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January 18, 2022
Sequoia Nagamatsu's Playlist for His Novel "How High We Go in the Dark"
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.
Sequoia Nagamatsu's novel How High We Go in the Dark is an imaginative and lyrical debut.
Library Journal wrote of the book:
"Nagamatsu blends literary and visionary verve in a narrative that's garnering comparisons to Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven."
In his own words, here is Sequoia Nagamatsu's Book Notes music playlist for his debut novel How High We Go in the Dark:
How High We Go in the Dark is a multi-generational journey across continents (and even interstellar space) that follows the lives of intricately linked characters as they navigate the aftermath of a climate plague. Ultimately, this is an exploration of hope, memory, reimagining grief, and acknowledging the ties that bind us as we reach toward new futures.
Written pre-Covid, this novel has been over ten years in the making. While I didn’t initially intend the arts to play such an important role, nearly every chapter features some form of art (often in the form of music). While I only listen to one band while I write (The Album Leaf), which I’ll refer to as a “secret track”, the other songs dig at how music runs through the lives of my characters as a form of remembrance or connection whether it be a lost loved one, a simpler time, or a bridge to solidify a new relationship. Sometimes the songs are directly addressed in the chapters themselves while other tracks will nod at tonal or thematic qualities that are often attached to the time and space where I initially created a character—my train rides to work in Japan after the death of my grandfather, long nighttime walks in San Francisco in my 20s, the hours spent gazing through a telescope during grad school where the word “possibility” filled my heart and manifested into another world on the page.
Chapter 1: 30,000 Years Beneath a Eulogy
The Neptune Movement, Planets Suite by Gustave Holst
Lyrics didn’t seem quite right for this opening chapter set at a climate research station in Siberia. Following Dr. Clifford Miyashiro, who is continuing the work of his recently deceased daughter, we move from remembrance and a search for connection to the mystery surrounding the remains of a pre-historic girl. The love of The Planets Suite by Gustave Holst was something Cliff and his daughter shared when she was younger. The Neptune movement seemed particularly apt for this opening, moving through a range of emotions and closing with an otherworldly wordless chorus.
Chapter 2: The City of Laughter
Under the Milky Way – The Church
This might be one of the heavier chapters in the novel and like many of the chapters, leaves a character reflecting on what could have been. The emptiness at the opening of the song nods at a world/life changed as does the line “It leads you here despite your destination”—a bittersweet, melancholic ode that acknowledges the skies above.
Chapter 3: Through the Garden of Memory
Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie
“I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere/When the water filled every hole/And thousands upon thousands made an ocean” – there’s such a longing here, a sense of community that makes me visualize a multitude of people recognizing how they are connected. It’s both an intimate and universal song that punches through the dark with a beating heart.
Chapter 4: Pig Son
I Care by Syd Matters
I first discovered Syd Matters via the soundtrack for the video game Life Is Strange, which is ultimately a story of friendship, the choices we make, and second chances. There’s such nostalgic tone with this song but one that is tinged with hope and a way forward. The lines “I have a memory to keep” isn’t weighed by sadness but is a kind of acceptance. “I care” for what was lost. “I care” about those times I wasn’t there. “I care” right now in this moment.
Chapter 5: Elegy Hotel
Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now by Starship
Dennis in this chapter listens to Starship mostly because it’s a throwback to music he was exposed to regularly as a child. It’s a connection to a complicated past and an uncertain time. Full disclosure: I owned multiple Starship cassettes as a toddler. Part of Dennis loves the cheeseball/sentimental pop, which seems at odds with a world healing from illness. And while this chapter primarily focuses on a decision about family, a close friendship is also central to helping Dennis mature and recognize the need to reach out for help: “Let the world around us just fall apart/Baby, we can make it/If we're heart to heart.”
Chapter 6: Speak, Fetch, Say I Love You
While My Guitar Gently Weeps by Yoshida Brothers (cover)
The only surviving recordings of a boy’s mother reside inside of a robot dog in this chapter—lullabies, finals wishes, the pop songs she used to sing with her shamisen, a traditional Japanese instrument. The juxtaposition of the traditional sounds with the modern produces an interesting energy, a kind of conversation with the past and present/future, which seems appropriate in near future Japan where temples reside in skyscrapers and holographic Buddhas hover over ponds.
