How do I go? Tell me. How do I go? How do I go with you? How do I pack a bag, Close a door, Turn a key, Walk away? Look at where I am And who I am And tell me. Is there something I don’t know? How do I go? How can I go with you?
But everything you know is true And everything you want to do And everything that makes you you Collides against the night. And nothing’s black and white.
JRB: The poignancy of Francesca’s choice is that we believe it could have gone either way. Marsha and I felt that we would make it even more powerful if Francesca were still young enough to see the possibility of starting a new life with Robert.
At first glance, it may seem as if Francesca and Robert have very similar types – they both are ISFx types. However, looking at their function stacks reveals that their types are actually quite different, which can help describe the ways they are able to fall in love so quickly and passionately. Both are feeling types, with Robert’s dominant introverted feeling (Fi) and Francesca’s auxiliary extraverted feeling (Fe), and their stacks follow a similar pattern but with entirely different functions.
Francesca’s dominant function is introverted sensing (Si), which is what gives her such a strong connection to her past and the routines she learns to love with her family. She spends a lot of her time looking on how the past has brought her to where she is, shown in many songs such as “To Build A Home” and “Almost Real”. But we can see how her life is shaken entirely when Robert arrives in her life. His presence causes her to use more of her inferior extraverted intuition (Ne) and see many more possibilities in the world. With his auxiliary extraverted sensing (Se), he is able to jump in the moment and help her to see his side of things.
Robert’s Se makes it a lot easier for him to act in the moment and make decisions on a whim, which works well for his job as a wandering photographer. This is also why he is able to quickly form an attachment to Francesca and isn’t afraid to act on it. He ends up asking her to leave with him in “One Second and a Million Miles”, and talks about how he feels as if he has finally managed to find where he can truly connect with the world. Francesca’s deeper connections with the world, such as how she uses Si to stick to what she knows, are able to help him in this way. He wants to show her all of the different possibilities she has never considered because of her inferior Ne.
As mentioned before, both Francesca and Robert are feeling types. Robert’s Fi causes him to play by his own rules and think about what he believes is right and wrong, remaining very independent for much of his life. On the other hand, Francesca uses Fe and has a strong connection to other people, namely her family. Robert admires this in Francesca, claiming that her love for her family was one of the things he loves most about her. This also means they have lower thinking functions – tertiary introverted thinking (Ti) in Francesca and inferior extraverted thinking (Te) in Robert. This means they are less apt at using logic to make decisions and plans. The two much better at using their emotions to make decisions, even if sometimes this clouds their judgement. At the end, the two are happy with the decisions they have made, because they were able to share love (“Always Better”).
