What Comes Out is Pure Prophesy

The following is an excerpt of a 19 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will.

I agree with you that the other characters need to be developed, to be protagonists in their own right.

I may have less insight into them because their personas derive (at least in part) from you and Joe.  Also, having written more poetry and songs than fiction, I'm not as adept at juggling multiple characters in a large, expansive plot as you are.

The only thing that I'm trying to represent is my sense of my own character and the songs, many of which I haven't had a chance to play for you yet.  I don't think it's that big of a difference of opinion philosophically.

Actually, it may be less philosophical as it is the organization of events.  

Without getting into super long paragraphs again, I just think that the marriage/children have to come first (toward the end of the Sweet World era) for the progression of songs to make sense.

Then losing the band-->short stint with Apotheosis-->losing wife, kids-->joining a cult, getting out of the cult-->getting electroconvulsed-->getting propped back up by Will to front Brand New Life.  

Brand New Life is ironic because for Will it's just an attempt to do definitively what he has been trying to do all along: whitewash all the mystic mumbo-jumbo and bring Arthur back down to the Kierkegaardian aesthetic sphere where he can be made profitable.  

The irony is that this "final solution" actually does the exact opposite, making Brand New Life a true resurrection of the original Arthur, catapulting him definitively into the religious sphere, never to descend again.  

Now, in spite of (because of?) his destroyed mental state, he speaks prophetic words that cut like a double-edged sword.  He's kind of like Dave Bowman has become by the movie 2010.  Unlike Dave, however, Arthur may be thoroughly broken on a human level--mental anguish can still be occurring.

But when he sings, what comes out is pure prophesy.