A full orchestra, behind them rows of empty red velvet audience seats, not one person in the audience. Every musician looking toward a space where normally the conductor stands. But there is just a dark hole cut into the floorboards, no conductor to be seen.

Where's the D in sovereignty?

Put the fifty best classical musicians in the world in one room and tell them to play. The first violinist knows exactly how the melody should breathe. The timpanist is right about the dynamics. The oboe is right about the tempo, and the cellos are right that the whole thing should be slower and darker than any of them are playing it. Every one of them is playing beautifully, and no two of them agree. What you get is not music – it’s fifty correct answers at once, and no one in the room whose job is to say which one wins. ...

October 6, 2026 · 8 min · Matthias Guenther