SOUNDTRACK: KISHI BASHI-“All I Want for Christmas is You” (2019).
The 2018 JNR Holiday Party, Vol. 2 compilation also featured a Christmas song by Kishi Bashi.
It begins with him muttering. “It’s Christmas. It’s never Christmas when you’re recording Christmas songs.”
What follows is the remarkably conventional song I’ve heard Kishi Bashi record. Aside form the obviously hugely conventional nature of one of Christmas’ biggest songs, the style of his singing along with the backing vocals and the general feel makes me surprised this version isn’t played more.
Thor Harris who appeared on yesterday’s bizarre Christmas song, makes an appearance here (although I don’t know what he does). The gorgeous backing vocals come from OHMME (just like yesterday as well).
K. sings this in his lower register–giving him a very croony sounds (one that is rather unlike his normal singing voice). The only real nod to it being Kishi Bashi is a the cool violin solo (so much better than a sax solo!).
I would listen to this version over any other, hands down.
[READ: December 17, 2019] “The Science Fair Protest”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my fourth time reading the Calendar. I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable. Here’s what they say this year
The Short Story Advent Calendar is back! And to celebrate its fifth anniversary, we’ve decided to make the festivities even more festive, with five different coloured editions to help you ring in the holiday season.
No matter which colour you choose, the insides are the same: it’s another collection of expertly curated, individually bound short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.
(This is a collection of literary, non-religious short stories for adults. For more information, visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.)
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check back here to read an exclusive interview with the author.
Want a copy? Order one here.
I’m pairing music this year with some Christmas songs that I have come across this year.
This was another confusing story that seemed like it might have been based on something … except the whole premise is crazy.
Even the beginning is hard to parse: “When the new gangsters got elected and took control, atoms could no longer be said to be the smallest form of matter.” What?
This begat the Science Fair Protest, an ongoing violent disruption. The narrator says he is no science teacher, but his neighbor, Ram, was an eighth grade biology teacher. Ram said that the gangsters insisted that instead of him having lab hours once a week, he was to take the students to a field to play a game called Stick & Ball. You have a stick and, not a ball, but a big rock. You throw the rock in the air and hit it with the stick as hard as you can.
One night Ram came over and asked if he could meet someone in thee narrator’s apartment because he felt his place was unsafe. Ram was exchanging beer for a package. The narrator was suspicious, but said okay. The man with the package arrived and brought with him a woman who was very tall. Strangely (as this story tends to be) the package is an album by Xavier Felipe, known in certain circles of jukebox pop as the Mexican Neil Diamond.
They drank all night, listening to the record until they all knew it by heart. He woke the next morning hungover with his apartment in shambles.
Later that week, walking home from work, he saw kids in a field. One of them threw a rock in the air, hit it with stick and knocked a grackle out of the air. He followed them as they brought the grackle to an old man who have them a coin for the dead bird. The narrator was angered by this. He knocked on the door and said he shouldn’t have children running grackles for him. The man said you’ve never had grackle soup and gave the narrator a container full to bring home and freeze.
On another day he noticed a crowd of people in a semicircle around two men in a fistfight. He asked what was happening and a bystander said they disagreed about The Dreyfus Affair. [I had no idea what this was. The narrator says it weird that people were fighting “over a hundred years and far away from France.” It turns out The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal that divided the French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. It remains one of the most notable examples of a complex miscarriage of justice and antisemitism. The role played by the press and public opinion proved influential in the conflict.]
He then says that he knew The Dreyfus Affair played a large part in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu and then he began to fear something absurd. What if he read Proust and realized that the scene he just witnessed turned out to be part of the story. When he mentioned this theory to Ram, Ram was excited by it–that fiction is leaking into our reality:
“Flannery O’Connor might be leaking down on a teenage girl at the park…Daphne du Marier, maybe, is leaking to somebody pumping gas at a station by a motel; or that story by Hawthorne about people throwing the world into a big fire, so we can cheer and heckle as it burns, is leaking into… I don’t know–”
“The life of a new gangster.”
“One of the new gangsters, yes. The only possible answer.”
What a great idea for a story!
But his story isn’t interested in focusing on ant particular idea (unless the whole story is examples of scenes from fiction and I didn’t catch on).
For soon enough he meets the tall woman on the street, where they sing Xavier Felipe. As the narrator walks away, he continues to wonder about the Science Fair Protest.
This was a weird story set in a weird reality that I quite liked. I need a lot more though for the story to make any kind of sense.
The calendar says, It’s December 17. Please enjoy this interview with Fernando A. Flores, author of Tears of the Trufflepig, responsibly.
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