President Obama Wins 2012 - Tod und Verklärung

 Gotterdammerung: Twilight of the Gods (Last opera in Wagner’s Ring Cycle)

Leitmotif: Recurrent themes running through the four operas in Wagner’s Ring Cycle
Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration): Tone Poem for Orchestra by  Richard Strauss

It began as he stepped on the podium and allowed the tuning of instruments to continue.  He looked into the distance and measured a rising tide that began flooding the arena.  His eyes moved to his first chair performers, The Wife and children.  In a short riff, they were established as a leitmotif that had traveled with and through him during his continued journey.  A crescendo began to rise as he moved to his core.  This was the foundation designed to maintain and support the moving parts.  These were the voices which persistently reestablished themes and missions of the movement. 

It would seem as if somewhere in the past, at some point, someone said, “This is the score.  These are the instruments. And here are the numbers you play.  You don’t improvise.”  There was buy-in, discipline, and the will to win.

There was Joe Biden, introduced on a strong downbeat and given levity to improvise and perform at will.  In the crescendo that followed was another unspoken yet strident undercurrent that continued resonating.  Who, having heard it, will forget the word?  Arithmetic!  It was heard once, echoed and remained a background four stroke riff.  It functioned as accepted truth to spoken and unspoken questions.  On this night, there was a warm feeling on realizing that President Clinton probably backed off and again allowed President Obama the evening.

The concert was a litany of four years with great frustrations, but greater successes in many areas.  As it continued, and people began to see and understand what had been accomplished, with so little cooperation from “the other side,” a crescendo began to rise.  With total control of momentum, and nuance, there were times of quiet awe as well as explosive response.  It remained measured until, by design, the crescendo of the moment reached its peak.  It held for a while and then dissolved.   People turned and looked into each other’s eyes.  There was quiet acknowledgement and accepted peace. Old and young faces, some with prayerful hands folded, others embracing, or sitting with a head resting on another shoulder.  There were those looking into the distance, unfocused, accepting and quiet.  Asian, Hispanic, White, Black, all those bodies looking, saying, first softly to themselves, “We did it.”  Then, they exploded.  

In back rooms, another dynamic began as voting counts continued to roll in with blue waves breaking up red sands.  Properties, lives, identities were being unraveled, lost and unrecoverable.  Heads looked up into flaming skies, and with wailing voices cried aloud, “Why, God?”  “Why, me?”

The God of Reason took a graceful moment and allowed the leitmotifs to reveal themselves.  Simple short strophe sounds.  No Latinos, No Blacks, No Asians, No Young People, No Jobs, No Colleges, No . . . .
The Death and Transfiguration has begun.