Present Day, July 28, 2026
The album closes with In My Name because that is always how it closes.
In God’s name. In the name of the faith. In the name of the divine will as interpreted by whoever holds institutional authority at this particular moment in this particular tradition in this particular century. The phrase is the closing argument of every atrocity I have witnessed that was conducted under religious sanction. It arrives at the end of the sequence: after the training, after the ritual, after the damnation of the questioners, after the holy war, after the grief of witnessing all of it: in my name.
I want to be careful about what the song is doing. It is not a representation of God speaking. It is a representation of the institution speaking in God’s name, which is a different thing and the distinction is the entire album. The song is the institution’s final claim: that what has been done, across five centuries of what has been done, was done with divine approval and in the divine name.
I leave the verdict to the listener. I do not preach. I have spent five hundred and sixty eight years watching the preachers and I have no interest in joining their number. What I do is document. What I present is the accumulated record. What happens with that record: that is the work of the people who receive it. In My Name is the last track because it is the last word of every institution that has claimed divine authority across five centuries of my witness. I offer it without comment. The comment is the preceding eleven tracks.