#thats right bitches fairport convention is canon in ghost quartet

[livvy94-1]

My attempt at putting Ghost Quartet’s plot in chronological order

(Thanks to the proshot that got released two weeks ago, I’ve kind of become obsessed with Ghost Quartet again. I saw a local production last halloween and it’s stuck with me ever since. I even started an animatic of The Photograph last December, but it’s a long way away from being done lol rip. Here’s my attempt at piecing everything together, sourcing the annotated lyrics, various animatics on YouTube, and the kind of headcanons you get from becoming obsessed with something and listening to it over and over lmao).

(Sorry if this seems like I’m just rephrasing the lyrics at points. While this is a "Ghost Quartet Explained" kind of post, my main goal is to pin down my headcanons/my own understanding of the plot, and to do it in a way where all the info is there.)

The cycle begins…

Rose Red and Pearl White are the main characters, and they live in the fairytale era. They are sisters, and they live by the sea, gathering salt in the moonlight.

Nearby, an astronomer of some renown lived in an observatory, a house as high as the treetops, full of globes and maps and star charts, and a big telescope in the roof.

The astronomer is not a very good astronomer, and his facts vary in accuracy. He is passionate, but never wonders too much about the stars and is generally bored before them, gathering data and moving on in his observations. He is mesmerized by the call to prayer that echoes and zaps through the speakers of the mosques, and dearly wants to learn how to sing like that… but he doesn’t practice enough. He doesn’t believe in ghosts. However, he knows about a man in Iran who says that “every soul that ever died is living in the shadows of the skies” and claims he can talk to these ghosts - a skill he acquired by losing his mind and isolating himself in his room for forty-two years. The astronomer thinks to himself that a scientific experiment like that would take way too much time, so he isn’t eager to find out for himself if ghosts exist.

Rose Red is in love with the Astronomer, and writes him poetry about lovers, and ghosts, and galaxies, and planets, and moons. He invites her into the observatory to show her the stars, and she speaks poetically about each of them in turn…

I see fire in the darkness, rage against the void. I see every time man cried out and raised his sword against God.

I see mothers weeping in chairs, clutching their shawls in the morning. Everything is lost, all is gone…and she tries to find the joy in life, but she is wasting away.

I see two women. In the forest, in the evening, in a light rain. The older has no expression on her face. The younger hangs her head down. The younger is in love, was in love, is in love, was in love. But the lover is in love with the older, not the younger.

(That last one may not actually be one of the things she said, since it’s a bit on the nose.)

Surprised and awestruck, the astronomer nods and writes all of this down. Later, he publishes this poetry without crediting her, and she is shocked. As time goes on, she is further dismayed to learn that he has also taken her love poems and published them as well! She slowly starts to hate him.

When she walks in on her sister Pearl looking at the stars with him, and sees that they are madly in love, she loses her temper, exploding in a fit of rage. She runs deep into the forest, and encounters a great bear. (This is a fairytale, after all.) She asks him to maul the astronomer, perform witchcraft on Pearl to transform her into a crow, and put both of them in a cave, so the crow would start to starve and she’d have no choice but to peck out the eyes of her lover and eat them.

The bear names his price.

ONE POT OF HONEY

ONE PIECE OF STARDUST

ONE SECRET BAPTISM

AND A PHOTO OF A GHOST

Rose then transcends and reincarnates across seven centuries, seeking out these tokens in turn…

In 20th century Sarajevo, a soldier, world-weary and depressed, is drinking alone in a bar. The war has made her numb to death and dying, so she doesn’t believe in ghosts. She is good at adhan singing, the same type of singing that the astronomer was so awestruck by. Though she’ll let you know she doesn’t believe in anything.

The soldier is a reincarnation of Pearl.

A reincarnation of Rose approaches her and starts flirting. Ever poetic, she overflows with love, though she’s insincere. She asks the soldier if she believes in love, and she says:

“I don’t believe in anything… but if you’re gonna steal my honey, please wait until I’m drunk. Then take me onto the dance floor, and let me cry against your cheek. Then take me out back, and shoot me in the alley… I won’t speak, I won’t say a word, I won’t come back to haunt you… I won’t have the time.”

Rose Red steals the POT OF HONEY.

In an unnamed era, we overhear a mother trying to get her daughter to go to sleep. The youngster wants a bedtime story, and says it’s not dark enough – there’s too many little lights, little moons, little candles, little snowflakes, little glows, little bits of STARDUST.

The mother comforts her and says that she should think of each little magic light as a little magic story. Eventually she agrees to read her Arabian Nights until she falls asleep.

(This era could be pretty much any point in history after Arabian Nights was published.)

