What Fire Teaches About What Survives

What Fire Teaches About What Survives

London, September 1940The German bombing has been continuous since September 7th. Last night the fires in the East End were visible from here, orange against low clouds, the kind of light that makes the city look like something from the industrial paintings that Dore...
Why Holy War Cannot Be Metaphor

Why Holy War Cannot Be Metaphor

Present Day, July 4, 2026Some listeners will hear Holy War and experience it as a historical document, a meditation on something that happened in other centuries to other people. I understand why. History provides distance. Distance provides comfort.I am writing this...
The Day Both Songs Arrived

The Day Both Songs Arrived

Present Day, July 2, 2026I Am Crying and Holy War are in the world now. Two testimonies that belong together, that I kept together when the release schedule shifted rather than separate them, because they are the two sides of the same fact: what the thing witnessed...
The Most Accurate Thing I Have Seen on Canvas

The Most Accurate Thing I Have Seen on Canvas

Paris, June 1937Guernica is hanging at the Spanish Pavilion of the International Exposition on the Champ de Mars. I stood in front of it for two hours today. I have been in enough wars to have personal reference points for what this painting documents.Picasso has not...
The General’s Words and the Five Centuries Behind Them

The General’s Words and the Five Centuries Behind Them

Present Day, June 26, 2026A United States military commander recently described the current conflict in the Persian Gulf as a holy war intended to bring about the second coming of Christ. He said this to the people he commands: the people who will carry out the...