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February 12, 2021
Mike Fiorito's Playlist for His Story Collection "Falling from Trees"
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.
Mike Fiorito's story collection Falling from Treesis speculative fiction that reshapes our worldview.
Kirkus wrote of the collection:
"Falling from Trees is a collection of otherworldly tales from Fiorito. This set of loosely connected stories touches on a wide range of timely and universal topics via science-fictional elements...readers will largely find it entertaining. The stories run the gamut from fully realized works to quick, slice-of-life glimpses of characters...an often engaging short story cycle."
In his words, here is Mike Fiorito's Book Notes music playlist for his story collection Falling from Trees:
When I first started writing Falling from Trees, I didn’t have a music playlist in mind. But the fact is I’ve done a lot of music writing. My previous book, Call Me Guido, is about three family generations as seen through the lens of the Italian American song tradition. Also, I’ve been a music reviewer for The Red Hook Star Revue, a local Brooklyn newspaper. And I’ve written many short stories that revolve around a piece of music or reaction to an experience of hearing music.
But of course, the first piece in Falling from Trees, “Climbing Time” describes how the “universe is made of music. Its secrets are trapped in the melodies of ocean water, in the rushing of waterfalls.” The story tries to convey the notion that our human perspective is narrow. Our eyes, ears and brains only grasp a sliver of the world around us. Perhaps we have not even evolved enough to understand the intelligence of birds. We can’t hear the cries of the trees as they swoosh in the wind. There’s real intelligence all around us and yet we have our telescopes pointed at the stars.
One piece that comes to mind for me for “Climbing Time” is Martynov's composition "The Beatitudes", as performed by Kronos Quartet. "The Beatitudes" was featured in the film La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty). The song is lush and repetitive, each repetition building with more and more emotion, until the violins gush over you like a waterfall of tears.
“The Purest Rain,” another piece in the collection, describes another kind of human evolution. Without giving too much of the story away, the narrator becomes melded with fellow space travelers as they travel across the galaxies, evolving into one mind. A single sentience. A mind that transcends place or time. They are everywhere all the time. But can we hear them? Perhaps they are the birds we pass by every day. Perhaps their voices are hidden in the sounds of leaves shaking. I can imagine Sigur Ros’s “Ekki Muuk” soundscape over “The Purest Rain” because of its pouring out of passion and feeling. Hopefully, the story invites us all to look up, to look out. To listen to the life that is around us. Even to things that aren’t alive, like rivers and wind. What happens to our minds when we are attuned to these sounds?
“Tomorrow’s Ghost,” one of the final stories in the collection, portrays a not-too-distant future in which “flaming sunlight bursts in like water breaking through a dam.” In this world, the ozone is nearly depleted, making even just sunlight intolerable. People have to scramble to and from their houses and cars to escape the heavy downpour of the sun’s rays. The story directly addresses the threat of climate change in the context of one family’s experience. I can hear many songs in this story. Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” when they rush out to the car from the house. I can see it captured on film, where their running slows down as Barber’s song plays, showing the look of confusion and fear on the faces of father and son. I also hear Paul Simon’s “The Boy in Bubble,” though I prefer Peter Gabriel’s version. I choke up every time I hear Simon’s lyrics:
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry, baby, don't cry
Don't cry
But again, I’m interested to know the music other people hear in these stories. The pieces in Falling from Trees are not intended to provide answers; they are invitations, questions. My hope is they serve as starting points for all of us to think about the possibilities ahead of us - as beings who can live beyond our own skin.
Mike Fiorito is an Associate Editor for Mad Swirl Magazine and a regular contributor to the Red Hook Star Revue. Mike is the author of Call Me Guido and Freud's Haberdashery Habits. Mike lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and two boys. He is currently working on a novel.
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