Kill the Wabbit! or Anticipating The Ring

Opera...

Most people don't give opera a second thought. Or a first thought, for that matter. I mean, it's kind of a dead form of entertainment, right? That's certainly what I used to think about it. And you could make a case for that, I suppose, since it's a relatively limited form of entertainment. Not that it has to be that way, but it requires a lot of training and, well, there are all sorts of things I could get into about this, but none of it's what this post is about, so we can have that discussion some other time.

However, despite the fact that opera has become rather exclusive, it has influenced popular culture in ways people are unaware of and don't understand. Just the influence in music is unmistakable, and I don't even know that much about music or music history, but you can find pieces of opera music in, well, everything. Okay, maybe not everything, but it's fairly pervasive. But it's not just music, though I don't have the background (and am not going to do the research right now) to tell you how far the reach of opera is.

I do know enough, though, to be able to say that it's possible that Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle is the foundation of... well, a tremendous amount of our current pop culture. Or at least related to it.

Which brings me to the point: The San Francisco opera is doing the Ring Cycle! [Actually, by the time this posts, I will be in the middle of watching this, but, as I write this, I'm still a day away from Das Rheingold, the prologue to the cycle.] I'm very excited to see this. All 16 hours of it. Yeah, you heard me: 16 hours! Don't worry; it's divided into four operas presented on four, almost consecutive evenings (though there are opera houses who present the cycle in one marathon performance!).

In preparation for this (this is such a big deal, you have to buy tickets a year in advance!), my wife got me a copy of Das Rheingold for Christmas. It's a dvd of a revolutionary production of the cycle. We only just last week sat down and finally watched it, and the threads of influence are almost immediately apparent. I'll tell you the big three, which should be self-explanatory enough for you to get what I mean about it being foundational: The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Marvel Comics. Not to mention Bugs Bunny. It was well worth the watch even if I hadn't like it.

But I did like it! It was a good and interesting story and it's too bad that people are so unfamiliar with it these days.

One thing of note: The opera is done recitative. I'm pretty sure there are no arias in the entire thing. If you've followed my opera reviews at all, you'll know that I pretty typically do not like operas done entirely recitative. Generally speaking, this is due to the music more than the actual style. For some reason, post-Wagner operas done recitative tend to have very droning music with very little melody that -- for me, anyway -- makes it difficult to stay focused. It's like a very aggressive way to put people to sleep. But that wasn't the case with Das Rheingold. Despite the recitative quality, the music was very melodic, soaring in places, even. I wonder what changed with people after Wagner. Or maybe it's just a matter of skill? I don't know.

I do know, though, that I'm pretty sure that opera should not be a thing of the past.

Be Vewy Qwiet...

...I'm hunting wabbits.

One night last week, when we were out on the evening walk with the dog, we came across a rabbit in a field off the trail. Actually, it was a hare, but people always get so confused when you talk about seeing hares or wild hares, so, you know, we'll keep it simple and just call "him" (because I'm deciding it was a him) a rabbit. I'm sure he doesn't really mind, because, well, he can't read. I hope. Because, if he can read, humanity may be in trouble.

Anyway...
We were out walking; my wife and I were way ahead of the pack of kids that were lollygagging with lizards and naked ladies behind us.

This kind of naked lady. Yeah, I know what you were thinking...

Out in the field on  the other side of the fence, was a rabbit. It was sitting up with its very long ears sticking straight up, and we stopped to watch it. The tall grass in the field beyond probably starts about 60' or so away from the trail, and the rabbit was about midway between us and the grass. (and I wish I had a picture, but I wasn't carrying the camera) The girls, my daughter and her two neighbor friends, were making a lot of noise, so, as they got close enough, I called out to them that there was a rabbit. Now, this was meant to be the signal for them to approach quietly, you know, like Elmer always says; however, it actually resulted in a mad dash toward us and even more noise, and, of course, the rabbit scampered away. It did stop just before hopping into the tall grass, so they did get to see it, but it's not like they got to observe it the way my wife and I (and dog) had been before they crashed in on us. Even the dog knew to be quiet.

The problem with the girls is that they all want to talk at once, and I don't mean just to each other. They all want to talk to me at once, and it makes my head feel like it wants to explode. I have flashes of that scene from the Grinch with all the noise all the noise all the noise from Whoville every time they walk with us.

So, last night, there was a squirrel. I love squirrels. I've probably mentioned that before. He (yes, he gets to be a he, too) was sitting up in a branch on a tree eating and chattering away.

Unfortunately, he was too far away for my flash to do any good.

My daughter was, again, lagging far behind, because she was looking for lizards, but my wife and I had stopped (with the dog and the younger boy), so she came running up making a ton of noise, and the squirrel dashed off farther up into the tree (so I didn't get a chance to try and get a better picture). She got to see the squirrel, but she was sad she only got to see it running away.

Is anyone seeing a pattern here?

At that point, my daughter wanted to go ahead of everyone else to see if we could find the rabbit again. I left the dog with my wife and younger son, and my daughter and I went off ahead wabbit hunting.

But not quietly as she was talking talking talking and not with an "inside voice," either. So I told her that if she wanted to see the rabbit, I mean, if she wanted to get a chance to see the rabbit and not just watch it running away, she would need to be quieter. She got mad at me. In fact, she told me I was being mean.

Yeah, seriously. She told me I was mean for telling her that she was being too loud to see the animals. So I explained to her about how the rabbit had run off when she and her friends had come up because of all the noise they were making, and I explained how the squirrel had run off because of all the noise just she had been making. Really, she knew that stuff, but I had to remind her of it. After that, I asked her what was more mean, to tell her that she was being too loud or to allow her to keep being too loud which would mean that she wouldn't be able to see the animals. She mumbled out something about wanting to see the animals and that I wasn't really being mean to tell her she was too loud. She just didn't like it.

I'm hoping that some of the more astute of you are seeing where I'm going with this, because I was immediately struck with the similarity to the way that people react to bad reviews and negative critiques. The reaction is almost always that the reviewer/critiquer is "being mean." The act of telling someone that they are being "too loud" is seen as some malicious act when, really, it may just be that the reviewer person is trying to help the reviewed to "see the rabbit."

Yeah, sure, I know some people are just being mean, but those usually aren't accompanied by the "why"s. In a review, if all you get is "this piece sucked! It was the worst piece of crap ever written!", you might be able to say that the reviewer was just being mean. Not always, though. However, when a reviewer takes the time to say, "I didn't like this and here's what didn't work for me," you can probably be pretty sure that s/he is not being mean but trying to point out some issues with the writing that legitimately need to be improved.

Just like me telling my daughter she was being too loud. She had a goal; she wanted to get to observe the animals, but her goal was not being achieved because she was being so loud she was scaring them away. It was an act of kindness borne from the desire to help that prompted me to tell her that she would need to be more quiet if she didn't want the animals to run away.

In the same way, if I give a review that points out mistakes in the grammar or story structure, it's not out of any desire to "be mean" but is meant as an assistance to the author so that s/he doesn't scare the readers away with the noise of bad grammar, poor punctuation, and weak plots. No, I can't speak for everyone, but I would imagine that anyone out there that's taking the time to say, "hey, this story didn't work and here are the reasons," is not doing that out of spite or any desire to be mean or to hurt someone.

I think it's time we, as a culture, stopped being so adverse to being told we're doing it wrong, to having our feelings hurt, to taking correction. It's the act of being told what we're doing incorrectly that helps us to get it right so that we can achieve our goals.

And, no, we didn't see a rabbit that night, but, if we had, my daughter was being quiet enough that it wouldn't have run away.