The Gospel According to Judas - A Handbook on Life

> From this.

I have a great love of music. Not that I play any instrument — not in the real world, at least. When the visions started proper, I remember while listening to a violin concerto by Mozart, when I (on the fly, right there on the spot) added another violin to the tune, in my mind, completely original in melody — that fit just right with the melody that was playing with the other instruments. It came so naturally, this ability, that in my own head, I could improvise music as easily as talking. Like playing guitar, the theme of the movie Romeo & Juliet, in the style of Hendrix and Satriani, Clapton and Stevie Ray, instrumentals that they never played, perfectly rendered in the sound of my visions. Just a shame no one in the real world could hear it.

One interesting thing to be done in the visions was to put emotion behind and through the notes. This was done by summoning through will a flow of sentiment, like a pressure of passion directed toward a novel use. As if rendering a new or intensified meaning to the music as it played. Through any instrument: to render solemnity to a flute’s cool flow, to put passion behind an electric guitar’s thrash, augment the sadness in a solo violin’s weeping. And with vocals, also to make the words to carry meaning more than ever before was written in them: love, anger, victory. As Beethoven once told me, one must drive the music. So for my own enchantments, I will have no magic wand, but a conductor’s baton. For the holy sometimes peeks into the music, beyond magic, in these my private hearing, and I must find the path where all paths meet: where the holy begins and ends.