Light from Uncommon Stars

Katrina’s performance of the Bartók piece is the culmination of her character growth and the resolution of the theme of Identity and the Struggle for Self-Acceptance. Katrina started as a timid, fearful girl who “could barely handle her truth” (75); she has now transformed into a proud, confident violinist who can stand on a stage and declare her identity to the world. Shizuka warns Katrina that the audience would find Bartók’s music “confusing, alien, even incorrect,” but the unconventional nature of the piece is precisely why “this was music that Katrina knew was hers” (336). The most challenging feature of the piece is its “in-between” notes, which even most professional musicians don’t attempt to play, but Katrina plays them perfectly. The “in-between” spaces are where she finds her sense of self, even though these notes are not as familiar or comfortable:

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 […] 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 (340).

This scene, which brings together the themes of The Struggles of Refugees and Outsiders and The Transformative Power of Music, is both an evolution of and a deviation from Katrina’s earlier performance at the music showcase. In that performance, she plays music she was comfortable with even before meeting Shizuka. The music is already familiar to the audience too, and she uses it to speak compassionately to their experiences. In this final performance, however, Katrina plays a piece that is deeply uncomfortable both to herself and to the audience. It is a piece that originally belonged to Shizuka, but Katrina has now claimed it as her own. Far from familiar and comforting, it challenges the audience in unexpected ways. This time, rather than speaking to her listener’s experiences, Katrina demands that they listen to her experience:

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 (336).

Whereas in Chapter 18, Katrina was frustrated because she didn’t know what her violin wanted to say, now she knows exactly what she wants to say and does so with confidence. Like her violin, Katrina generates music from her “hollows” (174), the dark space inside her shaped by her experiences.

Katrina’s intense performance is juxtaposed with Shizuka’s gentle farewell performance of the NetherTale piece. Shirley uses a projection to recreate the stage in Berlin on the night Shizuka lost her soul. Just as Katrina took Shizuka’s Bartók piece and made it her own, Shizuka plays the music she learned from Katrina, symbolizing how the two of them have changed one another. This exchange brings the theme of The Influence of Parents on Children full circle, emphasizing The Inevitability of Change and Transition for both parties in such relationships. Although Shizuka believes that her life is about to end, she plays like a child “full of strength and promise and hope in all that was new” (347). NetherTale, the game where it’s possible to escape from Hell without killing, represents Shizuka’s new optimism for the future she believes she won’t get to see, but Katrina will. And although Shizuka escapes from her damnation in the end, the meaning of this moment remains the same.