I made a joke that Gabir would be at the sing-along showings of KPop Demon Hunters, but when we were writing the strip he said that he had grabbed tickets with some difficulty for he and Kara. You know? For good or ill.
Inexplicably, he can deliver “The Boxer with precision. Outside that marvel of science, he has no conception of what note is which. It doesn’t keep him from singing constantly. It should be said that whatever I might have written in the strip, I really like it when he sings. There’s no air of performance in it. No one to impress. And not just because he’s physically incapable of it: he’s just singing all the time like a bird would sing. It’s just who he is.
It’s a sense he doesn’t have. But then, he has alien senses: just looking around at buildings or trees or rocks he perceives something similar to authorship, intentionality. Apophenia, but life-affirming. One of the things about magic, I mean music, is that you don’t have to have any understanding of its systems in order to be dominated by it. Do, Re, Mi, and the rest are all just Do to him. Even Ti is Do. The weird part is that his ear is so goof troop he will harmonize with you, completely inadvertently. Like, fairly reliably he’ll deliver a Mi when you Do. Maybe it’s just a calibration issue?
I’m worried about where I’d need to press for ten seconds to bust him down to factory settings. I’ll let Kara handle it.
Outside of films he simply can’t resist, Gabe is largely done with movie theatres. It’s a conversation we’ve had several times, so him pig-wrestling tweens for Kpop cartoon tickets is a real index. Of what, I don’t know. The showing is a self-selection of people who are okay with other people singing in the theatre. I used to sing with people every week in church; practicing alternate melodies was how I got through it. Singing the same song together, with a large group of people, may be something many of the participants haven’t experienced since we killed God. An invisible fire will consume them. When This Is What It Sounds Like hits, he’s gonna feel it in his scalp.
(CW)TB out.