"I don't sleep with Satan."  So stated Swedish organist Anna von Hausswolff in an interview in which she responded to a line in one of her songs that states she does exactly that.  Yet as she makes clear in this interview, Hausswolff, whose ethereal organ playing and the surreal lyrics with which she surrounds it seem to nod to the factuality of the lord of the other side, does not consider herself an aficionado of traditional religion.  Satan is not the issue for her.     Her music, however, resounds with otherworldliness.

    Performed in a darkened auditorium or cathedral, it  comes upon the listener as a voice from the beyond, as a harbinger of mysteries outside of normal human ken.  It urges us to open our eyes and heart to what might lie between the lines of material existence, a realm of activity which we may long to understand, but can never seem to grasp fully.  It's a bit like Rudolph Otto's picture of holiness, a presence that at once fascinates and frightens us, yet a presence which we do not think we can do without:  dread and awe.

    Maybe that's Hausswolff's point.  We can dispute the veracity of her response, we can reject her seeming pointers to another world, we can dismiss Otto's framework. We can set all our thoughts and aspirations in a totally material box.  And never look outside it.

    Perhaps.  Yet why do we keep looking?