scoring the news.

Maybe religion doesn’t belong in politics at all. You could argue the division between church and state is so foundational that we ought to sort everything into its lane and expect it to stay put.

Still, even the objective world of journalism acknowledges that “religion is always in the room”—a phrase you’ll come across often at conferences and panel discussions questioning whether reporters ignore the core values and motivations of their sources.

So maybe it isn’t a surprise that the video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez giving a barn-burner of a testimonial in front of the Ebenezer Baptist Church on Mother’s Day this year went viral on TikTok and Instagram but didn’t get a mention in The New York Times.

“We are living in terrifying times, but we are people of faith,” she told parishioners. “And our faith is the foundation that gives us the courage to fight in the face of overwhelming odds.”

The New York congresswoman had just finished thanking Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Georgia Senator, for his invitation to speak before the predominantly Black church in Atlanta that is famed for once being home to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And she would invoke the civil rights leader’s name in her comparison of ordinary people of faith to extraordinary figures.

“Like Deborah, who rose as a judge in a time of cruel kings and said, ‘I will go.’ Like Daniel, who stood firm in the court of a blasphemous king and declared there is a God in heaven. And like Dr. King — baptized in this church on this hallowed ground — who believed in the audacious idea that maybe this country could maybe live up to the promises we made in our founding documents,” she said, before hitting a huge applause line. “I’m here today, brothers and sisters, with a simple message: We stand together and we are not going back.”

When I wrote a score for that speech, with a song I’ve called “Higher Service,” I was inspired that AOC had so perfectly elaborated on something else she said in another venue a day earlier. When asked whether she wants to run for president, she told David Axelrod at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics: “They assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or seat, and my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country.”

The people of faith she described the next day in her Ebenezer speech are in service to something that is always in the room. Though often ignored, it is this higher service that makes every difference.

Is it real now?

How about now?

He just locked kids in cages. What about now?

It’s been eight long years this way.

I wrote “Ode to the Breach” in reaction to this delusion cycle—which many of us assumed must’ve peaked on January 6, 2021.

Yet here we are again. Trump really did pardon 1,500 people who attacked the U.S. Capitol.

Cue the uncle who voted for Trump but always thought the insurrection crossed a line. He didn’t sign up for violence! Then there’s the guy from your old evangelical church who went to the rally but didn’t trespass inside the building. He’s probably surprised to learn Trump sees nothing wrong with going in, even if you had to bash a few windows and skulls to do it.

“Ode to the Breach” is literally about the thin line of Capitol Police in riot gear, standing against an armed mob. During Congress’ investigation of that unbelievable day, the House Select Committee released footage from police body cameras. As the line collapses, you can hear them yelling, “Breach! Breach!”

That’s the footage I used in the video for “Ode to the Breach,” mixed with live TV clips of somber anchors calmly witnessing our unraveling. Their faces remind me of how they struggled to describe what we were seeing. Are they “protestors?” Is it a “coup?”

All these years later, the Revisionist-Historian-In-Chief calls January 6th a “day of love.” Trump really said that.

I say: Watch the video. Don’t let them forget.

I always thought maybe the January 6th Committee could’ve used a film scorer. The music I wrote isn’t the clang-clang of drums and horns you’d expect from a medieval charge on castle gates. Instead, the tension winds up ever so slightly, like the next outrage inuring us deeper.

Because here’s what’s always been real: no matter the pardons or the newest moral atrocity, the uncle and the church-friend may not regret their votes. There’s a haywire normalcy in the air—a creeping acceptance of the unacceptable. But I am clinging to my own sense of surprise.

Everyone you see attacked or arrested in this video is a U.S. citizen. So, what are their stories?

The Guardian reports that the first video shows two teenagers being taken from their workplace at a Target in St. Paul, Minnesota. One boy shouts to the camera and anyone who will listen, “I’m a U.S. citizen.” In another social media video, people find the boy bloodied and dropped in a random parking lot. Bystanders ask if he’s OK, and the teen says through sobs, “I am not OK.”

This wasn’t some rogue group of ICE. US border patrol commander Gregory Bovino was part of the gang that took the boys from Target.