Long ago, in the era of antiquity, Scheherazade is being held prisoner by Shah Zaman. He is known for marrying a new woman each day and then killing them. Scheherazade is clever, though, and tells beautiful stories, ending each one in the middle or at a cliffhanger, or intertwining them with each other by having characters start telling stories of their own. Compelled to find out how the stories end, the Shah always spares her life to allow her to continue the next night. (This is the basic plot of Arabian Nights.)

Scheherazade is telling the Shah and her sister Dunyazad, who is also present, the story of a subway accident in 20th century New York City, in great detail. She recounts how someone was shoved onto the train tracks, and how a woman ran towards the train, flashing her camera over and over to get the driver’s attention. But the driver didn’t see her, and she couldn’t run fast enough and help the victim climb out in time. Horrified, she threw her camera to the ground, breaking it. Later, she bought a new camera at a shop, found the phone number of the subway driver, and wrote it on her arm in green ink. But she is haunted by the image of the woman and the train lurking behind her, moments before impact.

Shah Zaman is astounded at this grim ending. He tells Scheherazade that when he kills her, he will throw a massive feast in tribute to the could-have-been queen, take the largest cask of honey-sweet wine back to his room, and drink until he gets sick, and then drink even more, sitting alone in his room for forty-two years, an old, old man all alone in his chair, watching game shows, making fun of the contestants for their STUPID answers and their wasted lives.

If you can lose your temper, then I can lose my mind.

In the actual events of the middle-eastern folktale, after 1001 nights of Scheherazade’s beautiful storytelling, Shah Zaman falls in love with her for real, and the two are wed. However, since the astronomer mentions a man who isolated himself to the point where he thinks he’s talking to ghosts, the Shah probably ends up killing Scheherazade in this timeline after all.

(Also. Disclaimer: I haven’t ever read Arabian Nights (though I’m certainly interested as hell now lol), so apologies if I got anything wrong. This is my impression from the musical alone, plus some wikipedia-ing)

In some mysterious paradox of time (which we won’t understand until the story’s end), Rose Red approaches Scheherazade. She doesn’t know if it’s really her, though, so she asks if she’s “an ancient.” Scheherazade is upset at first, but understands what she means, and says that she is indeed from the era of antiquity. Rose, who grew up with the folktale, always imagined Scheherazade spinning her stories forever, and asks her for a PIECE OF STARDUST. Unfortunately, 1001 is a pretty big number, so Scheherazade isn’t sure if she has any STARDUST left to spin. Instead, she tells her own story.

She used to be so full of life, so full of imagination. She would run across the desert sand and gaze into the stars, and stay up all night long telling stories and dazzling the people around her…but after all this time, she feels haunted by who she used to be. She tells Rose about a dream she had from another woman’s point of view, where she went to a tango and ran into her younger, livelier self. She asked herself to dance, but her younger self ditched her, not having time for anyone so used up. While her younger self partied, she was left to sit in a chair next to the dance floor, staring at her phone.

I was empty then, and I’m empty now…

…but it’s not the same at all.

Rose Red steals the PIECE OF STARDUST.

The year is 186X. Edgar and Lady Usher have two children, young Roxie and a boy named Brent who’s a bit of a fool.

Edgar Usher is a reincarnation of the astronomer, and Lady Usher is a reincarnation of Pearl.

Edgar and Lady Usher are upset that Roxie still has an imaginary friend at seven years old. They gently talk to her and ask her to play with the other kids instead, and to “put Rose away,” like how they put her baby toys away in the west wing of the manor, but Roxie loses her temper. Rose is a Starchild, and talks to her all the time! She is her sister, and died when she was a baby, and now she’s lonely and wants Roxie to cross over. She says that all the adults on the other side wish they had crossed over when they were young too, because when you’re a soul wandering amongst the stars, you don’t have to worry about growing old or disease or war or computers or any of that shit. And there’s no bugs or humidity or anything unpleasant, but there are rainy days where you can sit at the windowsill and be sad, just to keep things interesting. Suddenly, she yells at her parents. And not in her normal temper tantrum way, in a scary, possessed-by-something way. She says that if they insist on living for however few years they have left (not too many, if they keep drinking), they’ll regret it, and when they meet her on the other side, they’ll admit how dumb and pointless life really was.

Edgar and Lady Usher are appalled, and agree to keep the drinking and swearing to a minimum whenever the children are around.

Years pass, and Roxie has grown into a teenager. She has a baby with an astronomer of some renown (no, not the one we’ve already met). (No more information is given about the circumstances of this besides the fact that it happened.) In 1873, the baby is kidnapped. The husband abandons her, and Roxie is left bedridden, in sorrow and bewilderment.

(Roxie, the baby, and the kidnapper are all separate reincarnations of Rose Red, so she is stealing herself from herself.)

