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1. Citation

Introduction to the Snow Introduction to the Snow starts with a beautiful piano melody that sweeps into a full electric orchestra, before it slowly trickles off into wind whistling through the listeners ears. The very first lyric of the album is the phrase, “Alone at the edge of a universe, humming a tune”² and with the wind layered over Hawley’s voice, it feels like Simon (and the listener) is standing at the cliffs edge, about to tip over. Hawley however, is not alone in the song, as there are other voices humming under him. This begs the question: Who is Simon, and subsequently the audience, hearing? If this is Simon standing at the edge, waiting for that final push, who is the voice that is holding him back? This question is somewhat answered towards the end of the song, with the lyrics, “Knows only two can make it light, you’ll live forever tonight”³. Simon is unknowingly being drawn towards his first meeting with Stella. While the wind has not disappeared, the piano melody has come back with full power in a descending spiral that makes the audience question whether the other voices were in fact Stella’s or Simon’s own psychosis. But beyond that, Simon is now down from the cliff’s edge and ready to continue with the story. Introduction to the Snow is a great example of the phenomenon known as L’appel du Vide, otherwise known as The Call of the Void. The Call of the Void is described as a mental phenomenon where a typically non-suicidal person gets the random urge to “jump”, often times when they are close to the railing of a high surface or approaching large bodies of water. This effect can easily be compared to a siren song⁴, if that siren song was a psychosomatic suicidal tendency. While the song never explicitly references suicide or death, the allusions to loneliness and the ever-present underscoring of wind creates a feeling of isolation that is usually associated with one of the two. Stella is also a siren in her own way, drawing Simon to her without ever having met him. Isle Unto Thyself Isle Unto Thyself starts with a soothing and steady synth-based piano melody before transitioning into a surprisingly jaunty electronica drum beat. This creates the layout for Stella to audibly enter the picture, as she remarks that Simon, “[f]eels what can’t be known.”⁵ Stella’s voice is electronically distorted, her words are not as easy to catch. This gives her a romanticized quality, as the electronic noise pushes her emotions past the human realm. She is feeling something that Simon physically cannot, which leads him to retaliate and say “[y]ou were an isle unto thyself, you had a heart you hadn’t felt. Why would it hurt me? Or was it real?”⁶ Immediately the feelings of isolation kick back in, as Simon pushes back against the idea that love may have a place in his life. Every time Simon toys with the idea that he may reciprocate Stella’s feelings, his voice distorts with the same eerie electronic quality heard at the beginning of the song. This comes to a head with the verse, “I was a victim of magic, Apollo, catching my breath as I bled on the ground. Somebody called me to follow, I followed, thinking aloud without hearing the sound.”⁷ This serves to reestablish Stella as a siren, but one that acts for want of love rather than murderous intent. This also brings back the L’appel du Vide imagery, suggesting that maybe Simon is not as safe from his own head as it was once thought. The listener has no clue which choice Simon has actually made, whether he jumped or walked away, and just when it seems like Simon may be accepting his romantic fate, he switches the narrative to question why the universe allows bad things to fester and continue. This is a throughline that continues throughout the album. Black Rainbows Black Rainbows is important for two major reasons. To start, it is the first time that Stella appears as the primary vocalist; she leads the song and is allowed to act separately from Simon's perception of her. This is also where she gets her name, as she references the latin name for the eight-sided star, the Stella Octangula. Secondly, it is the first non-english song on the album, with half of the song being sung in Hawaiian. The usage of Hawaiian serves as a reference to the name of the album, but it also purposefully confuses the audience by throwing them into a language that they are not likely to understand. The low tone being offset by the syncopated beat is such a stark contrast to the song before that the audience never gets a chance to breathe. While the song may be hard to comprehend to the average listener, it is not simple or irrelevant to the plot. The chanting may sound ominous due to its low timbre and indecipherable quality, but in actuality the Hawaiian Man™ is just chanting the names of all the colors of the rainbow. This is the first appearance of the Hawaiian Man™, but it is certainly not the last as his existence can be tracked throughout the rest of the album but also through