Light from Uncommon Stars

“Lan’s civilization had long evolved beyond believing in supernatural beings and souls and music. And, in her reality, no one would think to attach such importance, such meaning, to music.”

Lan’s Galactic Empire has been torn apart by the Endplague, a self-destructive despair that settles into advanced civilizations that have stopped growing and changing. Although she doesn’t realize it, her dismissive attitude toward music is a symptom of the Endplague. Music, as a motif throughout the novel, represents change and growth and life, and Lan must learn to appreciate its importance as the story progresses.

“But Hell favored people who recognized their brilliance, who believed they deserved success, would have success, were it not for a flaw, a disadvantage that they could never overcome. […] What made each of them right for Hell was their need for a lie, a façade so powerful, so intoxicating, that they could believe it themselves. And those, Hell could easily provide. But this one didn’t seem ready for such a lie. At present, she could barely handle her truth.”

At this point in Katrina’s character growth, she has barely begun to take the first steps toward self-acceptance. Katrina’s experiences as a transgender girl, in the context of the music world, make her unique from Shizuka’s previous students, exemplifying The Struggles of Refugees and Outsiders. Shizuka observes that Katrina’s lack of confidence and ambition makes her unique from most other musicians, who are particularly susceptible to Hell’s temptations.

“Shizuka thought of the game that Katrina had told her about, The NetherTale. It was set in a Hell with a non-killing route, in a Hell where a player might actually make friends. Such a sweet idea, wasn’t it? But that was not how one saved souls, especially when the soul one was saving was one’s own.”

NetherTale is an important symbol in Shizuka’s journey as a character. When she first learns the concept of the game, she finds the idea sweet but naïve. However, as the story progresses, Shizuka gradually accepts this ideal of saving souls without killing as a goal that gives her meaning and allows her to face her own mortality with hope.

“Every one of Shizuka’s prior students—every one—clawed for their musical freedom in their own way. Shizuka had been trying to teach Katrina with the same assumptions.

 But Katrina had always been free. She had been free of acceptance, free of love, free of trust. So now she clung to anyone who would tell her which way to go, which way was safe, to anyone who would give her a star.”

This quote uses irony to draw a contrast between Katrina and Shizuka’s previous students. The meaning of the word “free” shifts between these two paragraphs. For Shizuka’s students, freedom meant finding their own musical voice and not being forced to follow after a teacher. Katrina’s kind of freedom is not “freedom to,” but “freedom from.” Because Katrina has lacked the normal care and nurturing that other students receive, she must first learn by following before she is able to find her own voice.

“Even as we sit here, people are waiting in line outside. Times have changed, the food has changed. But people still know Caputo’s.”

Caputo’s Pizza is one of many restaurants and businesses that are described throughout the book. Representative of The Inevitability of Change and Transition, it is a memorable example of the city’s ever-evolving nature, as it began as an Italian restaurant and morphed over time into an Asian restaurant. Yet the original name remained. Shizuka uses Caputo’s as an example of how community and legacy can provide a more effective form of immortality than the selfish fame-based immortality offered by Hell.

“At first, the game would increase in difficulty and variety, but past a certain point, it merely kept repeating. And repeating, with no change, no hope for growth nor any way to escape. Thus, everyone who played was destined to lose, either from fatigue or resignation. As crude as it was, this game was an uncanny simulation of the Endplague.”

The Stargate arcade game in the donut shop, which the shop was named after, is a symbol representing the sickness called the Endplague. The Endplague ties into the book’s theme of The Inevitability of Change and Transition, suggesting how important it is to embrace these forces without fear. In the game, after passing a certain threshold of difficulty, the player gets stuck in a perpetual loop that results in them inevitably giving up. The same thing happened in the Galactic Empire Lan fled from, causing the empire to descend into self-destruction.

“She thought of her body, the chromosomes it lacked, the voice that it could not hold. Sure, someone could hold her, kiss her, treat her like a girl today. But tomorrow, that same person could say she was crazy, a half-woman freak […] So what about her was true? What could be trusted?”

Katrina’s struggle to understand and accept her own identity is her most important arc throughout the book, making her a key figure in Aoki’s exploration of Identity and the Struggle for Self-Acceptance. Shizuka later tells a story of a performance that she believed she had failed at, but the newspapers praised her afterward; Shizuka argues that other peoples’ perceptions don’t invalidate your own. Katrina gradually learns to trust in her own truth rather than the perceptions that other people try to force upon her.

“Everything the audience hears, what we strive to create…what we live to convey…it comes from there. In your hollows. In your nothingness.”

As Katrina struggles to decide what she wants to say with her music, Shizuka metaphorically compares Katrina to the violin. The music of the violin doesn’t come from the strings, but from their vibrations reverberating inside the dark hollow space of the instrument. Likewise, Katrina’s music must come from her own dark hollow space, including the experiences she has lived as a transgender girl.

“Still, should your civilization survive, it will eventually find the same equation. And that will be your death sentence. For in that equation, there will be no forever, no eternity. Nothing. And this collapse, and all its attendant despair, is the Endplague.”

