There were some echoes of a quote from Mark Twain running through my head for a couple days, and I finally found it:

Mark Twain at Bayreuth, on seeing "Tristan and Isolde":

"I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven. But by no means do I ever overlook or minify the fact that this is one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life."

I like the part about the groping savage.