• I’ve decided to do in-depth analysis’ of all of Coheed and Cambria studio tracks in chronological order so that myself and others might have a better idea of the story line of the universe and how the songs and the comics connect to each other.

   

  I'm going to give a line-by-line (omitting repeated lines) of my interpretation of each song and explain how it corresponds to the comics.

   

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  <b>"Junesong Provision"</b>

   

   

              “Junesong Provision is probably the easiest song by Coheed and Cambria to interpret. It’s obvious that most of the song is from the viewpoint of a frightened and suicidal Claudio and that it is most likely in the form of a note that is being verbally recited as it is written. The theory of it being a suicide note written by Claudio has been around since almost the day the album was released, so the only real challenge in the song is placing each line and verse into the context of this well-fit theory and then to divine the narrators of the parts of the song that are obviously from someone other than Claudio.

              In general, I feel that the letter is merely a goodbye letter to Newo and the more emotional and pained lyrics are actually thoughts left unwritten by Claudio. As to this and how it works, I think the song overall is Claudio going over what he’s already written and left her now that he is on the run. The letter has already been written, so the song does not fit entirely within the bounds of the letter and thus should not be interpreted as the letter verbatim. I personally feel confident and satisfied with my own personal interpretation of this song and how it fits into the canon of the story, comics, and the overall timeline of events.

   

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  <b>”Good morning, sunshine, awake when the sun hits the sky.”</b> - (Claudio hasn’t slept and is still hiding and on the run when the sun comes up. We know that he left Newo’s house at 5:03am, so, being on foot, he probably is only a few mile away by now, hiding in an alleyway as the sun comes up. As he sings this, Newo is just reading his letter, which also opens up with “Good morning sunshine”.)

   

  <b>”Look up the sounds that surround the day you died.”</b> - (Claudio thinks about his sister Josephine as he runs. He’s in the city, hearing the sounds of a day that has continued on uninterrupted despite Josie’s death earlier that day.)

   

  <b>”She waits for me outside near a hole in the ground”</b> - (Since Claudio can’t possibly know of Ambellina’s presence or arrival yet, we can assume this also refers to Josephine. He doesn’t expect to live long, so he imagines her ghost waiting for him near her grave, with his freshly dug beside her own.)

   

  <b>”In the one way thinking you might get the upper hand.”</b> - (Claudio ponders if maybe Josephine isn’t better off dead. Maybe by being dead she’s got the upper hand, since she no longer has to worry about running for her life or dealing with the suffering that comes as a prerequisite to living.)

   

  <b>”Dear Newo Ikkin, how's Apollo been treating you?

  Has he been a good boy since the day I left?

  Give him my love and a sweet kiss for his head.”</b> - (Apollo is a Dalmatian dog that Claudio gave Newo as a puppy. As he looks at a photograph of himself and her that he took from her bedside nightstand, he thinks about the happy times they’ve had and the ones they’ll never have again. Apollo is Claudio’s only lasting gift of love left to Newo, so he hopes that Apollo is good to her and that she will love him since Claudio will never come back.)

   

  <b>”Cause I won't be coming home, when you get this I'll be dead.”</b> - (As Claudio writes this while hiding, he also considers just how much of his life is destroyed and the fact he himself may die very soon. Thinking that the Priest killed his entire family, he has trouble coping with the idea of living without them, so he considers killing himself before the Priests can get a hold of him.)

   

  <b>”Norris and Larry,

  Gloria to nowhere.”</b> - (At the same time as Claudio is writing his note, across the Keywork, as detailed in “Delirium Trigger”, his parents are onboard the Gloria Vel Vessa, alongside Captain Norris Henderson and Lieutenant Larry Goswell, as they are caught in the tractor beam of Admiral Crom’s battle cruiser. They try to reach Jesse aboard the Grail Arbor, but though the intercoms are not working.)

   

  <b>”Sir, I think you'd better take my hand

  And pray we'll make this one out alive.”</b> - (Cambria talks to Coheed, asking him to hold her hand and have hope as they try and take back control of the Gloria Vel Vessa.)

