Cascadia Calling, 2025.11.10
"I cannot escape the mistakes that you’ve made"
I’m traveling for work this week. While I despise the sprawl that makes up most of the Bay Area™, I love what an artist friend of mine insists on calling “Oakland and the West Bay”. Fortunately my work this week has me in the center of San Francisco. I’m already trying to figure out which Mandatory Fun events I can ditch out on to go on a brief (I’m in my 40s after all) bar crawl, hopefully with a local friend or two.
With a big smile on his face, Frog stood up. Then, flattening himself like a dried squid, he slipped out through the gap at the side of the closed door, leaving Katagiri all alone. The two teacups on the kitchen table were the only indication that Frog had ever been in Katagiri’s apartment.
Almost on impulse, I threw my new copy of Haruki Murakami’s Super-Frog Saves Tokyo into my bag this morning before heading to the airport. It’s a stand-alone edition from Harvill, translated by Murakami’s frequent collaborator Jay Rubin. It’s illustrated by Seb Agresti and Suzanne Dean.
The book itself is a beautiful artifact. It weaves the text with stylized, abstract scenes and images of the titular frog. Reading it feels almost like reading a well-made children’s fairytale book, but for adults. It’s hard to say too much about the story without spoiling it. It starts out as a fun, cute story that also evokes the seemingly universal desire to be known and admired by something monstrous who wishes us good will and takes us on a grand adventure. Then it turns into something altogether darker and stranger. (Think of it as a little like a platonic version of Mrs. Caliban.)
For all the shit I give streaming culture at times, I do have to concede that we live in an unprecedented time for the sheer volume and discoverability of indie music. This means that sometimes the tides of the Internet wash strange little gems on the shores of my attention. I had never heard of Anna von Hausswolff until I stumbled upon this haunting collaboration with Iggy Pop.
I haven’t quite figured out what to make of this swaying, haunting little love song. It’s lush and full of longing, and Iggy Pop’s fatherly, uneven croak makes it feel less like a duet and more like von Hausswolff is singing to a ghost. When he sings “somewhere in the dawn I have hoped to see your face / but you’re inside a lie I hope you’ll carry my name”, it feels like a call from beyond the grave.