it, he was happier than he'd ever been because he'd found his love and wonderful friends and a family besides blood family but he was tired) and he realizes the mistakes were all mistakes. They're married and having more children now. He evaluates things carefully.
Everything still haunts him. Because doing it better this time around doesn't change that for Alice and Fabian this is still the first time.
He doesn't really want to run far away from his family, but from the trouble – yeah. He has this tiny hope that a new baby and some traveling and a change of how life has been will just make the problems get better. He knows it won't, not alone. But he hopes and he hopes and he hopes.
As for the cold place, It hink we're back in 2002. With crossing over, and his being cold, and the "heartless ways" being his own. His family didn't know he wasn't being heartless.
The 'I' may be Alice and may be Fabian, but the 'we' is both.
The 'I' here is definitely Alice, because she understands him better than anyone. Sometimes Sully does in a sincerely analytical way, but it would be Alice who knows what he needs. The 'come to' line I have seen written also as 'come too' but it seems as if there's no "official" way – and 'come to' suits Robert better. Because it's like coming to from being unconscious. Or from being dead.
And he just wants things to be okay, but they are as the song says all tangled up and he can't get a chance to breathe.
Because really, all the bad things keep coming at a bad time.
Essentially a repeat, except here the verse is more saying that Robert's desires are coming at a bad time. Because they are – he wanted to take Alice around the world again, for a honeymoon (though really the monetary contributions would be equal on both sides). And the Dixon article hit. And now they're having a baby and settling into a new home but the cancer came up. Meanwhile Fabian's trying to date seriously, which isn't going well either, despite being a lesser concern –
The cold race may very well be racing the clock for everything to be okay again.
More repeats except for those mostly final two lines.
The scars on his face aren't literal, but there's certainly something that's like scars there. His old scarred ways might be more like it (the same way I used to think 'heartless ways' above was either 'helpless ways' or 'hopeless ways,' but multiple checks have it as 'heartless').
As for survivor's guilt – Alice even said it to Estee. They all know it. Robert has a lot of it. Guilt for everything, not just for surviving, and he frequently gets quite self-deprecating, even if it's in a sort of postiive, formative, I will never do this again sort of way.
And. Wow. I think I actually just covered the entire song.
Except have I mentioned Robert himself would like it? Despite the fact his favorite modern music is Maxïmo Park, he's fond of the New Pornographers in a way. A distant way since he hasn't really heard them, I don't think. But he would like them, if he did.
Really.
The issue is that you have to take most of the words literally, which of course the artists didn't intend. But isn't that how most interpretations of songs skewed for characters work? No? Okay. Good point. Just keep in mind the wounded wing is real and hang on to the part of you, my musically-inclined friends, who want to say no, that's not what this song's about!
Of course it's not, because the song wasn't actually written about Robert.
Here goes, though. I am working from no notes, just memory and relistening and god I hope all the lyrics are actually right. I think they're easy enough to understand!
Balancing on
One wounded wing
Circling the edge
Of the neverending
The best of the vanished marvels have gathered inside your door
Keep in mind as I get into this that it is not chronological really. A lot of it is about today and now (current in the game) and some of it is about 2002 (it was bad). It doesn't suit his childhood but honestly that's not important. I can come up with other songs that suit his childhood fine.
Sooo okay. His wings aren't really wounded. Because they don't actually do that – you can mangle the fuck out of a wing and it heals. A psychopath tried to cut off one of Isabella's, and she's okay now. Physically, anyway. But he uses his wings as personal protection. When you upset him a lot, when he gets overemotional, etc, if he's in a situation where he can he'll bring them out no matter how cramped the room might get. It happened when he proposed to Alice. Mind you, because he got scared. It happens with joy and cheer too, but that's more of a happy flapping than wrapping them around himself.
But he uses his wings for comfort. He flies for comfort, too, when he can. And if he thinks that stuff is really bad and he needs a release or whatever he goes to fly. And his heart's wounded, both in 2002 and today. His feelings are. And his wings are a lot of how he shows his feelings. Am I extrapolating on crack yet? I might be extrapolating on every line but it doesn't feel that way to me. The song feels right to me so if you think I'm extrapolating ... oh well, I am happy in my extrapolating! I don't quite know what the neverending is in this instance, because I think the vanished marvels aren't neverending. But there's a lot of sad neverending in his life, and here he is using his figuratively wounded wings to protect himself from them.
Oh, and the vanished marvels? Dawn and Sully, of course. Once upon a time there was a fight between Robert and Sully that I need to write most of so Scout can come in at the end and I keep meaning to but I just haven't done it yet. It's explained anyway, so everyone important knows what happened. Someday it'll even be in his backstory. Anyhow. I never said this would be an intelligently written musical analysis, did I? Pardon my ridiculous lack-of-segue commentary and informal words. The pair of vanished marvels didn't quite gather inside the door of Comus House after the May 19th wedding, but they did show up inside the telephone. Things were rocky but by early June they were quite back to normal.