the majority of Tally Hall’s discography. Throughout the existence of Tally Hall and Hawleys career as the main songwriter, he developed a musical niche involving a deep-voiced omnipotent man who shared his universal wisdom about life. This took the form of Mr. Moon in “Spring and A Storm,” a kind soul who reassures a group of kids about the existence of life after death, or Father Time in the song “Ruler of Everything,”⁸ who harasses the main character and may have pushed him towards murder. The Hawaiian Man™ is just a continuation of this archetype, he may even be an extension of Father Time itself. The usage of this character implies the existence of something far more powerful than Simon and Stella. And even though this is Stella’s step out song, she’s not allowed to shed the idea of love completely. While the Hawaiian Man™ chants his colors, she uses the connections between these colors as a metaphor to narrate her and Simon falling in love. As the colors line up to reveal a perfect rainbow, the love story is allowed to flourish. Since black is not typically a color seen in the rainbow, the usage of it in the chant foreshadows something dark and foreboding in the future. But for now, that does not matter, as there is love in the air and Simon and Stella get to focus on each other. White Ball Finally able to physically meet, Simon and Stella are head over heels for each other and this is depicted in White Ball. This is the first song where Simon and Stella get to sing together, even if they have appeared in the same song, they have been separated by the music, the narrative, or both. The title itself can mean many different things, with the White Ball being Simon and Stella's wedding day, Stella in all white and the ball being their first dance. This idea is supported by the fact that the song is a tango, which gives it a romantic overlay as the two dance across the stars. White Ball could also be a reference to the full moon on the album cover, the same one that is actually the bulb of the angler fish lurking in the darkness. This alludes to the sadness still to come and how something so beautiful can turn in an instant. Whatever it may be, Simon and Stella are seemingly the happiest they have ever been. All is not well in paradise however, because Stella begins to question whether their meeting was fate or happenstance with the lyric, “Something’s elegant find, so the program goes.”⁹ In the musical interlude in between the verses, we hear her giggle as an indecipherable voice begins speaking. Simon also comments on their chance meeting with the lyric, “Fate decides how these columns align, birthed by chess or benign.”¹⁰ While it is possible that Simon and Stella were simply destined to meet, it is equally as possible that some one, possibly the Hawaiian Man™, is meddling with the powers that be to make it so they meet. In between this verse and the next, there is another indecipherable speaking voice and a significantly deeper laugh, revealing to the listener that the Hawaiian Man™ has been here all along. In the next verse, Simon and Stella pledge themselves to each other and say that as they are reborn, they will always be each other's.¹¹ This is foreshadowing Stella’s death in the next song by placing her in a cycle of life and rebirth, but obviously the only way to access rebirth is through death. For Simon, this foreshadows his eventual entrapment in the time loop during the ending of Time Machine. In his attempt to rescue Stella from her untimely fate, he traps himself in the process. But despite the disapproving words of those around them, Simon and Stella wish to remain carefree and ignorant, they choose to dance right up to the cliff’s edge all while staring into each other’s eyes. Murders And almost immediately, the world comes crashing down around Simon and Stella. Leaving to go on their honeymoon, everything is lovely for the shortest while before Stella is tragically murdered. Simon’s reliability as a narrator comes into question as he truly cannot remember if he did it or not. There have been hints of Simon’s psychosis before now, such as his suicidal tendencies in Introduction to the Snow or hearing voices in White Ball, but this is the first time that the listener cannot trust anything Simon is telling them. A recurring lyric in the pre-chorus is, “I was in the middle ground,”¹² as Simon desperately attempts to stay neutral in his recounting of the events. As Simon searches for the girl, she has found The Erlking.¹³ The Erlking is a figure from the ballad written in 1782 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the ballad was subsequently turned into a famous Lied by Franz Schubert. In Schubert’s version, the Erlking is a Fae King who steals a young boy right out of the arms of his loving, yet ultimately ignorant, father. The frantic and fearful quality of Schubert’s Lied is portrayed by his dramatic use of triplets which underscore the whole piece. Murders also opens with these same triplets, this is acting as an homage to The Erlking itself but also as a tangible representation of Simon’s fear. They act as his unsteady heart rate, the pounding of his feet against the forest floor, something has ripped Stella away before Simon, or the listener, could even process the joy of them being married. The chorus tells the listener that Simon is doubtful of what he and Stella have actually experienced in the woods they were gallivanting in, as he says, “tree falling, no one would hear, shadow of nobody there, murders of murderers living in fear of it.”