   

  <b>”Captain! We've lost all systems control!”</b> - (In a fit of rage, Cambria destroys the core power component that Coheed was trying to rewire in order to return control of the ship to them. When Cambria destroys it they lose any and all control of the ship.)

   

  <b>”Then, Son, I'll see you in my sleep.”</b> - (Since they can’t stop the ship under its own power, they decide the best way to stop it, and themselves, from reaching Paris: Earth is to blow it up with them on it. As they begin preparing the explosives, Cambria secretly says goodbye to her son Claudio and promises that she’ll eventually see him on the other side of death.)

   

  <b>”Is it all you've shared with them that makes us paranoid?”</b> - (Now we switch to Star 4, where the Prise are beginning preparations to send Ambellina as Claudio’s guardian. The Prise have a reputation of being extremely paranoid, so it is fitting that the leader of the Prise, their queen, per say, is in fact named Paranoia. As she sends the orders to Ambellina, she wonders if it is in fact Man’s own violent and power-hungry similarities to the Mages that makes the Prise so paranoid. If Man and Mage share so many of the same attributes and tendencies, is one really better than the other?)

   

  <b>”Is it the dream that one day you might be something you're not?”</b> - (Paranoia ponders if the prophecy of the return of the Crowing, the only being more powerful than Prise or Mage, is what makes the Prise so paranoid of Man. Since the Crowing is prophesied to be born of Man, then that means Man alone brings not only the Fence’s best hope for salvation, but also its greatest threat of complete destruction. As Claudio and Coheed both dream of being something inhuman and Man as a whole dreams of one day besting the Mages, the Prise continue to watch with wary wide eyes.)

   

  <b>”Is it the dreams that make us real?”</b> - (Paranoia thinks about Coheed and the IRO-bots, once thought the be the saviors of Man, now revealed to be the Keywork’s biggest threat. Inside, they are not human. They are cyborgs, not quite machine but not quite truly alive. And yet, just like Man, they have dreams. Do those dreams mean that they are in fact the same as humans? Are they really alive? Is the life they feel inside themselves real? What makes it real? Does the presence of dreams make Coheed and Cambria human? Do their dreams save them from being nothing more than monsters?)

   

  <b>”We'll miss you and wait for you when you come.”</b> - (Back on the Gloria, Cambria and Coheed ready to set off the explosives. They both silently wish Claudio goodbye and promise to wait for him on the other side.)

   

  <b>”Wrong way, right way.

  Bad luck, what God has been giving me?

  Wrong way, right way.

  Bad luck, you've got to be kidding me”</b> - (Back on Hetricus, Claudio thinks about all the horrible things that have happened to him. He wonders if he’s done the right thing by running away or if maybe she should’ve done things differently. As he thinks of all he’s lost and wonders how he’s supposed to live through this, he becomes frustrated at God for allowing something so horrible to happen to him.)

   

  {During the break in the previous verse, we here someone reading a contract of some sort. The only words we can really hear clearly are “Your time was not included in the contract” and the words “time”, “contract” and “supervisor” after that. There are many theories as to what this is, including a prenuptial agreement, a will, a wage contract, or a labor form. I personally believe is sort of like a metaphorical conversation between Death and Claudio discussing the terms of Claudio’s death and the fact that Claudio wants to die now and since Death has yet to lay down a time for Claudio’s death, that means Claudio can choose to die any time he wishes. Claudio says he wants to die now and Death advises Claudio to talk to God, Death’s supervisor, about other options aside from Death. So, Claudio does this and prays to God. Receiving no answer, Claudio again considers his bad luck and his foolishness in even thinking God would offer any help. He then returns to writing his goodbye note, which is steadily becoming a suicide note.}

   

  <b>”I've spent so long sitting down here,”</b> - (Hiding like he has, in alleyways and abandoned buildings and other similar places, Claudio’s had time to think about his current situation and how hopeless he feels.)

   

  <b>”Paper cut my heart in half and discard the evidence!”</b> - (As he writes this letter, he pours his heart into. He compares sending the letter to literally sending Newo half of his heart that he cut off with the very paper he’s writing on. He asks her to read the letter in understand of just how much of his heart went into. He offers that much of himself as a farewell gift to her. He asks her to throw away or burn the letter after she’s done with it in order to destroy any evidence of having contacted him.)