Lady Usher, sorrowful for her little girl and her kidnapped granddaughter, becomes very ill as well. Her senses of sight, taste, touch, etc. become heightened to a torturous degree, and her mind slowly becomes unhinged. All the while, the foolish son erratically plays the cello alone in his room. As Lady Usher’s condition worsens, Edgar is forced to read her stories from their mansion’s vast library to keep her calm at night.

Let me read you a story, let me read you a romance.

I will read, you will listen, and this terrible night will pass.

While they try their best to keep Roxie alive, she wastes away. On her deathbed, she cries out for her brother, her sister (she has no sister in this era…), and her little girl. Roxie dies of grief, and Lady Usher decides to temporarily preserve her corpse in a vault under the master bedroom. (Presumably, while they arrange for a funeral.)

Some time passes. Lady Usher continues to suffer from grief and madness. The foolish son Brent, fed up, feuds with his father and flees to the Americas to pursue music. He swears that if anyone ever pushes him, he’ll push them back.

The lord and lady are left alone in the manor, sleeping in separate chambers.

On a dark and stormy night, Lady Usher becomes delirious, raving about singing ghosts, living stones, decaying trees, and the terrible wind and rain. She runs to Edgar’s room, throws open the tall, iron-wrought windows, and lets the storm howl around her. Edgar sits her down, opens a book, and starts to read. However, she doesn’t calm down like she usually does. Her acute hearing seems to be playing tricks on her, and she becomes convinced that she can hear Roxie struggling to escape the tomb below them, and that she’s still alive. Suddenly, both Edgar and Lady Usher hear footsteps on the staircase, and the windows and the door blow open. Roxie stares at them from across the bedchamber. She appears as a dark silhouette, blood dripping from her robes. All that’s visible is her large glowing eyes and the shape of her hair, floating and twisting in the wind. She jumps at Lady Usher with the rage of four generations, and Lady Usher’s heart bursts.

And so, the house of Usher falls.

While all of this was taking place, Roxie’s stolen baby has been baptized in the sea. The baby grows into a young child, presumably in an orphanage, and they become pensive about being blessed against their will in some religion they’ve never known and don’t believe in. Depressed, they join the other souls in the cosmos as a star. Some might say that they become present in all eras at this point, and it is possible that they become Roxie’s imaginary friend too. They ruminate on how the blessing has probably doomed them to never reach heaven (or whatever afterlife was originally in store), and how everything they see is countless light-years away and therefore doesn’t exist anymore, just like a ghost, and just like them.

Rose Red performs the SECRET BAPTISM.

In the present day, a descendant of Edgar Usher’s son Brent (who grew up in the 50s, and had feuds with his father just like his 1800s ancestor) is living in New York City, but can’t support himself with his cello playing, in groups, or even as a street musician. He tries being a heroin dealer, but eventually becomes addicted himself, ending up homeless and mentally ill.

An incarnation of Pearl waits at a train station for the Q to arrive, playing a game on her phone. In the game (which closely resembles Zelda II – The Adventure of Link for the NES), she’s playing as a soldier, and fighting a big bear, the final boss. Brent angrily makes his way through the dense crowd, screaming about the train coming, and the day of revelation. As Pearl opens a treasure chest, finds a sword, equips it, and strikes the bear, he remembers something from a previous life. He takes one last drink, and shoves her over the edge of the platform and onto the subway track, finally making good on his promise.

A woman standing nearby who works as a freelance photographer, an incarnation of Rose, witnesses this and runs toward Pearl. But the train is coming, and she realizes that she can’t run fast enough to rescue her. She takes out her camera and starts flashing it rapidly, trying to get the subway driver’s attention, but if he sees her at all, it is too late. The Q pulls into the station. The pusher runs from the scene, swearing. As the crowd swirls and paramedics arrive, she realizes that she has probably taken a photograph of the victim mere seconds before she died, and throws her camera on the ground in disgust, breaking it into pieces.

Rose, unable to finish her freelance, returns to her apartment. She is haunted by the ghost of Pearl, and has visions of all of her different incarnations, and how she’s responsible, indirectly or directly, for their deaths. She didn’t have any reason to believe in ghosts until now, but sleep-deprived, she sees Pearl whenever she closes her eyes, staring at her and screaming.

A few days later, Rose walks to a camera shop. A decorative fiddle on the wall eerily draws her attention. It belonged to the shopkeeper’s great grandmother – the original Rose Red. She pours Rose some whiskey, and tells her the beginning of the story – a story that she inexplicably knows in great detail. She hints at knowing she’s talking to a reincarnation of her murderer as well, and is cautious, subtly judgmental, and at times, seething. At the climax of her story, she yells very directly, “Don’t you remember!?” Rose buys the new camera and leaves the shop in a frightened rush.

