SOUNDTRACK: MASTODON-“Fallen Torches” (2020).
Mastodon has a new collection of rarities and B-sides coming out soon. I’m not sure if this single is a new song or an old one, but man is it good.
It features just about every aspect of Mastodon in one song. There’s massive drums, heavy guitars, angry vocals, soaring clean vocals and many different parts.
The song opens with a heavy riff and vocals–a classic Mastodon sound. After 45 second the guitars soar high and the second vocalist sings even higher, soaring the title before returning to the main verse riff.
A third part adds speed before a fourth part slows things down with a lot of sinister echo. It’s a great breather that slowly rebuilds the song with some more great riffs and intense drums. The end is suitably heavy.
I can’t wait to hear the rest of the record.
[READ: August 1, 2020] “A Village After Dark”
This story shows the aftermath of something we never learn the details about.
A man, Fletcher, returns to a village in England. He used to live there many years ago, but he is now older and easily disoriented. He didn’t recognize anything in the village.
But he needed to rest, so he stopped at door at random and knocked very hard on it.
While he was knocking, a young woman called out to him. She asked if he was “one of that lot with David Maggis and all of them.” He says he was, but that Maggis was hardly the most important one.
He realizes that he and his friends were all before her time. Nevertheless, she was excited he was there, saying that all of the people her age looked up to him. She invited him to her cottage.
He said he’d love to, but needed to settle in with the Petersens first (she had told him whose house this was). The Petersens finally let him in and are unhappy that he is there. And yet, they offered him a place to rest.
When he woke a woman told him that she had idolized him back then. Everything he said seemed like an answer. They used to make love–she was so attracted to him–but he didn’t seem to remember. But he ruined her life. And look at him now–covered in filth.
He responded that she was being unfair.
But all of the people wanted answers from him. So instead, he said he was leaving to go find the young girl he met earlier. He said that these older people were too fearful, crouching in their house, not doing anything. It was the young people who took chances and made changes. He would go and talk to them.
Mr Petersen said that they should stop him from corrupting the youth, again. But realized they couldn’t.
He went outside and the girl was still there. She invited him along and he followed happily.
As they walked, he ran into Roger Button a fellow he had known back when he was ten or eleven. He used to pick on and abuse Roger and Roger seemed to worship him then. But Roger said that if the narrator had still been around when Roger had turned 15, things would be very different.
But Roger isn’t mad–he seeks forgiveness for all.
This elliptical story was certainly odd and not entirely satisfying. I can’t decide if I feel like we need to know more or if it’s just a deliberate choice of obfuscation.
I thought I had read stories by Ishiguru before, but I haven’t. I wonder if this is what his stories are typically like.
I think I can help. I read this story a few years ago, and found out a couple of things:
“Ishiguro’s fourth story, “A Village After Dark,” was never intended by the author to be an autonomous story. Rather, as Ishiguro explained in personal communication with me, it was written as an experiment geared towards working out certain narrative techniques he was exploring while writing The Unconsoled.” – Brian Shaffer, “Somewhere Just Beneath the Surface of things: Ishiguro’s Short Fiction” via the anthology Kazuo Ishiguro: Contemporary Critical Perspectives.
That narrative technique was “the grammar of dreams” which he discusses in Paris Review’s The Art of fiction #196. One scene suddenly changes into another without all the transition realism would require, something or someone morphs into something else and it’s perfectly normal, you know who someone is though you’ve never seen them before, etc.
The only Ishiguro I’ve read is this story and The Unconsoled, which is an entire novel with these strange transitions, shifts in time and space. I’m quite fond of both of them, but I probably should read one of his more “normal” narratives.
Many thanks for your information about the place of that story in his work. I especially am grateful for your lead on the long Paris Review article.