it's time to go
- it's time to go / Better Man (TV) (Eras Tour, Gelsenkirchen)
Business loss: the decision to leave a professional situation that has become untenable, reading the signs that a chapter is definitively over. The song treats departure as wisdom rather than defeat: knowing when the institution or relationship has already ended before anyone has said so.
“When the dinner is cold and the chatter gets old, you ask for me tab”
the locked-away past and the key to reclaim it
“He's got my past frozen behind glass”
“And only you possess the key” — The Fate of Ophelia
Community readers read the buried, locked-away past of The Fate of Ophelia through it's time to go, where the antagonist sits on a "palace of bones" with her past "frozen behind glass." On this reading the rescue from the grave and the key that unlocks the memory gather up the masters story — the catalogue held hostage, then dug out and reclaimed — so the "you" who holds the key is not only a lover.