The German term “Gesamtkunstwerk,” coined by Richard Wagner to describe his music-dramas, comes to mind with multimedia work. “Gesamt” can mean either “whole” or “integrated,” making the various media of a multimedia work dependent on each other to convey the artist’s intentions. Wagner’s ten operas are spectacular music achievements, but the other elements of the dramas are weak, fussy, derivative. Furthermore, the music can be successfully extracted from the poetry; in other words, it is not completely dependent.

There can be no more disastrous artistic occasion in history than the moment when Wagner decided to create multimedia rather than “pure music:” symphony, chamber music. The failures of many of his early masterpieces bred a deep resentment that manifested itself in ludicrous essays. Musicologists scour Wagner’s scores in search of parallels to his anti-Semitic diatribes. This is surely a downside to multimedia; if one element of the cocktail is infected, the alcohol masks the taste.

My multimedia project is concerned with Wagnerian infiltration. The little girl ultimately infiltrates Wagner with her selfishness. The Grandmother reinforces Wagner’s anti-Semitism which is unapparent in the music itself. Finally, Wagner’s face, over-exposed and distorted, is the only visual element. In an exercise of restraint, I tried to excise myself from the piece entirely. I have no personal identification with little girls or old women. Furthermore, everyone in my family loves Wagner.

“Will it snow, friday at dusk?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I’m seeing someone then.”
“Who?”
“This woman. She has a beautiful lower back and she always wears pink silk pullovers. She rides bicycles like you..quite thrifty really.”
“What are you doing together?”
“We’re seeing Wozzeck.”
“How romantic. I’ve always hated Berg. I’ve always hated Viennese composers in general.”
“I’ve always hated you and I really don’t care. I’m Austrian.”
“Careful as you step out, the fichus is unhealthy.”
“I am in the habit of looking at things before I step on them, Sheryl.”
“You make me depressed.”
“I’m wearing Chanel, usually that makes you…frisky.”
“No longer. Hide the moon, hide the stars. Don’t look anyone in the eye.”
“Won’t you wish me luck on my date?”
“How will our marriage ever come together?”

1. My memory is so horrible not because I don’t remember things but because it blurs places and scenarios together. Details churn into other details and before I know it our living room in Tokyo is like our living room in New Jersey, and the achievements of my older sister when she was in kindergarten become my achievements in kindergarten. My memories have mixed and mismatched themselves to such an inordinate degree I define myself more by paperwork. Therefore my specific place is a filing cabinet, and not a journal because I found journal writing terribly inappropriate.
2. Enough of family, the really fascinating character of my life for the past seven or so years has been a tall swimmer named Geoffrey. Or rather, I’m sure that he defines himself by his height and his athleticism, and perhaps in some inverted way his own affluence and attractive features. Geoffrey goes to Harvard and I used to think the reason I acknowledged him with a smile from afar was because we had something in common. Pictures lie, he isn’t fat now.
3. One summer I came to the familiar epiphany that there is never authentic union between people. I say this is familiar because hasn’t every great philosopher made the same realization himself, in greater words and to greater effect, over the years? So I can give the clever answer, since I see these as answers, that I have always been alone, even in the most intimate of beds and pianos.
4. It was idle summertime, and I was entering my junior year of high school. In my sophomore year of high school I had been subjected to The Stranger in French class; it depressed me immensely. It was during that summer, however, that an existential panic ensued while my bags were packed and ready to be taken to Gare du Nord and I was sitting in the apartment, solitary, with the exception of a fat pigeon trying to flirt its tail. The moment of crisis was instigated by my, just for a instant, or a millisecond, or some ineffably small unit of time, fully grasping the inescapability of death. I hyperventilated, scared the bird away, and eventually calmed down enough to get myself to the train station and snooze on the ride home, only to find I could not explain my crisis to either of my parents.
5. If we are always alone, then on a classical concert stage we are loneliest. Gaspard de la Nuit is considered by many to be the hardest piano composition in the repertoire and I spent a year of patient exercise learning it. When it came time to perform the full suite, in an icy month, friends came with a patronizing air.

In my need for acknowledgement

I forgot that I despise my husband.

Perhaps my hope that one day

a poem of mine (maybe this one)

will astonish him is the only thing

keeping the ring on my finger.

Dear Grandson,

            In response to your energetic letter last week, I must tell you, in all frankness and honesty, that you must see exactly where money can get you before embarking on a career in the arts. Grandmother and I know you are talented, but there is always time for creativity later in life. What if you find one day, stuck in the middle ages, and by that I mean “mid-life crisis,” that you are barren, no longer able to procreate with the achievements of the masters? What would happen? Of course you would be bereft of all sense of meaning.

            This class you intend to take — I can just predict what will pass. To initiate “the class devoted to creative inertia” it will seem logical to every scoundrel in attendance to become so uninhibited that that quiet owl (an economics major from some milquetoast family, who out of accidental instruction found himself in creative writing), a testament to anxious prudishness, should be hanging from the chandeliers blushing nude, singing uncalled for, revealing nonsense. Let the argument be made that no man, woman, bisexual, or nocturnal-winged-creature ever truly knows another man, woman, etc. And that sometimes the most treasured facets of relationships are suspicions and mysteries. Be warned that the mutual goal of those relativistic sinners is to achieve artistic proficiency through emotional invasion. It will be like a narcotic (the real kind will be readily available if I imagine that pernicious crowd, in the middle of no where and buried in snow, correctly). Don’t sell yourself to creative pretensions.

            Anyway, your Grandmother and I are of course tremendously proud of you and in our retirement you are the principle focus of our attention and the source of all our amusement. We should hope that you have not chosen this “ expressive” career-path (a misnomer) in hopes that our deaths will finance it. If you do take this course rather than, oh, something constructive, be wary of every phrase’s meaning; it may be denouncing your very definition behind your back, under your arms, between your fingers.

With affection,

Grandfather and Grandmommy

02.13.08