The Double Edge

The Double Edge

Present Day, May 2026Every technology I have watched arrive has been a double edge, and it has taken me some time to arrive at a settled view about what this means and what the appropriate response to it is.The printing press. The steam engine. The telegraph. The...
Alchemy: What Prague Taught Me

Alchemy: What Prague Taught Me

Prague, late 16th centuryRudolf II’s Prague was a city organized around the belief that the world’s hidden laws could be discovered through sustained, systematic investigation of matter. The alchemists were wrong about the chemistry: base metal cannot be...
Diagnosis, Not Doom

Diagnosis, Not Doom

Present Day, April 2026Some people who have heard Black Sun Rising have described it as pessimistic. I want to address this directly because I think the characterization misses something important about what the song is doing and what the album is doing.Pessimism is a...
Black Sun Rising: What the Song Is

Black Sun Rising: What the Song Is

Present Day, April 24, 2026The song is out now. I want to say something about what it is, because I think the title requires explanation rather than allowing the usual mysterious ambiguity that single titles sometimes perform.The black sun is a specific thing. It is...
The Bonfire of the Vanities

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Florence, 1497I was in Florence when Savonarola organized the Bonfire of the Vanities. I stood in the Piazza della Signoria and watched it burn. Mirrors. Books. Musical instruments. Paintings. Cosmetics. Games. Anything that could be construed as bringing pleasure to...
The Ember Is Not Nothing

The Ember Is Not Nothing

Various, consolidatedI want to say something about survival, because the album is not only about collapse and I do not want the record of my thinking in this period to suggest that I believe collapse is the whole story.I have survived plagues. Multiple ones, at...