Lan’s explanation of the Endplague suggests that once a civilization has reached a certain level of accomplishment, there is nothing left for it to discover, and it stagnates. Without the ability to change or grow, a civilization faces its own inevitable mortality. Like the Stargate game, there is no final win condition, no eternal happy ending, only endless repetition until you give up from exhaustion or despair.

“If the Endplague was a type of despair, then it was less an affliction of the mind than of the heart. And for afflictions of the heart, did they not have anything like poetry, music, or even sappy movies with star-crossed lovers?”

In this quote, Shizuka unknowingly hits upon the solution to the problem of the Endplague. If a civilization has advanced so much that it has left behind art and music, then stagnation and despair are inevitable. But in the face of the existential dread of mortality, hope can be found in music, which embraces change and evolution as an essential aspect of its nature.

“From the darkness, Katrina willed her violin to build their world. To let there be light, let there be colors, then calculus and molecules and starlit vistas, let there be home after home after home where no one yelled and no one was beaten.You can do this, Katrina’s song seemed to tell them. This is your universe. Your creation. Please don’t be afraid. Let’s not be afraid anymore.”

This quote, from Katrina’s performance at the musical showcase, shows the power of her music to reach people. Although she is not as highly trained as other musicians, and her selection is from a popular video game rather than a renowned classical composer, Katrina gives people a glimpse of a world for which she has always longed. Through her music, Katrina generates a space where all people can feel safe and accepted regardless of who they are.

“I felt like no one was going to hurt me. I felt safe, Miss Satomi. And powerful. So powerful that I could keep you, and everyone who was listening, safe as well.”

This quote, in response to Shizuka’s question about how the applause made Katrina feel, leaves Shizuka dumbfounded. Katrina’s response again highlights how different Katrina is from Shizuka’s previous students. While Shizuka expected Katrina’s first taste of success to give her an inflated ego, thus making her vulnerable to the temptations of Hell, Katrina instead only expresses a longing to feel safe and to make others feel safe. Katrina’s response is born from her years of abuse and rejection, as well as her naturally compassionate personality.

“Once, in Budapest, I broke strings on my instrument, then the concertmaster’s Bergonzi. Finally, I grabbed someone’s viola and continued with that. The papers called my performance magnificent […] I thought I had failed. All I wanted was to finish without breaking another string and get off the stage. I had no idea of what the audience might be seeing. So whose experience was real?”

Shizuka tells this story to Shirley as Shirley recovers from the worst of her existential crisis. Like Katrina, Shirley has a unique identity, and her treatment by others (particularly her mother) cause her to question her own experiences and feelings. Shizuka tells Shirley this story to demonstrate that different people can perceive the same situation in vastly different ways. Someone seeing you in a different way than you see yourself, however, doesn’t invalidate your own truth.

“She thought of all the koi that had been trapped there over so many years. How many parents had lived in that pond? How many children had each of them had? Yet the pond did not acquire more fish. For the older ones, the graceful ones…the chosen ones, the brilliant ones, the ones gilded with darkness, with flame…were also the ones who ate their young.”

The koi fish are an important symbol related to the theme of The Influence of Parents on Children. While Shizuka observes the fish, she notes that those who survived were the ones who ate their young. This realization acts as a metaphor for her own relationship with Katrina, whom she has begun to see as a daughter. Shizuka must sacrifice Katrina, i.e., “eat her young,” if she wishes for her own soul to survive.

“Your music. Oh, how you’ve believed in this music!

But others will see only what they wish to see.

[…] Even when your hand felt like burning, broken glass. Even when you have sacrificed your soul—

Will it even matter? People have long stopped listening, if they had ever listened at all […]

You will be alone.

And nothing, nothing has changed.

And so you stop. You turn. You walk away.

And while the audience is still in shock, you leave your soul onstage.”

This quote comes from the climactic moment of Shizuka’s flashback to the night she lost her soul. Shizuka had sold her soul to Tremon in exchange for being able to play her music again. But Shizuka’s dream was to create music that would change the world, and in this moment, she realizes that music born from a bargain with Hell will never be able to truly accomplish that. Shizuka therefore walks away in mid-performance, leaving her soul in limbo.

“Around and around the koi would be swimming. Living, growing, killing, in a music that would last today, tomorrow, a hundred years from now. Yet it would never question, never leave that pond, never, ever change.”

Just as the koi fish function as symbols related to The Influence of Parents on Children, they are also symbolically related to The Inevitability of Change and Transition. While the fish that eat their young do survive, they remain trapped in the same pond, swimming in the same pointless circles. This image evokes the empty repetition of the Stargate game and the Endplague associated with it. Shizuka realizes that sacrificing Katrina to save herself will not give her what she wants; rather, the only hope for a better future is to embrace her own mortality and let the legacy of her music live on through Katrina.

“But when I listen to Katrina, I realize she will take this music to places I would never dream. I think that’s enough for any teacher—to know that her music will continue long after she is gone.”

