A reader compliments Matt on his rhapsodic post on his favorite opera, La Boheme.

Matt responds:

Thank you for your generous words!

I absolutely believe that great music and great art are the melding of two dimensions.  There is a theory that we are living in a realistic dimension, and that adjacent to it is a parallel dimension exactly the same as our own, only truly based in the spirit and not the materialistic.  That place is where we should be probing to answer the call of the quest for perfection, which is impossible.

I always felt that music is the voice of the other dimension, the parallel universe.  Puccini had to be a bridge from one to the other.  Many of the great artists of the world of music—Pink Floyd, the Beatles, the old Negro spirituals, the great operas, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, the music of the passion of love—music has the ability to bring me to tears.

If I can sit alone watching the waves, the sunsets, or the sunrises in far corners of the universe, I can close my eyes and truly see the magnitude of God, not as an outward but an inward expression.  It can make me cry, or periodically, laugh hysterically.  It’s definitely touching my soul.

For someone to say that my art is making that expression on other people, is the ultimate compliment, because in reality, that is what I’m trying to do:  to be part of the process of bringing the parallel dimension of spirituality to our reality, so that we become kinder, more trusting, more trusted, more accepting, more loving, and that we personally are in charge of an infinitessimal but magnificent part of making that transition.

Thanks again for your comment, and keep me in your prayers,
Lamb