   

  <b>”When it's yours, come send me the last half.”</b> - (Claudio is essentially asking Newo to keep her half of his heart, i.e., her memory of him, alive inside of her and to return it to him after her time has come and they meet again in the afterlife. This is the first reference Claudio makes to asking Newo to stay true to his love,)

   

  <b>”Dowsed in kerosene

  In a torched blazed blood bath.”</b> - (As the “Guile Griever” lifts off in a blazing roar, Claudio reveals that he plans to kill himself and fantasizes of dying as some martyr going out in a violent blaze of glory.)

   

  <b>”When boy sets fire, God knows you've lost

  At a cost that has no price.”</b> - (Claudio is essentially telling God and everyone around him that when he goes, they’ll never know just what they’ve lost. He doesn’t realize just how true his words are, for if he dies, then so too dies the Keywork’s last chance for salvation. The cost would be unthinkable as millions of lives will be lost alongside his.)

   

  <b>”When you've purchased guilt,

  Stand at attention

  And make sure you know the lines and yourself.”</b> - (Reaching the height of his suicidal rage, Claudio lashes out at God and the Prise, who he feels were supposed to be his protectors. He feels that they have failed in their duties as laid out in God’s Riddle and that all his suffering is their fault. He tells them that when he succumbs to his misery and dies that they should think about themselves and where they failed and accept the guilt of their failures.)

   

  <b>”Yet you'd say, "I'll be home alone again, waiting."</b> - (Suddenly, amidst all his emotional turmoil, Claudio thinks back to Newo once saying that she’d always be there for him, that she’d always wait for him. He imagines that if she could talk to him now, she’d promise to wait alone at home for his eventual return. This thought of Newo’s love and faith to him brings him out of his suicidal urges.)

   

  <b>“Wait for me, alright?

  I'm still a boy down there.”</b> - (As the Guile Griever leaves the planet, Claudio throws the note in with the rest of the trash and looks out the window of the garbage hold and watches him home drift away. He decides to try and stay alive long enough to return to home and to Newo. He silently asks Newo to promise to wait for him down there where he is still just a boy who’s gone missing.)

   

  <b>”When you want to promise me that.”</b> - (Much like a silent contract, or provision, Claudio asks Newo to promise him that she will wait for him to return to her. This is pretty much equal to him asking her to marry him, since he doesn’t know how long he’ll be gone and how long she’ll have to stay faithful to her love of him.)

   

  <b>”(To drive down. Where's Wednesday? Where's Wednesday?)”</b> - (In the back of his mind, Claudio wonders why his life has turned upside down all of a sudden. He just wishes that he could go back to last night and he could just have his Wednesday back to normal. Just like Patrick,  all Claudio wants is his Wednesday back.)

   

   

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  Many wonder about the title of the song and how it relates to the subject matter and the characters involved, as well as just what the hell a “Junesong Provision” is. Well, a provision is basically a type of contract that lays out certain conditions for agreement, such as the legal paperwork that must be filled out when one gets married. Also, it is known that June is the most popular month for weddings to be scheduled, so it is my own personal theory that this song is actually a kind of unofficial marriage proposal from Claudio to Newo. While he’s not literally presenting a ring or the paperwork to her, by the end of the song he’s essentially proposing that she promise to love him for the rest of her life and to wait for him to one day return to her, even if that day only comes when they’re both dead. In essence, this is like him asking her to marry him. As romantic as this sounds at first glance, it’s actually very selfish of him, since he’s essentially asking her to give him all her heart in exchange for half of his laid out on paper.

  In the comic, ‘Junesong’ is Claudio’s nickname for Newo, the same as ‘Grover’ is her nickname for him. While I feel these are canon and relevant, I feel that the lyrics in the comics are not always literal parallels of their placement in songs and the timeline, but are instead general indicators of the overall subject matter that they referred to while in-song. As such, my reasoning for ‘Junesong’ as a title still stand, but the comic has luckily reaffirmed my interpretation of the letter being a goodbye letter to Newo. While much of it was suicidal, it seems obvious that Claudio left those thoughts unwritten and only gave Newo a cryptic goodbye letter.

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