I did a book report on The Human Equation

Growing up in a house full of literature ... I knew way before I got into music that there was a lot of great stuff in there, as well as some stuff that was not so great.

The same thing happens with a lot of music, and specially what is known as "progressive", although there are many other things that are not "progressive" that are also long sides and not given a lot of credit for anything but the idea/fact that it is rock music.

Reminds me of the early days of The Moody Blues, when they were using poetry and created a world that had you believing that there was more to these words, then just a bunch of letters. And they were fine until their "poetry" became jargon, and over rated comments on anything and everything. The poetry, or at least the Romantic side of it, was totally gone and replaced with 2nd rate crap.

Ayreon's piece is nice, but if you really want to stretch your imagination into what writers and creative people really do, you should tackle TFTO, or even better, tackle THE SNOW GOOSE, which has no lyrics but it would be a much better, and STRONGER exercise for you if you were able to explain the music as a MOVIE, or a VISUAL for all of us and/or your class.

Having the lyrics is kinda cheating, since they "tell you" what this is all supposedly about, which is a huge fallacy in rock music, btw, and you need to be aware of it ... sort of like a play in the theater ... on Friday it works, on Saturday it doesn't and on the Sunday matinee the kids are laughing ... and you have no idea why this happens and how the material can be "so different" each and every time!

I did, in my directing days, on a class on Opera Directing (with Peter Mark - Emeritus of the Virginia Opera), a movie version of Puccini's TOSCA, and when I lined it up in the blackboard, and examples, I explained the "visuals" as a MOVIE, which got Mr. Mark all excited, and he stated that I solved almost all the issues and problems that opera had on stage. And I, said ... let's get it done then! I can tell you that he was more worried about staging his wife's operas than doing a movie like version for TOSCA ... and nothing came out of that, but I have the script and notes from the class still! However, by that time I had seen the ETC LA MAMMA group and they did CARMILLA with simply a huge Victorian bed/couch, and the back window side of it was a very large movie screen ... so when the carriage moved you could see the background in the window changing, and far out stuff like that. 

In my directing days, the only "idea" I wanted was ... IT HAS TO BE REAL AND ALIVE. It's not an idea, and it's not a concept, and it is not based on a set. I loved the empty stages and did my best work on them!

Make a serious impression. What you did is a good thing, but it does not show an original view of the material and the words, since it is all "given" to you at the start, and you believed that the music and the words were right, and matched up perfectly. From an acting, and directing, point of view ... they are not quite that well matched, and could use some serious "directing" on stage to make the presentation better and stronger, rather than the stupid make believe thing that rock music tries hard to get all teenagers excited about!

Hope this helps, but kudos for doing that ... although I would have immediately suggested something better and stronger, not a high school version of a piece of music and lyrics, IN MY BOOK. 

The worst thing, the only bad thing, IMO, is when Arjen Lucassen appears at the end of the performance from inside a shell, like Botticelli's Venus. I find it very ridicolous. For the rest is good enough.

So I hope you can explain the story to me...

Have you seen "the Theathre Equation"? Time ago the whole opera was available on youtube but I think it has been removed.