The Arrival of Something That Will Not Last the Winter

The Arrival of Something That Will Not Last the Winter

by | Oct 7, 2026 | Journal

Rome, September 1820John Keats arrived in Rome last week from England, accompanied by his friend Joseph Severn the painter. He has come for the climate, his physicians having decided that the warmer Italian air might slow the tuberculosis that has been progressing...
The Portrait Titian Painted Under a False Name

The Portrait Titian Painted Under a False Name

by | Oct 3, 2026 | Journal

Venice, spring 1535 Titian Vecellio painted me this week. He has been after me for two years, since someone in the Venetian patronage circles mentioned that I was one of the more interesting faces in the city, which I took as a warning rather than a compliment. But I...
Following Trade Routes Toward Something I Could Not Name

Following Trade Routes Toward Something I Could Not Name

by | Sep 30, 2026 | Journal

Northern India, early 1503I have been on the road from Delhi for six weeks. The trade routes through this country are ancient in a way that the trade routes of Europe are not: they carry the memory of everything that has ever moved along them, spice and silk and...
The Place You Begin and Can Never Return To

The Place You Begin and Can Never Return To

by | Sep 26, 2026 | Journal

Present Day, late September 2026I was born in Umbria in April 1458 in a small town that no longer exists under the name I would remember it by. My mother died in the hours after I was born. My father was dead before the year was out, killed in a war in Naples that was...
Why the Music, Why Now

Why the Music, Why Now

by | Sep 23, 2026 | Journal

Present Day, summer 2026People ask, in various ways and with various degrees of directness, why I make music. Why not writing, why not painting, why not the other forms I have been in proximity to across five centuries of watching the best practitioners of every art...
Milton Understood the Exile Better Than He Knew

Milton Understood the Exile Better Than He Knew

by | Sep 19, 2026 | Journal

London, 1667I have spent the past three days reading a poem called Paradise Lost, published this year by a man named John Milton. He is blind. He dictated it to his daughters. It is ten thousand lines of blank verse about the fall of Satan, the temptation of Adam and...