are we still holding space for the lyrics of “defying gravity”
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some lore, sparked by @patriciaxlee.eth. i interviewed musician kishi bashi last year, and during our chat, we talked beyond just on-the-record quips. he composed an album called “omoiyari,” inspired by the experiences, survival, and trauma of those imprisoned in japanese american concentration camps during wwii. he recorded every song at a different camp, and the one that touched me most was his “improvisation at heart mountain.” my grandma passed from dementia in 2017. in her last year, she would sometimes speak to me in japanese (i'm not fluent) because she seemed to think i was her mother. i would sit and listen and hope that i was filling some childlike need inside her. on one of her last days of life, she told me she got her hair stuck in the barbed wire fence while she and her friends were playing near the watchtower. sometimes the guards would give them candy. she asked me to fix her hair. her barrack at camp amache is identifiable, and i have yet to stand where she slept as a child. i made a pilgrimage to manzanar this past year, and i played this song at the altar, because despite it being improvised at heart mountain, the bounty of soul within the piece felt transcendent to every dusty cage my diaspora was forced to make into a loving home. funny enough, kishi bashi isn't a descendant of former internees, but his presence in these spaces moved him to write music that fully encompasses the voices of the people who survived so that i could live freely and wholly. my grandma was so beautiful and neurotic and strange. in the few pictures of her in the camps, she dons lovely permed curls, a long necklace of plastic pearls, mary janes she'd play baseball in. she didn't leave unscathed. none of them did. but within those fences, she improvised her way through every trial and tribulation, plucked poppies from cracks in the parched earth, and settled gently into some strange and foreign melody. https://open.spotify.com/track/2MqDo7tbBslFLRKiaaU6U4?si=6ef1d8030d0046aa
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should i get this tattooed on my forehead
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