Why do we write songs? To know that we are alive.”
Accompanied by notes emanating underneath fingerless gloves and illuminated by the orange tint of a golden hour Arkansas sun, violinist and songwriter Kaoru Ishibashi, who performs as Kishi Bashi, provides a soundtrack to the now desolate Jerome War Relocation Center. It is a place whose history that seems to match the cold: one of ten sites used for the forced relocation of Japanese Americans shortly after Pearl Harbor. A smokestack stands as a visual reminder. The frost seems to fit the memory too.