The Play Will Make It Okay

You will blame innocent people for your affliction, and you will hoard, and you will trample upon your fellow man, and you will make merry among yourselves, and even till the angel knocks on your very door you will never cease to fill the world with your noise.

The Laurel Leaf, Part 4: All This Sound From a Single Tone

That’s what an Orphic response is. It’s being affected by music for its own musicality. It’s not just a sad song, with a sad story behind it, but sad music itself. It makes a listener respond, no matter their background, no matter their emotional state, with, well sure, pure catharsis. And just like those Dionysiac cultists found out on accident, there is only one cure for it: Noise. Complete, utter, thudding idiocy. The only way to protect yourself from it is to be too stupid to let it affect you.

The Laurel Leaf, Part 1: Ombra Mai Fu

It’s the sauce that has to be perfect, she said. It’s the pasta’s job to get the sauce to your mouth. In a perfect world the pasta would be perfect too, but it’s not a perfect world, so all the pasta has to do is be not terrible. To me, the music is the sauce, and opera is the pasta that gets the sauce to your mouth.