Dear lovers of music, mystery, and meaning,

👿 “The news outrageous, deep”

This is a line from poet Robert Tear in the unusual Epiphany anthem “The Magi’s Dream” by James Whitbourn that we sang this past Sunday.

The quiet, menacing words of Herod return as an uneasy refrain in this anthem: “That I may come and worship him.”

Violence and murder at the hands of federal police in Minnesota have served as a terrifying corollary. We are facing another ruler and society that seeks to put its own citizens to death, to normalize this action, and to immediately blame the victims for their own murder. 

It is with a dear, desperate hope that we arrived at the end of this anthem: “Satan’s legions to beat.”

📚 In my reading list lately, and that of my 12-year-old (it’s hardly age-appropriate, I know!) is the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman. This, Wikipedia tells me, is a LitRPG, a literary Role-Playing Game. Unfortunately, one of the things that resonates here, too, is the larger society attempting to kill these central characters. (But if you don’t overthink it too much, like I just did, these books are rather wild and fun. And the shared experience I have reading these books almost simultaneously with my tween feels unique.)

Carl has his own quiet refrain: “You will not break me.”

🎸 The first solo album of Swedish bassist Björn Meyer, Provenance, emerged as a salve for our uneasy souls this week. His new album, Convergance, comes out next week. 

Until then,
-David