On her way back, she is compelled to inquire who the subway driver was that day, writing the phone number on her arm in green ink.

Rose Red takes the PHOTO OF A GHOST.

Back in the fairytale era, Rose Red gathers together everything she’s collected, puts on a sexy red cloak, and greets the bear in his cave. He threatens to eat her up like berries, but she doesn’t care as long as he agrees to maul the astronomer and turn Pearl White into a crow. However, he flakes out and says that he’s not a murderer or a crazy person, he just wanted the honeypot.

Rose, distraught, storms from the cave, gets spectacularly drunk, and eventually kills Pearl in her sleep. She pushes the body into the water, and it floats away, eventually washing up on a shoreline next to a mill. The miller finds the body, and leaves it on the bank to dry. Later, a fiddler walks by and discovers the skeleton. He takes the breastbone and fashions it into a fiddle. Presumably, he meets (and marries?) Rose Red, who passes the fiddle down through the generations.

It is said that when no one is around, the fiddle, made with Pearl’s bones and strung with her hair, will play itself, and sing a song that got adopted by folksingers everywhere as a traditional murder ballad – the grisly tale of her death.

In 1963, Bob Dylan shares a drink with folksinger Paul Clayton, and in a fit of inspiration, they write Percy’s Song – a more contemporary ballad with the same structure and melody. Fairport Convention, the famous British folk rock band, records a cover of it in 1969 with extended harmony and instrumentation.

Amongst the stars, all four of the ghosts sing a mournful tune about how they’ll try to forgive themselves for all of their transgressions, and try to see themselves for what they are. Rose Red sings an emotional solo song, lamenting her understandable shortcomings and the grave mistakes she’s made throughout all her reincarnations, and accepting that she can move on and rest in peace. She drifts through the cosmos and becomes a star.

At the End of Time Itself, all of everyone’s reincarnations are hanging out, talking, overlapping with each other, and reflecting on their lives. The scenery appears to resemble Shah Zaman’s 14th century Persian palace…or is it a small community theater building? Rose Red shows up, steals the PIECE OF STARDUST from Scheherazade, and disappears back into history. Dave Malloy, Brent Arnold, Gelsey Bell, and Brittain Ashford are all there, drinking and talking to each other about ghosts. Time is undone, and the day of revelation is at hand.

Dunyazad asks Scheherazade how Rose was able to steal the baby from Roxie – surely the Ushers had a security system? Ah, they were outside in a park. That makes sense. Scheherazade asks if she can remember a time before they were sisters. Dunyazad frowns, unable to remember anything.

Brent is playing his cello beautifully, from the corner of the room.

Dave plays the last piano in the world, despite the Gods’ longstanding declaration that mankind doesn’t deserve music anymore, so each note is like torture for his hands and fingers. Nevertheless, he beautifully plays legendary jazz pianist Thelonious Monk’s music night after night in the hope that his ghost will appear before him, forgive him, and grant him a smile, a kiss, and a meaning for all of his pain.

Pearl asks Dave why Monk’s soul would have lingered on Earth instead of passing on and going to heaven. In response, he basically just lists off all the ghost film cliches he can think of.

Brittain is still struggling to remember her other lifetimes, so Gelsey tells her all of her own reincarnations to jog her memory. She was her sister (as Rose Red in the fairytale era, and as Sheherezade), her lover (the soldier), her child (applicable to both Roxie and her stolen baby), and her best friend (the two actresses are very close).

Dave ruins this touching moment, bursting out with “Or maybe there isn’t a heaven. I mean that’s pretty likely, so…” Everyone chuckles and rolls their eyes.

Brittain asks Dave if he can remember the two of them looking at the stars through his telescope. He thinks for a bit, and remarks that he hasn’t lived as that reincarnation of himself yet. She asks him for a dance.

The subway driver and the photographer awkwardly dance with each other. She had called the phone number and arranged a date, and now these two souls are together and in love at last. Gelsey comments that they ended up having two children – sisters, of course.

In a tiny moment of closure, Pearl compliments Brent on his cello playing. A faded cardboard sign reading “THE END IS NIGH” and pieces of a broken glass jar lay discarded at his feet. He says “Thanks. I practice a lot.”

And so, the cycle is complete.

Who's Who

Rose Red reincarnates into: Roxie, Dunyazad, the Photographer, the Starchild, and Brittain Ashford.

Pearl White reincarnates into: the Soldier, Lady Usher, Scheherazade, the Victim, the Camera Shop Owner, and Gelsey Bell.

The Astronomer reincarnates into: Edgar Usher, Roxie’s absent husband, the Subway Driver, and Dave Malloy.

The Bear reincarnates into: the Fool (who grows up to be the Pusher), Shah Zaman, and Brent Arnold.