¹⁴ He is hearing things, possibly the Erlking that took Stella, possibly the Hawaiian Man™, or perhaps there is no one actually there and his brain is just conjuring up images to torture him. Since no one heard the metaphorical tree fall, no one is coming to advocate for Simon and save him from himself, he is once again alone in this world and that is almost worse than Stella’s death. Space Station Level 7 Sung almost entirely in Japanese, Space Station Level 7 represents another departure from the already strange norm for Hawaii Part II. Fluent Japanese speakers were not really the target audience for this album, and it would be another few years before J-Pop would seriously hit the American market, so the usage of Japanese has been contentiously debated in many fan theories. With the album seemingly being set in Hawaii, some believe it to be a reference to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which then makes Simon a WWII veteran seeking revenge. Others believe it to be commentary on the Japanese internment camps that happened soon after the war and that Simon himself is Japanese, meaning he is not seeking revenge, but retribution for the crimes committed against him by the state. The english translation of the lyrics tells the story of a group of ghosts waiting for their children to join them in Heaven before they can move on to further explore the Galaxy. The children are instructed to go to Level Seven of the “Space Station” on Earth and to “throw themselves and live forever”, this will allow them to join their loved ones and experience Heaven. This is a reference to Dante’s Inferno in which the seventh circle of Hell is reserved for those who have committed acts of violence¹⁵. The second ring in the seventh circle is dedicated to violence against the self and it is where the Woods of Suicide are located, the souls of those lost have been transformed into gnarled trees which are fed upon by harpies. Intentionally obscured behind another language and an upbeat pop sound, Space Station Level 7 is seemingly about a parent having to make the heart wrenching choice between their child dying by their own hand versus being killed by something more horrific in the future. Filicide, the murder of a child by a parent, is a common theme in music with other examples being The Rake’s Song by The Decemberists or The Cruel Mother by Hedy West. Coming right after Murders, it is reasonable to assume that this is the story of Stella ascending to Heaven. Much like a parent should, Simon was someone who was supposed to love and protect Stella for life, and now he seems to have been the one to have killed her. The Mind Electric The Mind Electric is where things really start to take a turn for the worse for Simon. The song narrates his murder trial, and subsequent imprisonment, for the murder of Stella, and he still has no idea if he actually committed the crime. Starting with the horrific shock treatment punishment then reversing back to the actual trial, the listener is hearing Simon’s mind fracture in real time. The Mind Electric also happens to be the most auditorily torturous song to try and listen to, as it operates as a perfect palindrome. This means that the song starts with Verse Five through Verse One being physically sung backwards before a musical interlude, a bell rings and then the musical interlude is played backwards (or forwards if we are being textually pedantic about it) and the song is sung forwards Verse One through Verse Five. The song is also electronically distorted to hell and back, which serves the plot in two major ways. The more obvious one is that Simon is quite literally undergoing electroshock therapy so this distortion over his voice is going to mimic the situation he finds himself in. The slightly more heartbreaking one is that up to this point, all electronic noises have been associated with Stella and every time Simon thinks of Stella, his voice distorts in the same manner. Even in his most painful moments, Simon is still thinking about someone who loved him. Under all of this musical chaos, there is also a mocking laugh that echoes whenever there is a lull in the noise. This is both a callback to the voice that was chanting in Hawaiian way back in Black Rainbows, but it is also a callback to the musical history of Tally Hall. In the Musical Universe of Tally Hall (the MUoTH??), this recurring character is the slightly malicious Father Time, who makes his first appearance in the song “Ruler of Everything.” Here he has a