The First Song Written Under My Own Name

The First Song Written Under My Own Name

New York City, December 1988I was in a club in lower Manhattan last night. I do not remember the name of the club. What I remember is a particular moment when the music hit something that had been sealed for a long time, and the thing inside came loose, and I left at...
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...
The Music That Named the Distance

The Music That Named the Distance

London, October 1982There is a club on Meard Street in Soho that opened this year. The Batcave. I have been three times now, standing in the back where the sound is slightly less total, watching something happen that I recognize from other moments in other centuries:...
The Audience Understood Before the Curtain Fell

The Audience Understood Before the Curtain Fell

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 Forms That Bearing Witness Takes

The Forms That Bearing Witness Takes

Present Day, March 2026For centuries I documented in journals. The journals from my early years in Florence are careful and specific: names, dates, conversations, the details of events that I suspected would be significant before I could be certain they were. The...