Wagner has kicked Homer out of my heart. What a genius! What a JOURNEY! Hurtling through the woods with the storm roaring around me, the swords and spears of my foes rattling at my back — hearing echoes off the cliffs, over the rush of the Rhine through the trees, of the maidens’ lament burbling up through the water, and the screams of the poor pregnant girl hunched over her soulmate’s bleeding body and the shards of his much-needed sword… then meeting the grey old god wandering over the doomed earth, stumbling over the graves of his son, his daughters, his grandson, piling wood around Valhalla waiting to burn himself down, thinking back to the days when the gods were young and the rainbow bridge glowed with the promise of life… when I see the despair on his face, see the free, fearless hero stabbed in the back by the people he loved, floating down the river in a fog of the past — Glowing flames Fire up my heart To hold him completely, Enfolded in him, In the fire of feeling To be FUSED with him! SIEGFRIED! SIEGFRIED!— oh, WILL! I wish I could help the Valkyrie onto her horse, send her into the pyre — end her torture and pain — and then throw myself in after her.