deep booming voice and talks about the slow passage of time and the inevitability of death. The continuous usage of this voice implies that there is some force larger than Simon overseeing everything, someone completely unreachable who has ripped him away from Stella, making him pay for his supposed crimes, and is propelling him towards his untimely death. The cacophony of noise combined with the crushing sense of cosmic pity from a pseudo-god makes it so that the listener’s pain is indistinguishable from Simon’s. The lines between Actor and Audience are blurred and the electronic noises that were once associated with feelings of love now become distinctly dehumanizing and painful to process. Labyrinth Every time Hawaii Part II establishes a musical convention, that same convention is broken a few songs later. The songs are in English until the third one opens with Hawaiian chants, the next few songs are in English until there is one entirely in Japanese, the song immediately after that starts being sung backwards. This constant shift between genre and sound makes it so the listener never becomes fully grounded within the universe of the album. Once you think you know what the next song is going to sound like, Hawley flips the script and shoe-horns you into a new niche. This reaches its peak with “Labyrinth” which is a fast moving, yet not fast-lipped, rap about Simon running from his fears and doomed fate. The song opens with yet another electronica melody ushering Simon towards an unknown ending, but this time it is a woman's voice singing about the circular nature of the labyrinth itself. The electronic woman's voice is presumably Stella if we are following the convention that the rest of the album has set up, but the Labyrinth has two possible meanings. First, it can be a reference to the physical location where Simon has been held and operated on, with the album cover showing the white stairs that he tries to climb.¹⁶ It can also be a metaphor for his fractured mental state post shock treatment, new synapses are forming as his mind literally folds in on itself. This trapped feeling is mimicked through the rhyme scheme of the song, as the lyrics never move onto another structure. The circularity mimics the labyrinth itself. From there, Simon is running from his “old girl” and towards his “new girl,”¹⁷ which implies a deep sense of guilt for Stella’s death, but the twistedness of the Labyrinth may mean that these girls are one and the same. Reaching a more frantic tone, Simon begins to repeat the phrase, “I’m trapped”¹⁸ as the song fades into Time Machine. Once again, this mimics the circularity of a maze and how making the wrong turn will always bring you back to where you started, but the repetition creates a sort of a record scratch that keeps Simon trapped in between moments. Time Machine Speaking of being trapped, Time Machine narrates Simon’s grand escape from his terrible situation. Using his magical time machine that he has apparently kept in his back pocket this entire time, Simon is getting the hell out of dodge. The lyric “I’m leaving today, today”¹⁹ works in twofold because not only is Simon leaving the Location of Today, but he is also leaving the physical Time of Today. The electronic distortion is also back in full force, taking it away from Stella’s motif and moving this concept towards the memories of Simon’s electroshock treatment. Upset with the way the past has played out and seeking to get a redo, Simon is looking to go back and rescue Stella from her untimely death so they can run away together. Detaching from his emotions in an attempt to focus on his task, Simon also mentions that he will be “Playing in dimension number four,”²⁰ as he moves through time and space. This is another reference to Dante’s Inferno, with the fourth circle of Hell being dedicated to Greed and Avarice²¹. Dimension number four could imply that Simon is on his fourth failed attempt at getting Stella back, but it also implies that Simon knows his attempts to rewrite history are inherently possessive. He is making up for lost time, literally, as Stella was prematurely taken from him and he spent a long time being locked away in prison. However, each attempt to go back in time only degrades the time machine further and reminds Simon of his loneliness, something that is heard at the end of the third verse in the lyrics, “You’ll have time enough to spend some time alone, all alone, time alone…time alone.” Simon is slowly realizing just how crushing his loneliness truly is and just how isolating this whole experience has been. Just as this realization hits, the time machine breaks down. The jumble of crashing mechanical noises that slowly fades into static tells the listener that the time machine is powering down, but Simon hasn’t realized it yet. As the two main lyrics of the chorus repeat, “live the dream with a time machine, you’ve been waiting forever,”²² back and forth for a solid thirty seconds, it is suddenly apparent that Simon is stuck in a time loop of his own