Götterdämmerung - The Ring

Last night in the opera, a dead man held up his finger on which had been placed the coveted ring from The Ring Cycle. This was too much mysticism for our audience and they laughed, the same audience who were spell bound and not laughing during the National Theatre’s presentation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein last year.

Obviously that English audience doesn’t live in the same house I do in London, or they would have been able to make the leap from reality to fantasy. For example, last night I woke 3 times to what I thought was karaoke or singing in a pub or people gathered in the house next door sitting around the table and singing their hearts out with a beer in one hand and their arm around a companion as well. No one warned me that I would hear this in my attic room all night, when I moved up there a week ago. As well, Rebecca has a sign on the doorbell: the doorbell doesn’t work; knock or flip the mail slot. Still, at odd times during the day, the doorbell rings, and no one is there. As well, night and day, the toilet burps. A blat of noise, as though a bubble has risen through the water from the centre of the earth and made its way up to the surface through our toilet -- no one anywhere near the bathrooms.

I am going to stay with the idea, that if a dead man holds up his gold ring just before he is slipped into the funeral pyre, that is not too much suspension of disbelief if you live at this house.

Arta