I think that's one of the key features that makes the difference between art and craftsmanship. As an artist, you try to create a tight web of associations and symbolism, mostly based on intuition. Often, the associations all run into dead ends quickly, and the resulting work is rather shallow; after a while, you've had enough of it and starting to notice the faults and errors more than its artistic content. However, sometimes a magical thing happens: the associations and symbols and cross-links and connections you've made reach "critical mass", and open up a self-fuelled cascade of perspectives and thoughts; they start leading their own life, and even the artist stands amazed at the ideas it provokes. The artist (not even Picasso himself) doesn't control this process, and doesn't plan everything you see in a work; what makes a good artist is not excellent craftsmanship (although that is pretty much a requirement), it's not being able to plan a work in great detail and execute that plan meticulously: it's being able to lay down the groundwork on which a fascinating, magical thing can unravel.

But then, "writing about music is like dancing about architecture", so writing about this is time wasted (guilty as charged). Some people have that sense that is tickled by good art, others don't. Neither is better, although there are idiot who pretend to have it while they don't, forcing themselves to "enjoy" lengthy plays without any artistic value, or listen to "modern" music (the kind that used to be avant-garde 50 years ago) and pretend to like it, then go on writing long essays about how the particular work is about The Economy, The Universe, Quantum Mechanics, Religion, Mankind As A Whole, or whatever they think art should be about, or worse, they fill column after column with meaningless babbling about the technical skills involved, mainly focusing on the things that go wrong.

Nicely put.
It reminds me that at one point I got really annoyed with Harry Mulisch because for at least some of his work, it seemed obvious that he was stuffing in as much symbolism as possible without any real plan behind it. Just symbolism for the sake of letting people look for meaning in it.

After reading "The Discovery Of Heaven" (or rather, the original "De ontdekking van de hemel"), and not knowing anything about Mulisch except that he was supposed to be an important writer, I spent quite some time wondering whether he was being sarcastic, and mocking the whole Christianity thing, or whether he was actually being serious. The I figured, if a lover of good black sarcasm like me can't figure it out, then it's either a failed attempt at sarcasm, or a failed attempt at a cohesive world view. I then decided I didn't like the book much.

Well, I think given someone has read exactly one book by Mulisch in the past few years, the chances of that book being "The Discovery..." are rather high I'd say - after all, among his books, this is probably the one that got the most international attention.
I don't know, maybe it's a Dutch thing, but I just didn't "get" it. Maybe the Dutch literature still has to recover from those centuries of deep and thorough Calvinism, which for some reason held the country back until long after WWII (and to a certain extent continues to do so). Maybe I just never experienced in person the thing he's mocking in that book.

You think he's dead serious about angels referring to God as "the boss", and meticulously monitoring and manipulating peoples' lives to execute the will of an otherwise omnipotent God? I find that hard to believe.

...all of which is of course ultimate and utter bullshit, excusez le mot, because science and religion are not opposites. There are things we can observe, there is basic logic, and there's Ockham's Razor; these three are enough to bootstrap Science as a whole. Refusing to accept Science and scientific methodology means you don't accept one of:
a) that there is a reality which we can observe, at least partially
b) that the basic rules of logic are valid
c) that given two explanations to a phenomenon, the simpler one is more likely to be correct, all else being equal
Not accepting a) is a valid, yet useless, philosophical point of view - if we cannot observe a reality in any way, then what ground do we have to reason from?
Not accepting b) is theoretically valid too, but it leaves you without any instruments for arguing your point, rendering every conversation pointless by definition.
Not accepting c), probably the most popular one, means you choose your explanation based on what you wish for, rather than what is objectively the best explanation, and again, you have no ground to argue from against someone who picks a different explanation.

Aaaanyway... long story short, I don't like Mulisch, FSM bless his soul.

Aww, I love the author and the story too
I've read it half a decade ago, now happily read it again

By the way I think it's some not-full version:

Append:

Cool thing.