Writing report.
Like a proper nineteenth-century artist-genius I like to do my work last minute in fits of desperation and sublime inspiration.
Tonight we are developing a grand theory, which has nested in our minds for weeks, reading Vernon Lee's gothic tale "A Wicked Voice" as an intricate critique of hegemonic ideals of aesthetic theory from the side of those ideals. The chilling ghost story relates a musicological battle between Wagner and the baroque opera set on the stage of fin de siècle Venice, as the effeminate ghost of a castrato singer hunts down the composer Magnus and tragically prevents him from finishing his Tannhäueresque grand work. Venus in the Mountain is an over-sexualised, uncannily high-pitched voice which troubles the composer's composition.
In a surprising twist everything is revealed to the avid student of history, as its complete contradiction. The author in reality hated Wagner with a passion (or rather, without a passion), and the protagonist/narrator has by the end of the work, rather than simply become obsessed with the past, actually finally, after years of copying his idol, come across some original inspiration. It is frigtening to him only, we realise, because he is the inadequate product of his time.