Ars Est Mendacium

There's a moment, maybe you remember yours, when music stops being background noise and starts feeling like a mirror. It doesn't happen with the songs that fill school dances or the albums your older cousin swears changed his life. It happens quietly, almost inconveniently. A record finds you, or you find it, and instead of offering escape, it provides exposure. You don't nod along. You pause. You don't feel bigger. You feel seen. Not triumphantly. Uneasily. That's when music becomes something else entirely. It doesn't just fill silence; it replaces it with something heavier. Before you hear your first "real" album, the kind that doesn't just take up space but unsettles it, you think music has a job: to excite, to soothe, maybe to make you feel cool. At fourteen, that was my world. Music blasted from passing cars, rattled locker doors, and soundtracked weekends. It was adrenaline and swagger, drums to bang your head to, lyrics to scribble in notebo...

It begins on Maundy Thursday, the kind of day where the weight of the world doesn’t come all at once but in small, unremarkable pieces. A child wants to wear something impractical. A husband moves too slowly. A wife, already overwhelmed, tries to hold everything together. Abbe Deighton, the wife in question, has a full day ahead and plans for the evening. To make room for it all, she leaves her daughter Cleo with a friend. Not the friend she first thought of, but one close enough. A safe choice, she believes. The kind of everyday compromise parents make constantly. But by nightfall, the road outside that friend’s house is clogged with police, neighbors, and blue lights. Cleo is gone. Some novels teach, some entertain, and some simply sit with you.  Come Sunday , Isla Morley’s first does the last. It does not move with urgency. It does not try to dazzle. It opens a door to grief and leaves it open, inviting you to stand in the doorway and feel the air turn cold. Morley’s writing is ...

The first time I saw Job’s arm at the Richmond Museum of Fine Arts, I didn’t think about theology. I thought about hospitals. Specifically, the way someone looks when they’re beyond needing help and just want to be seen. His body was curled inward, as if someone were trying to disappear into their own bones. But the arm reached up. That arm changed everything. It’s a pale, drawn thing, ribs visible, skin translucent, hand half-open like it forgot what fists are for. Reaching not like he expects an answer, but like asking the question is all he has left. He’s alone, lit by an eerie lunar light that makes him look more like stone than flesh, though he’s definitely still alive. Barely. Around him sit three men cloaked in silence. Their backs are turned to us or their faces obscured. One might be looking at him, or maybe just through him. They don’t touch him. They don’t help him. They’re just there. Watching. The painting is called  Job’s Comforters , and it was painted by Alfred Bram...

In 1988, a young woman was raped in a bar. On a pinball machine. While men cheered. It wasn’t a headline, though it easily could have been. It was a scene from a film called  The Accused . But the horror of it didn't feel distant or fictional. It felt too real. Too familiar. The kind of thing we hope never happens, but know in our bones already does. The woman was named Sarah Tobias. She had messy hair, a denim jacket, and a loud mouth. She was played by Jodie Foster, who wasn’t supposed to get the part. Studios didn’t think she was right for it. Too smart, too reserved, too Yale. But Foster wanted it, fought for it. And when she got it, she gave it everything. Sarah Tobias is not the kind of victim movies usually give us. She drinks. She dances. She argues. She doesn't look for sympathy. She demands it. And that’s what made her unforgettable. You couldn’t tuck her into a corner of your conscience and move on. You had to sit with her. All of her. The story unfolds like this: Sa...

The boat was waiting for us. Not dramatically. Not with fanfare or creaking grandeur. Just quietly, the way old truths tend to wait, tied gently to the dock in Cambridge, Maryland. Her hull white and unbothered, her lines taut against the pilings, her sails bundled like folded hands. Her name, painted just above the rail in crisp lettering, was  Nathan of Dorchester . The day was bright. The air smelled like river salt and sunscreen. A few of us stood at the edge of the harbor, squinting, not entirely sure what to expect. This wasn’t a thrill ride or a reenactment. No pirate flags. No costumed guides. Just a skipjack and the people who loved her. And so we climbed aboard. At first, you don’t think about history. You think about footing. The slight give of the deck. The ropes underfoot. The unexpected intimacy of being on a boat powered only by wind and bodies. There’s no engine hum. No digital screens. Just the creak of wood and the sound of someone asking if you’ll help raise the ...