What the Grief Actually Is

What the Grief Actually Is

Present Day, June 23, 2026I Am Crying requires some explanation because grief is a word that gets used loosely and what I mean by it is specific.Ordinary grief has a trajectory. It is sharpest at the moment of loss and then, for most people, it softens over time into...
Two Songs, One Day: July 1

Two Songs, One Day: July 1

Present Day, June 20, 2026I Am Crying and Holy War arrive together on July 1. I want to explain why these two, and why together.They are the two poles of what witness costs. Holy War is the external: what I have watched across five centuries of religiously sanctioned...
What Institutional Violence Looks Like

What Institutional Violence Looks Like

Florence, April 26, 1478Giuliano de Medici was stabbed nineteen times in the Cathedral this morning during High Mass. Lorenzo escaped, barely, through the sacristy. The signal for the attack was the elevation of the host. They used the consecrated moment. They always...
Twelve Tracks, Five Centuries

Twelve Tracks, Five Centuries

Present Day, June 18, 2026The full arc of Sanctified Hunger, as briefly as I can describe it:Well Trained is the precondition: the systematic surrender of judgment that institutions require before they can operate without resistance. I Was Never Yours is the refusal:...
Everything Counted, Nothing Wasted

Everything Counted, Nothing Wasted

Leipzig, Good Friday, 1729Johann Sebastian Bach performed his St. Matthew Passion at the Thomaskirche today. A three-hour work for double choir and double orchestra. I sat in the back of the nave and did not move for the entire duration and when it ended I could not...