SOUNDTRACK: THE McCRARY SISTERS AND THE FAIRFIELD FOUR-“Rock My Soul” (Field Recordings, September 20, 2015).
Hearing these eight voices intertwine so beautifully is wonderful (I especially love the bass voice). Knowing how the voices are connected is pretty cool, too.
The original Fairfield Four was founded nearly 95 years ago in Nashville, and has remained relevant into the present day; many current listeners know the group from its appearance in the Coen Brothers’ 2000 film O, Brother, Where Art Thou? The McCrary Sisters are the daughters of the now-deceased longtime Fairfield Four lead voice, Samuel McCrary; together, they’ve made a major impact as that rare thing in a mostly masculine preserve, a female gospel quartet. To hear these voices perform “Rock My Soul” together is to feel the power of living history and the timelessness of family connection.
“Rock My Soul,” powered by their persistent clapping is just wonderful. Their voices sound amazing, their harmonies are wonderful. It’s a joyful three minutes.
[READ: August 29, 2018] “The Wind Cave”
This is a somber story from Murakami.
It concerns a boy and the death of his younger sister when she was 12. She was born with a malfunctioning heart valve and although she was never robust, it was still a surprise that she died so young.
His parents told him to watch over her, to look after her because she was so delicate. The fact hat he couldn’t save her from death (no one could) has hung over him.
He hated seeing her in the coffin and he grew claustrophobic even thinking about her in that tiny box. The symptoms didn’t start right away but occurred after he had been locked in a box truck. He was working a part time job and was accidentally locked into the back of the truck when people wanted to leave early. (Frankly I would think that might trigger claustrophobia more than anything having to do with his sister).
But now he can no longer ride in elevators or watch movies about submarines.
The end of the story (or, I imagine, excerpt) sees him and his sister in a Wind Cave. He is 13, she is ten and they went into this vacation spot because she was feeling strong that week.
I had never heard of wind caves so I enjoyed this paragraph, but wanted more
One day we hiked a bit farther than usual and visited a wind cave near Mt. Fuji. Among the numerous wind caves around Mt. Fuji this one was the largest. Our uncle told us about how these caves were formed. They were made of basalt, so inside them you heard hardly any echoes at all, he said. Even in the summer the temperature remained low; in the past people stored ice they’d cut in the winter inside the caves. He explained the distinction between the two types of caves: fuketsu, the larger ones that were big enough for people to go into, and kaza-ana, the smaller ones that people couldn’t enter. Both terms were alternate readings of the same Chinese characters meaning “wind” and “hole.”
He and his sister were the only ones here. It was cold (despite being hot out) and they enjoyed the spooky chilly cave. Then they spied a tunnel in one of the caves, They poked flashlighs in and saw that it was a small, round room. His sister went in although he could not.
She stayed there a long time and he was increasingly nervous.
She finally came out and talked about how magical it was. It was just like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland–a story they had shared many times.
The end of the story is perfect. It nicely sums up what has happened, but it also could serve as a springboard into something else–the kind of fantastical worlds that Murakami creates. I don’t know if this is connected to his forthcoming novel Killing Comendatore, but I’m curious to see if it is.
This story was translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel.
I Just Read About That... 
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