devising. The vocalizing “ahs” makes it sound like he is exclaiming with joy or relief that his plan is finally coming together, or it could be him screaming in fear with the realization that he is potentially trapped for all eternity. This trapped feeling pervades the listener too, as the only thing they can do is watch helplessly as Simon flails and drowns. Stranded Lullaby In one of the saddest plot twists ever, the time machine that Simon stole was not real, it was merely a broken down dingy that he stole and he is now stranded out in the middle of the sea. His shattered mind has made him delusional and his greatest plans have all turned out to be complete failures. Even though they do not actually sound anything alike, Stranded Lullaby shares a lot of similarities with Introduction to the Snow. At his very lowest moment, Simon has lost all of his ties to Stella and the electronic distortion is gone, this mimics the clarity of tone from the first song the listener hears. In another breaking of conventions, the song also starts off with a simple piano melody before building to include the full orchestra. This parallels the way Introduction to the Snow sweeps both Simon and the listener right up to the metaphorical edge of the cliff before dropping away to give room for the whistling of the wind. While it is very faint, there is also a soft whooshing noise underscoring all of Stranded Lullaby, this could be the crashing waves of the sea that Simon is floating in, the blood rushing in his head post time machine breakdown, or a callback to the same wind at that cliff's edge from the beginning of the album about thirty-five minutes ago. Swirling in the middle of the ocean, Simon is remembering his life in flashes, all while mourning the fact that Stella is not there with him. Yet this song acts as Simon’s apology to Stella, he is apologizing for not being strong enough when she needed him. The lyrics, “I’d like to know why you are all alone while I’m lost at sea, maybe we’ll be there when you want,”²³ is Simon accepting that it is Stella’s turn to make the decisions now. He is recognizing the pain and loneliness that she has been experiencing this whole time instead of assuming that she automatically wants to shed everything and run into his arms. He also acknowledges his own bizarre behavior with the time machine ploy²⁴ and accepts the fact that Stella might not need him any more in the way that he has needed her. Since the plot has been Simon-centric, Stella has had this whole time to move on while he has been literally and figuratively stuck in the past. As the rest of the orchestra fades and the piano takes center stage, the metaphor between love and the rainbow comes back again Simon’s final acceptance acknowledges that he might be the loose end that Stella needs to snip. She must decide whether she is cutting the thread or mending the patch, and since Simon has had all the time in the world, she deserves the time to figure it out for herself. Dream Sweet in Sea Major Being the last song on the album, Dream Sweet in Sea Major has a lot of wrapping up to do…and oh boy does it do so. Exactly seven minutes long and featuring references to every other song off the album, Dream Sweet in Sea Major is a satisfying conclusion to both Simon and Stella’s story but also to the musical arc of the whole piece. The first verse of Dream Sweet in Sea Major is a callback to the first verse of Introduction to the Snow, complete with the melodic piano and the ominous whistling. Here, Simon directly acknowledges Stella as a siren and that certain promises may have been empty, but also that being with her is the only conceivable option and they will ascend to heaven together. As Hawley adds a distinctly 1940’s style croon to his voice, Simon states “it’s now and never…as tall as another realm”²⁵, marveling that he and Stella are stuck in-between realities, but at least they are experiencing Heaven together. Referencing Space Station level 7 with the French portion, the thin lines between flying and dying get blurred, but after all, the spectres in Space Station Level 7 do float up to Heaven so they are presumably the same thing. Around three minutes and forty seconds into the song, a very quiet voice repeats the “hues arranging” verse from Black Rainbows, implying that Stella has accepted Simon’s apology and they can resume their love story once more. Suddenly, the beat drops, Joe Hawley dons a horrendous French accent, and signs off by saying, “pure delights surround us as we sail, signed, yours truly, the whale.”