To Say Music Is Your Life Is An Understatement. Music Is What Makes You Wake Up Each Day—albeit Always

To say music is your life is an understatement. Music is what makes you wake up each day—albeit always in darkness. It’s the living substitute for the family and friendships your face, a damning accident of birth, has denied you.

Then one day you hear her voice from your desolate hiding place. You discover music personified in the form of a grieving girl just as lonely as you are. You can't explain why you took the risk of revealing yourself to her; you only know that there’s no meaning in music anymore without that seraphic voice in your possession. Molding it, controlling it, is your closest approximation to happiness.

It doesn’t end well. Your desire turns to a murderous obsession that nearly wrecks her. You forget that that messiness of the human heart is only partly transposed in the sheet music of an opera. She isn't music personified; she’s just a woman who belongs to the living world from which you're exiled.

Still, she shows you compassion. For a moment she sees you. In that fleeting fraction of time, she understands you better than you've bothered to understand her in your relentless quest to own her. And so you release her. With one last goodbye, she returns the ring you gave her and your eyes follow her long after her form disappears from view.

You’ve accepted it. You nod your head in resignation and kiss the ring that once touched her fingers. You'll be brave! You’ll think of her fondly and savor the fragments of her that live in your mind's eye.

Then you hear her voice again: that call that first summoned you from the darkness; the instrument that shaped you as much as it was shaped by you; the melody on which you'd set all your wretched hopes. It possesses your body as usual. As it radiates down your spine, you react like a cobra to a charmer's flute. The angelic sound seems to await your response.

But your face crumbles when her rescuer sings back. In the notes of their duet you hear all the things you can't give her, all the grief you've caused, and the sure certainty that you've lost her forever. You hang your head and realize that you're not brave; you're sorry. So very, very sorry, and...

You love her. You love her desperately!

Filing An Emotional Distress Claim Against Earl Carpenter's Phantom for:

How softly he whispers "sing" during the title song.

Nearly putting his arms around Katie Knight Adams while singing "soooarrr" during MOTN but chickening out.

The emphasis he puts on "lead me save me from ~my solitude~"

Hands (see items 5-9):

Directing Christine (and honestly the music) during the title song like he's literally pulling the melody/sex out of her.

Doing that wrist twist thing during the cape twirl and MOTN.

Doing all the things during PONR.

Always holding Christine's head/hair during the kiss and sometimes even putting his hand on her cheek. [Melts.]

Reaching for Christine when she returns because he thinks she's coming back for him only to try to refuse the ring when she gives it back.

Falling to his knees during the ring return and offering the ring to her AGAIN?!?! This is very intentional infliction of emotional distress wtf!!

Going all the way to the floor like a baby during the whole "go now and leave me" sequence.

Reaching through the damn portcullis with the damn veil in hand while singing "you alone can make my song take flight."

The fact that he came back to the West End for a limited run in 2023 and destroyed us all over again.

And then ended that 2023 limited run with the ultimate sad wet cat "noooo" after the ring return in the final lair. Who let this happen?!?

So honestly this is a respondeat superior case bc the producers of POTO allowed Earl Carpenter to victimize us all in the 2000s and then brought him back aged like fine wine just to find devastating new ways of milking our tear ducts all over again.

This has to be actionable. My lawyers will be in touch.

New fandom level unlocked: I officially have an AO3 account.

POTO retelling loading. And maybe I'll even overcome my trauma and restart the Jane Eyre fanfic I lost more than a decade ago when my computer was stolen.

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