In Glee's Season 2, Episode 18 "Born This Way," Mercedes Jones requests that all the members of New Directions meet in the commons area at a specific hour. Puck doesn't have a clue as to what's going on. To his, "What's up?" Mercedes responds, "It's noon, which means it's official!"
Without a minute to spare, Kurt Hummel appears at the top of the stairs and shouts so all can hear...he's come back to William McKinley High School. When he makes his way down to where Mercedes is standing, she tells him that a group of people wanted to say goodbye. Blaine and the Dalton Academy Warblers descend a different set of stairs. After extending their appreciation for the time Kurt had spent with them, Blaine begins their farewell song, Keane's Somewhere Only We Know...
I walked across an empty land
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand
I felt the earth beneath my feet
Sat by the river and it made me complete.
Oh simple thing, where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin.
I came across a fallen tree
I felt the branches of it looking at me
Is this the place we used to love?
Is this the place that I've been dreaming of?
Oh simple thing, where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin.
And if you have a minute, why don't we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So why don't we go somewhere only we know?
Somewhere only we know
And if you have a minute, why don't we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So why don't we go? So why don't we go?
Oh, this could be the end of everything
So why don't we go somewhere only we know?
Somewhere only we know
Somewhere only we know
While every story within the gemstone has a character who is God incognito, with Glee it's more difficult to ascribe the role to a single person. The list would begin with Will Schuester who goes to bat for the glee club members and strives to keep them within the boundaries of the storyline. Burt Hummel serves as the bald-headed "Fortune" who almost slips away, while Blaine is very much the younger re-invention of God who arrives in the story an episode or two after Kurt questions the idea of having belief in anything other than his own father.
Parallels can be drawn between Dalton Academy and the Wondrous Palace in The Story of the Grail where Gawain discovered his supposedly long deceased mother and sister. The Wondrous Palace was otherworldly, a notion which allows us to entertain the idea that Kurt is returning to his old stomping grounds at William McKinley High School following an absence that was more than just a transfer to a private school.
The concern that Blaine has that "this may be the end of everything" pertains to the possibility that Kurt might not remember what he intended to accomplish with his coming home. Assuming we all come to life with a specific intent, few people stick to the task or can even remember their intention, sacred or otherwise.
Kurt finds his way to the school auditorium where stagehands are finalizing work on props. Ocean waves that spread the length of the stage are getting a fresh coat of paint and being tested for ease of movement and control. Kurt appears in the wings and ventures between the whitecaps—as if he's walking on water. However, from a slightly different angle we can see his feet have never been more firmly planted on the ground.
The stage seems to open floodgates to a long lost memory that simultaneously offers a familiar setting with an altered landscape. Interestingly, the lyrics to the song the Warblers sang on his return to McKinley include the image of a fallen tree.
Not long ago the gemstone details suggested the Tree of Knowledge had been cut down in preparation of the new Sacred Story. This was captured by the tree in the Sabian Symbols where Pluto was positioned at the start of the story written by the very moving of the moon, "Ten Logs Under an Archway Leading to Darker Woods."
From a different perspective, this fallen tree may refer to the "Cutting of the Elm," which removed the tree where Franco-Norman negotiations traditionally took place up until 1188. The cutting of "the Elm" would suggest the time and place for negotiations is no longer a part of the current scenery.
Moon itself passed through 6 Capricorn on February 27th. It does this every month, but on this day Sun was in 9 Pisces, "The Race Begins: Intent on Outdistancing His Rivals, a Jockey Spurs His Horse to Great Speed" while Mercury was in 10 Pisces, "An Aviator in the Clouds." Twelve days later the earthquake and tsunami ravaged the coast of Sendai. Sendai is known as "the city of trees." Japan's Takata Matsubara forest of 70,000 pine trees was reduced to 1 by the waves that swept across the land. Dubbed the "Tree of Hope" the lone pine tree now serves as the tree of life from which the forest may be regrown.
Kurt begins to sing As If We Never Said Goodbye from the musical Sunset Boulevard by Andrew Lloyd Webber--the same man who put Phantom of the Opera to music--with lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton.