In another video, an ICE agent points a taser at a man, who NBC News identifies as Gage Diego Garcia, a U.S. citizen who refused to provide ID. “All I needed was your fucking ID,” says a masked agent. “You’re a fucking bitch and you are gonna learn the fucking hard way.” Garcia is arrested and held for six hours.

A woman on her knees screaming to a Miami Herald cameraman for help, “I’m a U.S. citizen,” said she was a behavioral therapist on her way to work. In body camera footage reported by NBC6 in Miami, an agent is heard saying, “See if we can get her to ID, if not, we’re going to drag her out of the car.”

CBS News reports the man with a swollen-shut eye is 21-year-old Kaden Rummler, a protestor who a federal agent pulls from the crowd, “then shot in the eye with a less-lethal round at close range.” Rummler tells CBS News he can’t see anymore: “Not even light, and I never will.”

The video ends with Aliya Rahman, who the Associated Press reports is a U.S. citizen on the way to a doctor’s appointment before getting caught up in ICE chaos on jammed streets. In the video, Rahman tries to explain that she’s disabled. The AP reports “she was brought to a detention center where she was denied medical care and lost consciousness.”

This is by no means an exhaustive video. ProPublica reported in October, even before the killing of Renee Good in the street in Minneapolis, that “We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days.”

It was after that video of Good went viral that I started writing this music, “In Defense of Logic.” And if it sounds like sweeping dread and sadness, that’s because it’s how defending logic feels.

I feel like I need to start with a disclaimer—the video for “Air Traffic” isn’t a political ad. You could reasonably see Elon Musk’s cameo, and all the headlines about mass firings at the FAA and assume I’m drawing corollaries.

The video is told from the viewpoint of the passenger looking out the plane’s window, worrying about all that’s happened in the world. “Air Traffic” is about what’s happening in our heads as passengers—what it feels like to be in the air while everything on the ground feels unsteady.

You can say “one thing didn’t lead to the other.” That plane in Toronto didn’t crash because of FAA cuts, and I wouldn’t disagree, not even for a minute. Regardless, everything is happening at the same time.

So as I boarded a few planes between Albany and Miami, I avoided seeing the ubiquitous news video from Toronto, and I took out my laptop and started writing music. “Air Traffic” captures that tension—the delicate balance required to keep the skies moving, thousands of aircraft crossing paths, landing safely, delivering millions of people across the globe. It’s a system built on precision, communication, and trust. But what happens when that system is infected by chaos?

—Doubt.

As the new presidential administration dismantles protections, Americans are left trying to hold everything together with fewer resources. Planes are crashing—literally—as uncertainty builds, and we collectively cross our fingers. “Air Traffic” reflects that overwhelm, starting with driving percussion before spinning into a careful cacophony that sounds to me like the anxiety we carry-on at 30,000 feet and beyond.

You remember that fool who strapped on a pair of beeswax wings and flew too close to the sun. As the Greek myth goes, Icarus wasn’t a god—he was a mere man with an ego.

These days, I think of Icarus as a stand-in for modern humanity. Climate scientists are like his father, Daedalus—the inventor famous for building the labyrinth. Daedalus designed the wings and gave Icarus explicit instructions on using them safely: Don’t go to extremes. Fly only within the temperate zone midway between the sun and the ocean below.

Like us, Icarus didn’t listen.

Consumerism propels us. We think it’s virtuous to build more, burn more, extract more, no matter the consequences. That same overconfidence inspired me to write “Icarus,” named for the young man so sure of his own invincibility that he soared toward destruction.

The video for “Icarus” is practically begging us: But have you seen the sun?

Because we’re no match.

I used publicly-available footage from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which has been watching the sun since 2010. I thought it was a pretty simple idea. Maybe seeing the sun’s overwhelming power and hearing the music as it shifts from majestic to lurching would make people pause. Maybe even reflect. Instead, when I shared the video on TikTok, I was met with the people who grumble, “Don’t look up!”

“This is beyond a joke,” one commenter wrote. “To ANYONE who thinks this is anything other than CGI you need to take a step back bc your indoctrination runs crazy deep.”

Another said, “CGI pictures.” When I suggested checking NASA’s website, his response was: “No thank you, I see the sun every day that our Heavenly Father created, not NASA.”

I don’t even know where to start with that. Objection, irrelevant?

