The Laurel Leaf, Part 5: Purpose Is No Country You Can Find

I’m so glad you finally got to see it.

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 3: A New Empire in Rags

The song needs what the song needs.

The Laurel Leaf, Part 2: All the Mountains That You Could Climb

Your song has to make any listener, anyone at all, want to hear it over and over again, every minute of every day, until you make another one that makes them want to do the same. Your songs have to be a cupids arrow that hits their heart every time, that makes them love it so much it hurts.

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.

A Word in Your Ear, From Father to Son (Part 2)

Know that the air you breathe, I live to give you, and know that while you live and breathe, you are powerful.

A Word in Your Ear, From Father to Son (Part 1)

Let me tell you, then, about the time I slew the great big dragon.

People Who Love People

Someone turned the air purple. London has its pea-soupers and we have our borscht.