Kurt moves from the stage to the hallways and finally to the choir room where everyone in New Directions is waiting for him:
I don’t know why I’m frightened
I know my way around here
The cardboard trees,
the painted scenes,
the sound here.
Yes a world to rediscover,
But I’m not in any hurry
And I need a moment
The whispered conversations
in overcrowded hallways,
The atmosphere as thrilling here as always.
Feel the early morning madness.
Feel the magic in the making
Why everything’s as if we never said goodbye.
I’ve spent so many mornings
Just trying to resist you
I’m trembling now
You can’t know how
I’ve missed you.
Missed the fairy-tale adventure
In this ever-spinning playground
We were young together.
I’m coming out of makeup
The lights already burning,
Not long until the cameras
will start turning.
And the early morning madness
And the magic in the making…
Yes, everything’s as if we never said goodbye.
I don’t want to be alone
That’s all in the past,
This world’s waited long enough,
I’ve come home at last!
And this time will be bigger,
And brighter than we knew it.
So watch me fly, we all know I can do it…
Could I stop my hand from shaking?
Has there ever been a moment with so much to live for?
The whispered conversations
In overcrowded hallways,
So much to say, not just today, but always.
We’ll have early morning madness.
We’ll have magic in the making.
Yes, everything’s as if we never said goodbye
Yes, everything’s as if we never said goodbye
We taught the world new ways to dream.
A Crucial Time
The two songs aren't the only songs in this episode, but they provide something worth holding onto as we enter a particularly difficult and crucial time.
As mentioned previously, Glee is the product of Divine inspiration which arrives via creative, imaginative thought. Only sometimes does the recipient sense it's as if someone were speaking through them. God's fingerprints are found everywhere in Glee, from the layered story to the characters' clothing, and in the selection of other artists' work. As throughout the gemstone, lyrics deliver subtle yet undeniable messages.
This idea of "madness" as an event entered the larger story with Phantom of the Opera when the Opera Ghost announced, "Let the madness begin!" Just as in the biblical story of Job, whose details were woven through scenes in The Story of the Grail, the pattern of twice repeated words or phrases reveal the path of God.
The song lyrics assure us that whatever "madness" erupts, will give way to something magical, perhaps miraculous...something with the potential to bring us all to believe in God and be awed by his capabilities.
The truth is we've always lived within a Sacred Story initiated by God, the spectral genius working behind the scenes. With the new story in the Garden of All Fulfilled Desires being rolled out, there's a very strong desire on the part of the Master Storyteller that ALL of us be present on Page One, at its onset.
Many Keys to Unlock It
As captured in the photo above, Kurt arrives at William McKinley High School with a collection of keys on a ring that he has hanging like a bow-tie at his neck. Each key represents a source from which details had to be gathered to complete the Sacred Story as laid out by the Master Storyteller.
All indications suggest this last group of details start coming together on May 31st, the last full day of the waning Moon that began under the Sabian Symbol Taurus 13, "A Porter Carrying a Mountain of Heavy Baggage."
The New Moon of June 1st is all about independence and arrives with a solar eclipse.
As I write, the path of the story is heading straight towards the Jewish Pentecost, which King Arthur was celebrating when The Story of the Grail abruptly ended. It's the second time we've approached the celebration, but never with so much potential.
At sundown on June 7th, we will imaginatively be delivered to where the medieval tale left off more than 800 years ago when Gawain called upon a young man to go and find King Arthur:
"It can be done with little strain;
indeed, the journey should be short,
because the king is holding court
in Orkney town for Pentecost.
Now if the journey's high in cost,
then I will have you reimbursed.
When you come to King Arthur, first
he will be full of rage and woe,
but I am certain, and I know
when you greet him on my behalf,
he will rejoice, and smile, and laugh.
The whole court will rejoice again
at news of me," said Sir Gawain.
"Then you must tell the king my plan;
he is my lord and I his man,
that by sworn faith and mutual trust,
he must not fail me, and he must
come to me and be here at least
five full days after the great feast,
camped on this field beneath the tower,
and he must do all in his power
to bring his whole court here in state,
the lesser people and the great,
for I have pledged my word to fight
with the Guiromelant, a knight
who does not think the king or I
of any merit nor deny
his deadly hatred for the king."