The concept of “legacy” is frequently mentioned in this book, associated with the theme of The Influence of Parents on Children. Shizuka, choosing to sacrifice herself rather than Katrina, gains a new optimism about the future knowing that Katrina will carry on her legacy when she’s gone. Through Katrina, the music will not simply stay the same but will evolve into something new, beyond what Shizuka herself could even imagine.

“One usually learns to play a piece a section at a time. Within each section, the musician will memorize passages, phrases, movements, until the sections reach from beginning to end […] And so many live the same way. One becomes a good plumber, or mother, or Christian, or Dodger fan, or teenager. One lives section by section, one stage to the next. But sometimes, sections change keys, tempos. They change moods. Timing…Some melodies don’t resolve in an expected way. Some don’t resolve at all. So people begin to fear playing beyond the sections they have played out of habit, out of fear.”

In response to Lan’s question about why people can be good in some ways and bad in others, Shizuka compares the way people view the world to the way musicians learn a piece of music. Musicians feel uncomfortable or even afraid when they encounter a section of music that changes from the familiar. In the same way, people fear those who deviate from what they see as normal. This metaphor relates to the theme of The Struggles of Refugees and Outsiders, as represented through Katrina, Shirley, Lucy Matía, and even Lan herself.

“Imagine a music with no sections, with every note resonating with the whole composition. Whether it is at the end of the beginning—it does not matter.In such a music one can listen anywhere and instantly experience the entire work. Even as the piece progresses from season to season, from movement to movement, there is no anxiety about how the next section may or may not fit. Instead, the whole piece is always realized and complete—in that note. That chord. That rest. That ornament […] Lan, what would happen if someone played their existence not only to its inevitable end, but also to its inevitable beginning? What if someone played their music to its inevitable everything?”

The “music with no sections” is a metaphor for a world where, instead of rejecting change and difference out of fear, people instead embrace change and difference. Every part of the music and such a world is complete by itself yet also an essential aspect of the whole. Shizuka’s thoughts are born of her knowledge of her impending death. As she contemplates her own mortality, she embraces the end because she knows the music will continue beyond her.

“Yet Shizuka quickly realized that, although it different from her previous students, Katrina was far from untrained. Her tonality had been honed by a lifetime of being concerned with her voice. Her fingertips were liquid, born of years of not wanting her hands to make ugly motions. And her ability to play to a crowd, project emotion, follow physical cues? Katrina had trained in that most of all.”

Throughout the novel, it becomes clear that Katrina’s powerful music is a result of all the experiences she has gone through as a transgender girl. The way Katrina learned to carry herself in a world that was hostile to her has made her uniquely qualified to produce world-changing music. This relationship ties into the theme of Identity and the Struggle for Self-Acceptance, reflecting Katrina’s long journey toward self-actualization.

“There seemed no clear way to classify this. the violin spoke in such contradictory voices—with, without, against each other. Even the key seemed to morph between major, minor and irrelevant. Miss Satomi had warned her that listeners would find this confusing, alien, even incorrect. But for someone who had played her life in multiple parts, to similar reactions, this was music that Katrina knew was hers.”

The Bartók piece that Katrina plays at the climax of the book embodies the theme of The Inevitability of Change and Transition. This piece also expresses Katrina’s identity as a person who has transitioned from boy to girl and who does not fit into any of society’s comfortable categories. Although her audience might view the piece, and Katrina herself, as strange or even wrong, Katrina has gained the confidence in her own identity to own this music and play it proudly.

“The audience wanted transgender? They would get transgender. Or queer, or whatever else they wanted. But they would also get her. And she was beautiful. Listen to me. Listen to me now. For if this dogwood bow can force beauty upon you, then I shall shove every part of myself into that beauty. I shall make you feel all the joy, the terror in loving who you are.”

In contrast to her Axxiom piece played in Chapter 22, which evoked safety and familiarity, the Bartók piece does not allow the audience any such comfort. Before, Katrina used her music to speak to the personal experiences of her audience in ways that moved people to tears and made them feel seen. Here, Katrina finally raises her own voice and demands that the audience see her. No longer ashamed of her transgender identity, she owns it defiantly.

“Here, with her fingers upon the in-between places, Katrina played a deviation that the instrument thought was wrong, the audience thought was wrong, that everything she had learned about intonation and harmony thought was wrong. Here, where even Aubergine’s resonance became cold and faraway, Katrina drew her bow across the strings, quickly, smoothly, roughly, flirtatiously, desperately. Cursed or not, she drew her bow across as she would draw her breath. Queer or not, she would play with a cursed bow and be called an abomination. Trans or not, deviant or not, that did not mean that there was anything wrong with her love.”

What makes the Bartók piece so especially difficult is that it features many “in-between places,” transitional notes that are challenging even to highly trained musicians. But the “in-between places” are where Katrina finds her own identity as a person who doesn’t fit into the typical categories of society. Even though both the audience and even her own instrument feel there’s something wrong with these notes, Katrina’s growth as a character allows her to play the piece with great skill. In doing so, she declares that there is nothing wrong with her or the love she offers to the world.