(For a standard on normal, there's this.)
More than begin
But less than forget
But spirits born
From the not happened yet
Gathering there
To pay off a debt brought back from the wars
This verse really won't have a lot of links, because I haven't written anything war-era (yet, and this might also be a "we," because Randolf and Anne and Rupert and Pierrick and Dragomir were there, though I think nobody knew Dragomir except Pierrick) but this is a decidedly war-era statement.
Wars, rather. I really don't think TNP (I think Bejar wrote the lyrics? I'm not sure and I can't find it on the Internet because I'm a fool) intended 'wars' to mean 'one person that was in multiple wars.' Most people aren't in multiple large wars. Robert was. He was in both World Wars (which he refers to as the Great War and the Second War) and a couple of smaller wars. He also had an emotional involvement with Irish independence, because of his childhood best friend, though it had been over a hundred years before the actual war. But he wasn't really all that involved because he was quietly sideless and busy, uh, being the descendant of a duke. I think he was the duke's "son" at that point, despite the fact the actual Duke then was Roland, his great-nephew. He proceeded to be his great-great nephew's son, too, and his great-great-great niece's twin brother. They were actually born on the same day. This is not about the song, this is giving backstory that everyone who's going to read this already probably knows. SO ANYWAY.
Robert's got a pretty good memory. He remembers a lot, very far back. There are obviously pieces missing and hazy details, but he even has vivid memories of his childhood and he's three hundred and forty seven years old as of when I'm writing this. Some of the things he remembers, though, include the wars – every one of them, and every patient he couldn't save, and every patient he fought for anyway. If he knew that Alice were named after a child who died in the war, which actually he might and I have to ask Scout, he'd only love Randolf more for it. Because the losses all took tolls on him. Each and every one. He watched people die and knew the only way he could save them would be to make them immortal, something he would never do to someone he didn't know, and something I don't think he has ever done, though he would have had Alice not already been. He's not as violently against making people immortal as Cecily is, it's just something he considers messy – and I'm tangenting again. He couldn't do anything and he will not ever let himself forget what happened there. The horrors he saw and the things he couldn't stop. And he does feel like he carries a debt – a debt to life, because he let so many lives go.
The parts about spirits make sense to me in ways I don't think I can articulate. But he sure has seen them since – spirits of people who died, of people he'd known, run into again. Especially when he was in the afterlife, a time I can't talk much about because ... it's the afterlife. All I know is that eventually Randolf and Isabella forgave him when he turned up, and that is thanks to actually discussing it with Scout. Robert in a way though is someone who lost a lot to wars including his own sort of spirit, and so he's got even more of a need to protect people and save people. My articulation of the meaning in this particular verse is utterly failing. But I tried. I will probably even try again when I can make more sense of it, because this verse really screams out particular ideas and thoughts and images that will not translate to word form. It's very frustrating.
We thought we lost you
We thought we lost you
We thought we lost you
Welcome back
Finally, I can yell self-explanatory!!! In theory, they did lose him; he was gone, from spring 2002 to winter of 2008. Why? Out of character, a flub of OOC 'whatever' handwaving because we didn't think Robert would ever matter, same way Fabian and Alice didn't talk for ages. It turned out to matter a lot. In character, a death of a patient that was more a killing. That'll get covered in the next verse, linkswise, but his family sure lost him.
Messily, in fact – it didn't go so well for Alice. If I can continue linking amazing things that Scout wrote because without Scout there would be nowhere near the amazing amazingness of the Robert show, and I can go on and on about how she and Alice complete me and him but that's not really about the song, it continued to not go so good. Robert's point of view on his crossing has not been written, and I don't know if I could ever do more of a drabble on it because so few of his thoughts would make sense. Fabian's needs to be.
But he went away. His wife and son thought for sure they'd lost him – and then later welcomed him back. (Note that the reunions were kind of us jumping the gun,a nd need to be rewritten. Not super canonically accurate. I haven't even reread them, just blindly linked them – this is what happened as it is but they weren't well-developed yet and so there are things they might not have done. Or said. Robert wouldn't have used so many contractions, Alice probably would've hit him after jumping on him and clinging and crying, etc etc. That's my disclaimer.)
Sleeping for years
Pick through what is left
Through the pieces that fell and rose from the depth
From the rainwater well
Deep as a secret nobody knows
Sleeping for years is another self-explanatory. Robert was dead. For six years. Technically dead, anyway, because angels (another thing I could link and didn't, because I assume that's also self-explanatory but maybe just in case I should) don't really die, and he was still aware of himself, but the reason he crossed over – a move that was possibly intended to be temporary, but the truth of it is that it wasn't actually intended at all, he just went a bit madder than was entirely right and time had taken its toll over and over and over – was because of a deep secret.
