Sanctified Hunger: What the Album Is

Sanctified Hunger: What the Album Is

by | Jun 9, 2026 | Journal

Present Day, June 9, 2026Let me be precise about what Sanctified Hunger is and what it is not.It is not an atheist album. I am not arguing that God does not exist. I have had five hundred and sixty-eight years to gather evidence on that question and it remains...
The Bishop Called Me Damned

The Bishop Called Me Damned

by | Jun 6, 2026 | Journal

Florence, 1473His name was Rinaldo Orsini. A bishop. My cousin by blood, which made the verdict more precise in its particular cruelty.I was fifteen years old. I had been in his household since infancy, sent north from Umbria after the deaths of both my parents. He...
The Audience Understood Before the Curtain Fell

The Audience Understood Before the Curtain Fell

by | Jun 6, 2026 | Journal

Prague, October 29, 1787I have heard music that stopped me before. Bach in Leipzig. Certain late Monteverdi. But what happened in the Nostitz Theatre tonight is something I am still attempting to locate in my memory for comparison and finding nothing adequate.Don...
The Weight of Having Spoken

The Weight of Having Spoken

by | Jun 4, 2026 | Journal

Present Day, June 4, 2026The Geometry of Ruin has been in the world for two weeks. I am still adjusting to what it means to have placed the testimony in public hands, to have allowed something that lived for years in my own accumulated observation to become a thing...
What He Sees When He Looks at His Own Face

What He Sees When He Looks at His Own Face

by | Jun 3, 2026 | Journal

Amsterdam, March 22, 1638Rembrandt van Rijn is thirty-two years old and already painting himself with the attention most men reserve for the face of God. I have been to the workshop twice this week, introduced as a scholar and collector from the south, and each time I...