A related layer is the idea of loops. Loops that end up stuck on repeat in our psyches as we age and continue to manifest in situations that rhyme with each other.Another interpretation I was thinking is that maybe the implication is that these different ages of the people exist together at the same time, either figuratively or literally. That is, it is not showing the passage of time, but rather how one's childhood, adolescence, and adulthood are always a part of the same person for their entire life. Or more literally, imagine if you had a time machine and went back to meet your younger self. Nostalgia and childhood are obviously huge motifs for BoC, so I could certainly see the intent being a message about remembering yourself from the past or keeping in touch with your inner child. I have a gut feeling that this album will be quite dark and similar to Geogaddi and Tomorrow's Harvest tonally, so maybe there is also the inverse meaning--being forced to grow up too fast.
Lots of room for interpretation!
It's like the negative edge of nostalgia. Not necessarily trauma, but the momentum of habit that we are often blind to while ending up in the same difficult situations time and again.
Also related to loops: feedback. The closed loop producing monstrous things with exaggerated features in our lives, dreams, and societies, frightening us until we can cultivate enough equanimity to face them head-on. I think that exaggerated, maybe even cartoonish, character of our demons when left unchecked kind of fits with the bit of camp in the design for Inferno.
I already said it somewhere else, but, to me, I'm getting the feeling this isn't strictly a dark album, but also about the process of turning to face your demons--individually and as a society--in order to transcend and move beyond them. To befriend those exiled aspects of our psyche so we can rescue ourselves from the havoc they can wreak when left unchecked.
It's a recognition that things may get a lot worse, very dark, but it's an inevitable stage in the development of humankind.