And then he looked back (I wrote that so long ago it's dubious too, my Robert introspection these days is a lot better from first and third person and when I wrote that post I didn't know him at all) and wanted to go back. Wanted to be with them again. Hated that he'd left them.
So he did, and had to do what the lyrics say again: pick through what he had left of himself, gather the pieces back together, of him and of his family, and try.
But there was still the secret. Quite accidentally, Fabian found out. Confronting Robert about it caused a major storm. It wasn't so good. Telling Alice was hard, too – very, but at least it didn't entirely ruin Bess's birthday. (Bess is one of Robert's favorite relatives, after all.)
Less than forget
But more than begun
These adventures in solitude never done
To the names of our wounds
We send the same blood back from the wars
Now we're getting to the part where I won't ramble on and on and on as much, because a lot of the rest of the song I think is reiteration of points. Of the last war verse that I couldn't articulate properly.
His "adventures in solitude" were his time crossed over. He didn't chum with his dead friends much. He mostly spent the entire time alone, thinking, being sulky and sad in his own dignified graceful polite kind of way. He's not really emo but he's something. Thoughtful. He was very thoughtful.
And Robert's wounds all had names. Because they were all people. Pretty much every last one.
As for the same blood back from the wars? Could be taken two ways but the one I'm actually able to talk about because I'm finding the proper words to convey it is, again, simple. It's just Robert, over and over. Even if he's entirely made of magic he still bleeds. He wasn't sending sons away to war, be it the real wars or the emotional war with his family and himself and Cyrus' death and of course Iri Burton in her entirety. He just let himself go and fight it, over and over, and even the one time he pretended to die it was still him coming back.
We thought we lost you
We thought we lost you
We thought we lost you
It will all come back
See, I can't go on and talk about this one a lot, as I talked about the 'we thought we lost you' already. But it is all coming back, all right. Every mistake he's made that he ran away from his haunting him now. Not marrying Alice before. Not having more children before. Not saving lives the right way, not saving lives at all. Letting things go and letting other things stay.
He's trying to make amends for it all, as now his head is clear in ways it even wasn't in the 1960s (because let's face it, he was happier than he'd ever been because he'd found his love and wonderful friends and a family besides blood family but he was tired) and he realizes the mistakes were all mistakes. They're married and having more children now. He evaluates things carefully.
Everything still haunts him. Because doing it better this time around doesn't change that for Alice and Fabian this is still the first time.
I know you want to
Run far away from one more
And that it’s coming at a bad time
Some cold place, heartless ways
For all we know
He doesn't really want to run far away from his family, but from the trouble – yeah. He has this tiny hope that a new baby and some traveling and a change of how life has been will just make the problems get better. He knows it won't, not alone. But he hopes and he hopes and he hopes.
As for the cold place, It hink we're back in 2002. With crossing over, and his being cold, and the "heartless ways" being his own. His family didn't know he wasn't being heartless.
The 'I' may be Alice and may be Fabian, but the 'we' is both.
I know you need to
Breathe through
Come back
Come to
But it’s coming at a bad time
Tangled day
For all we know
The 'I' here is definitely Alice, because she understands him better than anyone. Sometimes Sully does in a sincerely analytical way, but it would be Alice who knows what he needs. The 'come to' line I have seen written also as 'come too' but it seems as if there's no "official" way – and 'come to' suits Robert better. Because it's like coming to from being unconscious. Or from being dead.
And he just wants things to be okay, but they are as the song says all tangled up and he can't get a chance to breathe.
Because really, all the bad things keep coming at a bad time.
I know you want to
Run far away from one more
And that’s coming at a bad time
Some cold race
Heartless ways
For all we know
Essentially a repeat, except here the verse is more saying that Robert's desires are coming at a bad time. Because they are – he wanted to take Alice around the world again, for a honeymoon (though really the monetary contributions would be equal on both sides). And the Dixon article hit. And now they're having a baby and settling into a new home but the cancer came up. Meanwhile Fabian's trying to date seriously, which isn't going well either, despite being a lesser concern –
The cold race may very well be racing the clock for everything to be okay again.
I know you want to
Breathe through
Come back
Come to
But it’s coming at a bad time
Old scarred face
Survivor’s guilt
For all we know
More repeats except for those mostly final two lines.
The scars on his face aren't literal, but there's certainly something that's like scars there. His old scarred ways might be more like it (the same way I used to think 'heartless ways' above was either 'helpless ways' or 'hopeless ways,' but multiple checks have it as 'heartless').
As for survivor's guilt – Alice even said it to Estee. They all know it. Robert has a lot of it. Guilt for everything, not just for surviving, and he frequently gets quite self-deprecating, even if it's in a sort of postiive, formative, I will never do this again sort of way.
And. Wow. I think I actually just covered the entire song.
Except have I mentioned Robert himself would like it? Despite the fact his favorite modern music is Maxïmo Park, he's fond of the New Pornographers in a way. A distant way since he hasn't really heard them, I don't think. But he would like them, if he did.
Really.