I feel like we need more of everything. More education. More news coverage. More art. Because whatever narrative we’re relying on isn’t working.

The video ends with NASA’s illustration of global CO2 emissions. For decades, climate scientists have warned us never to increase the temperature of Earth more than 1.5 °C over what it was during pre-industrial times. We’re already at 1.36°C.

It must be hard for them not to feel like Daedalus sometimes, watching the wings soften and knowing exactly where this all leads.

With time, even dropping the ball in Times Square evolves. Back in 1984, New York City was leaning into its title as “The Big Apple.” The ball became a glowing red apple with green leaves attached from the top.

More importantly, the people change. Watching this archival video (from archive.org) of the annual Dick Clark special, you notice the ’80s fashion. People holding entire bottles of champagne. Homemade signs would one day get replaced by those Planet Fitness hats and jiggly wands. I’m not so sure it’s an improvement.

And that’s what you worry about, or hope for, with each passing year. That one is better than the next. Not worse.

So I wanted to look back at 1984, eponymous with the George Orwell classic. The novel keeps coming up in conversation. In reality, not in that alternative history, the throngs of celebrants weren’t headed for doom.

Even though none of us knows what the future brings, our instinct—or coping mechanism—is to celebrate its arrival.

The history of feet.

So much symbolism to unpack.

Consider that every year, the Pope makes a ceremony out of washing the feet of parishioners. He’s reenacting the example set by Jesus Christ, who washed his disciples’ feet as a lesson about service to others—which is our responsibility, no matter who we are.

Then there’s this week’s AI-generated video that took over the TVs inside the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Someone hacked the screens and played faked footage of the president kissing Elon Musk’s feet, with “LONG LIVE THE REAL KING” splashed over top. Trump was so voraciously worshipping that he looked intoxicated by the fragrance. It was, in a word, gruesome.

Kissing the king’s feet is much different than the King of Kings washing the feet of his subjects. One is service. The other is subjugation. This performance, though, was something else—a mix of recognition of power and lusting after it.

Naturally, I thought: Doesn’t this need some music?

That’s how “Foot Play” was born—a piece that feels like a royal fever dream. The video I created, set in a springtime Capitol, underscores the contrast between how we view our history and what’s happening today.

But why would Donald Trump be so infatuated by Elon Musk?

Trump often gets depicted in love affairs with strongmen: We’ve seen murals of him kissing Putin. Memes of him waltzing with Kim Jong Un—out of the lead position. Now, Trump has a new object of affection, one that’s atypical.

You can imagine why. Trump loves money. And Musk has lots more of it than him. Money is the metric he respects above all others. No matter how many terms he racks up as president, Trump might never feel he measures up.

And so the idolatry of money leads Trump to slobber over the feet of wealth’s incarnation—at least in this pretend world. These days, even the resistance has an AI account.

It was never about her.

We were told the 2024 vote would be about turning the page and wanting all this chaos and division to meet its end.

We’re not going back, we said.

Except here we are, bracing for executive orders to deport immigrants, dehumanize people who are transgender, and unveil moral atrocities we couldn’t have imagined. The page has not turned forward.

I wrote “Promised Ending” immediately after Election Night, when Donald Trump won a second term. If it sounds like an army marching toward a funeral, that’s the point.

Campaigns end. Funerals are for those left behind.

I posted the first version to TikTok on November 10 while feelings were still raw. “This hurts my heart,” someone commented. “Exactly how it felt,” another wrote.

I hope you’ll follow me here on Substack because I plan to keep trying to turn what’s hard to express into music. I didn’t compose this song as a Democrat. I wrote it for the two-thirds of Americans who either voted for Kamala Harris or didn’t vote at all. Yes, the candidate lost. But more importantly, so did anyone who wanted a country that lived up to its promises.

The video I edited for “Promised Ending” uses C-SPAN footage from the election-night-rally-turned-concession-speech Harris gave on the grounds of Howard University. As the results come in, you can see the crowd’s mood deflate. Then in the morning, Harris returns to say goodbye. The song’s “end” is a soaring placeholder for Harris’ last words, when she urged the crowd not to relent.

Today is January 20, 2025. Trump’s second inauguration coincides with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Of course it does. The timing feels like both a violation of something sacrosanct and a reminder of who we must become.