Strange visitor from another profession, you know me as a mild-mannered blogger for the Every Other Daily Planet. Because I was scheduled to teach a class at Stanford University (surprise, I am a computer geek by profession), I managed to miss all of the dress rehearsals of the Ring. But I did get to see The Valkyrie yesterday afternoon, and will see Twighlight of the Gods today. For me, every opera I see is a new experience. Hearing the Valkyries sing "Hojotoho!" was pretty cool (especially after seeing Apocalypse Now). And since I haven't seen much opera (each one being fun and wonderful for different reasons), I will not play at being an opera critic and comment on the performance. Besides, Green Cryptography might rob me of my blogger powers. Yet as all the bad puns and allusions may have hinted, I have an insight about the stories we love.

In The Valkyrie, I watched the arc of Wotan's emotions as they roughly followed this path:

1. Bwahh hah hah!
2. Nyah, nyah, Fricka!
3. Drat, Fricka! (Hey Brünnhilde: Do what I mean, not what I say...)
4. Raaar! (Hey Brünnhilde: You were supposed to do what I said, not what I meant!)
5. Fear my wrath, you are so busted!
6. Ummmm... Okay, Brünnhilde, I still gotta punish you, but I'll show you how much I love you, too (and prepare for the Next Episode)

Now, computer geeks are stereotyped (at some points in their lives) as playing Dungeons and Dragons, reading Comic Books, and being otherwise a bit odd. Guilty, guilty, and guilty. I haven't played D&D with my friends since their kids were born, but I still regularly read comix (although we prefer to call them Graphic Novels), and if you think this is an art form for kids, then I strongly encourage you to read Scott McCloud's scholarly (and graphical) Understanding Comics. Sorry, the "a bit odd" part is genetically imprinted – just ask my somewhat more normal girlfriend. But with my trio of character attributes, I noticed a remarkable similarity of Wagner's Wotan to the aforementioned Comic Books.

Some of the characters in the Marvel universe bear a striking similarity to Wotan. One such character is Wolverine, from the recently cinematographied X-Men series. He is far from alone in his emotional gyre, but he too cycles from Raaar! to Brooding but Nice and back again with astounding regularity. We see the same cycles in Kung Fu movies (even in the high art versions like Jet Li's Hero). Greed, guilt, shame, and wrath feature prominantly as points on the emotional compass, but surprisingly love is often present, too (and amazingly, in combination with all of the other emotions).

Why was Wagner so popular in the 1880's to 1920's? Why are Spiderman, Batman, Superman, and the X-Men so popular today? The stories of Greek and Norse mythology and Troy? Why Kung Fu movies? Why Macbeth? Why Rocky? Highbrow or lowbrow, these stories all share something in common: larger-than-life heros and villians, meteoric rises and stellar falls (never mind that meteors fall to earth and stars rise ascendant). We aspire to our hero's graces, we identify with his (or her) good characteristics, and we (re-)learn the lesson of hubris.

I find it interesting that we yearn for the abject lessons we also shun. Who wants a friend to say "I told you so"? Who wants a parent to teach them a lesson? Yet we crave stories that demonstrate the avoidable (yet obvious) falls from heights, because we instinctively know that we would never make those mistakes (or perhaps we know that we would, and in watching we needn't suffer them ourselves). We crave stories of redemption and reconciliation because they show our own greater good (or at least the good for which we all aspire) and make us feel better that someone can ultimately get it right. And perhaps we crave the "Raaar!" of our larger-than-life heros to make up for the societal shackles we put on our own emotions, but we also need the remorseful Nice Guy to balance it all out. Or maybe we all just like a good yarn, a story to ruminate on, an escape from whatever our mundane day-to-day may be.

I hope that in documenting the rehearsals and preparations for the Ring, I have given my readers a good yarn or two, and given you all a thing or two to ruminate on. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so (and escape from my mundane day-to-day), because believe me, it has been a lot of fun. And stay tuned for the Next Episode, because Pagliacci is coming, and you won't believe some of the odd associations I've made there.

Raaar!