²⁶ This is a reference to Joe Hawley’s personal social media accounts and his website, whalejoey.com, as whalejoey as an anagram of Joe Hawley. Acknowledging the falsity of the album and jumping in to say goodbye gives the ending a little bit of levity as Simon and Stella fade from focus. Now, the ending of the song is about Hawley saying goodbye to this piece of art that he created with all of his bandmates and friends, something especially impactful considering this was their first project together after the hiatus of Tally Hall in 2011. As the final verse wishes the listener, “Bye, hi, sigh, Hawaii…invisible to some until it’s time,”²⁷ there is a comforting realization that Hawaii Part II will always be there when you need it. A note about Variations on a Cloud Variations on a Cloud was released as a stand-alone single prior to the official release of Hawaii Part II on September 11, 2012. No, the date was not a coincidence. Joe Hawley did not lose any family or friends to the 9/11 tragedy, he was nowhere near New York or D.C when the events occurred, but for whatever reason, it seems that Hawley feels a deep personal connection to the September 11th attacks. Now, this is not to downplay the events of 9/11 in any way, shape, or form, but it is a tad bit strange that he still feels such a visceral connection to it eleven, fourteen, and eighteen years later. After the release of Variations on a Cloud and Hawaii Part II, everything was looking pretty good, until Hawley started making the claim that the entire album was actually about 9/11 and nothing else. Obviously, everyone else who worked on the album was very confused by this, as they had no idea what he was talking about and had not made any of the songs with the intention of it being about 9/11. In 2015, Hawley released a music video for Variations on a Cloud on YouTube that featured footage of people jumping from the second tower; it was taken down almost immediately and can only be found on his website. The backlash from this event is what prompted Andrew Horowitz to step out and admit that the rest of Tally Hall had been noticing a significant decline in Hawley’s mental health and that the treatment he was getting by fans was not helping his increasingly erratic behavior. In 2019, Hawley participated in a Zoom interview with @band.6478 on Youtube (he inexplicably has the camera quality of a broken dial-up phone) where he doubles down on his thesis that Hawaii Part II is indeed about 9/11, but also leaves it up for audience interpretation and says he enjoys reading all of the theories about it. And so, Variations on a Cloud marked the beginning of the end for Joe Hawley, Miracle Musical, and his relationship with his former bandmates and friends. A recluse and an enigma, Hawley was last heard to be living in Florida and fans are encouraged not to interact with him out of respect for his condition. Hawaii Part II opens up a lot of really beautiful conversations about the ability, or lack thereof, to separate the Art from the Artist. The entire album is embedded with Joe Hawley’s influence; which is fantastic when you consider him as a gifted lyricist and sound engineer, but detrimental when you consider him as a mentally ill man who is seemingly opposed to treatment. Yet beautifully enough, Hawaii Part II cannot exist if Hawley is removed from the equation, the wordplay and distinct Tally Hall sound make the album unequivocally his. With themes of isolation, the spirals of loneliness, and lost love, one cannot help but draw parallels between Hawley’s tumultuous life in the limelight and Simon’s own narrative. But ultimately since the plot has never actually been confirmed and no one has heard from Joe Hawley since 2022, there are some questions that will just never be answered. Works Cited Hawley, Joseph. Inside the Mind of Simon. 2006. Hawley, Joseph. Song, Introduction to the Snow. Ross Federman, Dec 12, 2012. Timestamp: 0:30. Hawley, Joseph. Song, Introduction to the Snow. Ross Federman, Dec 12, 2012. Timestamp: 1:15. Scott, Beverley J. “Inner Spiritual Voices or Auditory Hallucinations?” Journal of Religion and Health, vol. 36, no. 1, 1997, pp. 53–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27511090. Hawley, Joseph. Song, Isle Unto Thyself. Ross Federman, Dec 12, 2012. Timestamp: 0:36. Ibid. Timestamp: 0:42. Ibid.Timestamp: 1:38. Tally Hall. Song, Ruler of Everything. Timestamp: 0:55. Hawley, Joseph. Song, White Ball. Ross Federman, Dec 12, 2012. Timestamp: 0:25. Ibid. Timestamp: 0:58. Ibid. Timestamp: 2:24. Hawley, Joseph. Song, Murders. Ross Federman, Dec 12, 2012. Timestamp: 0:19. Goethe, Johann. “The Erlkonig.” 1782. Hawley, Joseph. Song, Murders. Ross Federman, Dec 12, 2012. Timestamp: 0:45. Dante’s Inferno - Circle 7 - Cantos 12-17. danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/circle7.html. Link to the album cover art Hawley, Joseph. Song, Labyrinth. Ross Federman, Dec 12, 2012. Timestamp: 1:13. Ibid. Timestamp: 1:55. Hawley, Joseph. Song, Time Machine. Ross Federman, Dec 12, 2012. Timestamp: 0:07. Ibid.Timestamp: 0:55. Dante’s Inferno - Circle 7 - Cantos 12-17. danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/circle4.html. Hawley, Joseph. Song, Time Machine. Ross Federman, Dec 12, 2012. Timestamp: 3:20. Hawley, Joseph. Song, Stranded Lullaby. Ross Federman, Dec 12, 2012. Timestamp: 0:40. Ibid. Timestamp: 1:18. Hawley, Joseph. Song, Dream Sweet in Sea Major. Ross Federman, Dec 12, 2012. Timestamp: 1:09. Ibid. Timestamp: 4:35. Ibid. Timestamp: 5:50.x