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April 28, 2020
Kathe Koja's Playlist for Her Story Collection "Velocities"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Kathe Koja's collection Velocities is filled with marvelously dark and dense supernovas disguised as short fiction.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
"An impressive collection of stories unafraid to explore bleak topics like death and despondency."
In her own words, here is Kathe Koja's Book Notes music playlist for her story collection Velocities:
When I write a novel, it’s a process that takes months when it doesn’t take years, and my working playlist evolves along with the text: some songs go the distance, some only last for a pivotal scene, some are deep background, some belong fully to the characters, during the writing and forever after (like Nico Vega’s “Iron Man” for the passionate push-and-pull of Under the Poppy’s Istvan and Rupert).
Short fiction is different, is a day’s deep work, a week’s. Creating this playlist for the stories in Velocities was an exercise in intensity, a soundtrack and a beat for each story: one song to reflect and encapsulate that story’s voice. And I learned things about these stories I didn’t know before.
AT HOME:
At Eventide – Murdered Out/Kim Gordon
The hard energy of the guitar cut with Kim Gordon’s fierce deadpan vocal, over the crash and slither of the drums, echoes for me the dusty roll of a pick-up truck up desert roads, hot empty roads, the killer rolling up to the place where the woman works, not waiting for him, not waiting for anything anymore. Nothing says “I’m done” like Kim Gordon’s voice in this song.
Baby – Bad Guy/Billie Eilish
This song would be purely aspirational for Jani, “Baby”’s oblivious and seeking and awful young narrator. And she would never, ever understand why.
Velocity – Insomnia/Faithless
Sleep is essential to sanity. “No release, no peace . . . I can’t get no sleep.” The mind preys on itself in those empty hours, and if every hour is frantic with emptiness, like a speeding wheel going nowhere, what else might make a home behind those open eyes? I love the orchestral intro that ushers in the intimacy of that weary, confiding, 4AM voice; I see the Red House, all its lights burning, its grounds littered with dead bicycles, I hear someone inside walking the floors.
DOWNTOWN:
Clubs – Fretless/R.E.M.
“Me I think I got stuck somewhere in between”—where there’s no room, just that stately piano, that echoed Michael Stipe vocal, that feeling of being totally isolated in the midst of a loud, crazy, sweaty club, standing beside the one you want who’s looking for someone else. “Don’t talk to me about being alone.” Anyone can play.
Urb Civ – Ultraviolence/New Order
The city, even a city on the brink, on the constant cusp of violence and loss and permanent decay, has a beat: you hear it best in the places where the veneer has already worn off, where the future is already the present and it’s best to watch your step. Especially around strangers. Especially if you are a stranger. “Everybody makes mistakes.” And New Order always keeps the beat cold.
ON THE WAY:
Fireflies – Olsen Olsen (live, from Heima)/Sigur Rós
Some places feel immediately like home, or heaven, or some impossibly wistful, playful version of both. Sigur Rós inhabits their own timeless zone where they play the music of the spheres, of the stars and the fireflies, all the time, and in this song they play it live.
Coyote Pass – What Else Is There/Röyksapp
“Nowhere near here” is the place the trickster inhabits, not to pounce or harm, but not not-to, either. “It was me on that road but you couldn’t see me.” Anne, this story’s hero or victim, is heading toward the barking dogs and the mystery, and when I hear this song I see her on that road.
Road Trip – Hammers/Nils Frahm
The back-and-forth repetition of the keyboards, the increasing surging urgency, the way it all comes to a final and permanent stop . . . This is the only instrumental song on the playlist, because sometimes there truly are no words.
OVER THERE:
Toujours – An Old Whore’s Diet/Rufus Wainwright
This song’s voice, Rufus Wainwright’s voice, is extremely knowing, infinitely unsurprised, just like this story’s Gianfranco, who has seen it all, knows exactly what to nurture and what to destroy. Until the violin starts, and the loping rhythm lurches, and Rufus and Anohni [here Antony] rush together to the lip of opera, hell, and suicide . . . And back to the beginning again.
Far and Wee – A Pair of Brown Eyes/The Pogues
A sentimental song, a walzting drum, a lilting chorus: the kind of song drunken men sing in the old-fashioned music halls where the pretty women dance for them, where things happen backstage and out behind the shed that remind Sonny Boy, the boy who came to the city, of the country he tried to leave. “I looked at him, he looked at me, all I could do was hate him.”
The Marble Lily – To Let Myself Go/Ane Brun
The slow current of this song, its otherworldly melody, “To let myself go, to let myself flow,” down the river, into darkness, into eternity and out of it again . . . That vocal so calm and so assured, the voice of the young woman who is the Marble Lily, the voice never heard in this story as everyone tells her who she is, or was, or might be. But it’s her story all the same.
La Reine d’Enfer – Butterscotch Goddam/Fischerspooner
Just like all our mothers, I don’t have favorites, I love all my characters just the same—except Pearlie in “La Reine,” who is my favorite voice in Velocities. This song’s confessional swagger, its insinuating beat, its constant demand for kisses, could totally belong to amoral, beautiful, terrible Pearlie, who understands the brutal value of need, and knows that there’s more than one idea of heaven. And hell.
INSIDE:
Pas de Deux – Teardrop/Massive Attack
The inevitability of this song, its deliberate ticktock percussion, moving at its own pace, not aggressive, utterly unstoppable: like the woman in this story, for whom “Love is a verb,” and so is dance and so is getting what you have to have. Nothing happens without action. Massive Attack is sui generis, and their splendid inevitable darkness is her darkness, too.
Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces immersive fiction performances, both solo and with a rotating ensemble of artists. Her work crosses and combines genres, and her books have won awards, been translated, and optioned for film and performance. She is based in Detroit and thinks globally.
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