Chapter 7: Songs for Your Decay
Lonesome Sundown by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Music as a bridge between people and as a form of remembrance is central to this chapter where two characters, a forensic anthropologist and a terminally ill man, move from a musical A to Z playlist in the days leading to his death. Tom Petty is mentioned in one scene, but I could have probably used Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for this entire playlist seeing that his entire oeuvre is marked by some kind of pain, isolation, and the half endings we often have to embrace in life.
Chapter 8: Life Around the Event Horizon
Singularity by Bright Eyes
While the singularity here refers to the point in our technological evolution where human civilization ceases to be recognizable, I think the song still touches on the mysteries of the other type of singularity (points of infinite density like black holes and wormholes) and what happens to reality beyond their borders. Could hope and love reside on the other side? Do realities exist where our loved ones are still with us?
“When singularity comes/We will be cradled within/We will be perfect/We will be one.”
Chapter 9: A Gallery A Century, A Cry A Millennium
Quiet Friend (from Structures from Silence) by Steve Roach
Steve Roach is a pretty big name in the ambient electronica scene. A lot of his work is influenced by space and the environment and his tracks tend toward the long side with this hour long album only comprising of three tracks, which seems appropriate when thinking about an interstellar journey that lasts thousands of years. The sounds here are slow, nuanced, and trance like, a perfect companion to the silences of space and the cold steel halls that the main character of this chapter tries to bring life to through her murals.
Chapter 10: The Used-to-Be Party
The World I Know by Collective Soul
I can’t separate this song from the music video where a man, who is saddened over the ills of life, finds himself standing at the edge of a building rooftop until a beautiful moment, feeding a dove, pulls him back to the world and toward a place of hope. For Dan, it’s not a dove but the prospect of community with his fellow neighbors, the life he never really took part in with his family before he lost them.
Chapter 11: Melancholy Nights in a Tokyo Virtual Café
Coming in from the Cold by the Delgados
Easily one of my favorite bands of the late '90s/Early '00s. In the music video, the soulful voice of Emma Pollock follows two lonely people going through the motions of life and repeatedly missing moments where they might meet. “Have a look around you there's no-one there/How can you call this fair?”
Chapter 12: Before You Melt into the Sea
1,000 Oceans by Tori Amos
Amos has talked about how this song helped her husband through the grieving process of losing his father. For the characters in this chapter, there is a friendship and a brand of unrequited love. What does grief look like for someone you’ve shared a bond with? How do you say goodbye to the possibilities that may very well have been a pure fantasy? “So I will cry a thousand more [tears]/If that's what it takes to/Sail you home”
Chapter 13: Grave Friends
Home by the Foo Fighters
This song probably doesn’t get nearly as much play in my daily/weekly rotation as it probably should. A fitting song for a character returning home to Japan for a funeral, knowing she’ll likely will never return home for good: “Wish I were with you, but I couldn't stay/Every direction leads me away/Pray for tomorrow, but for today/All I want/
Is to be home.”
Chapter 14: The Scope of Possibility
Broken Monitors by B Fleischman
Another entry in the wordless/ambient electronica genre. I can listen to this song on repeat for hours. This is what I listen to if I need a pick me up and the compounding electronic melody digs at the hope and wonder that I want readers to leave with after reading the novel.
Secret Track (The Album Leaf):
Vermillion by The Album Leaf (JMJL rework)
I don’t listen to music with lyrics while I’m drafting, but I can’t write in silence. When I’m not drafting to a loop of the Starship Enterprise engine rumble, I’m listening to The Album Leaf—a genre blending act that is symphonic in the scope of their mostly wordless songs. This track in particular is one that I regularly play on repeat—the electronic/synth sounds are vaguely spacey/futuristic (in a Kraftwerk kind of way) but the track at large is also deeply moving.
Sequoia Nagamatsu is a Japanese-American writer and managing editor of Psychopomp Magazine, an online quarterly dedicated to innovative prose. Originally from Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay Area, he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University and a BA in Anthropology from Grinnell College. His work has appeared in such publications as Conjunctions, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Fairy Tale Review, and Tin House. He is the author of the award-winning short story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone and teaches creative writing at St. Olaf College and the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA program. He currently lives in Minnesota with his wife, cat, and a robot dog named Calvino.
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