起因是在小红书上刷到乐评人王硕的一篇关于大张伟是否懂音乐的评价。看完之后,去油管找到当时买过花儿乐队的那张专辑「草莓声明」(2001年)来听,发现几年前可能已经有过相同的怀旧轮回。大张伟是否懂音乐呢,我想作为初中就听他在初中写的歌、初中就自己写歌的我来说,是从未怀疑过的。会不会有一部分的我曾经觉得,初中的他可以写歌,初中的我自然也可以写歌呢。当然,大老师在其它方面的造诣,在此就不赘述了。
顺藤摸瓜找到王硕写的一本书「如何假装懂音乐」(本来是想要看2023年出版的「并非假装懂音乐」,网上评价比这本高许多,但没找到),出于好奇拜读了一下。基本上浅显地讲解或者提到各种不同细分音乐类型的历史、轶事以及代表人物。我也只是蜻蜓点水地翻阅,今天在健身房边做椭圆机边读的时候,经过了Linkin Park的新金属阶段,又经过了Craig David的R&B / UK Garage阶段,没有忍住找出这两位的歌来重听。可能是因为2000年左右R&B在大陆因为周杰伦、陶喆等人开始流行,我竟然买过Craig David当年的专辑「Born To Do It」,当然是磁带,也很有可能是盗版的,里面的「7 Days」现在听起来依然很熟悉,不排除我曾经会唱的可能性。 Linkin Park我最熟悉的专辑是2003年的「Meteora」,高中时有喜欢我的男同学借给我这张专辑,当时已经是CD的形式了,不排除依然是盗版。这可能是我第一次学会英文摇滚说唱。当然,英文说唱启蒙可以说是Avril Lavigne 2002年的专辑「Let Go」给我的,这张专辑我至今每首歌都会唱,包括Nobody’s Fool。Avril对于我来说跟大张伟一样,给当时的我一种深深的代入感,让我相信十几岁的我写歌这件事是有据可循的,所以这张专辑对我来说影响深远。男同学同时借给我的还有Korn的某张专辑,但他们的风格对于我来说终究是有些过于吵闹了,我想我没有鼓起勇气听第二遍。 周杰伦我是从2001年发行的第二张专辑「范特西」开始听的,这盘磁带是初恋的男同学借我听的,我一直都没有还给他,歌词纸可能被我翻烂了,因为当年周杰伦的歌,哪一首的歌词不是烂熟于心的。后来回去听第一张专辑,同样的惊艳,同样的欲罢还休。周杰伦的歌伴随我到了上大学,也就是到「十一月的萧邦」和「依然范特西」。那之后,也许是我变了 ,也许是周董变了,总之我开始排斥他的新歌。我曾经一直是一个很心高气傲的人,总想要证明自己跟别人不一样,听歌也想要听小众的,才显得神秘又遥不可及。我不确定这个毛病我至今有没有完全丢掉,但心境必定是平和了许多。 大学时代也离音乐很近,在学校经常有一些大大小小的演出或者比赛,也会跟玩音乐的小朋友一起唱歌,这些可能是我大学生活最幸福的部分。那时候因为环境的原因,更倾向于听英文歌,音乐风格主要是流行,夹带一些民谣、摇滚、爵士等等。当时在舞台上翻唱过的歌有Corinne Bailey Rae的「Put Your Records On」、Kara DioGuardi的「Terrified」等等。当时用来录歌的软件好像叫做Cubase。 2010年大学毕业后在北京的阶段,更明显地倾向于听独立民谣和乡村民谣,会常常光顾一些比如Indie Shuffle这样的网站,吉他好像也是在这个时候真正捡起的。我自己的歌都是深受民谣风格的影响,有些影响甚至非常具体到某个音乐人或者某首歌,比如Bob Dylan,比如Darren Hanlon。那个阶段在小酒吧的几场演出里,除了唱过自己的歌,还唱过Stone Temple Pilots的「Plush」(算是大学时种下的一个执念)、Adriano Celentano的「Il ragazzo della via Gluck」、Kim Carnes的「Bette Davis Eyes」等等。可能我对音乐从来都持有一种自负的态度,因深信自己有无限可能而目空一切,同时因可能性的无从实现而感到悲天悯人。 说实话,不知道为什么突发奇想像回忆录似的写下这些过往,而且我隐隐觉得曾已经写过相同的内容,却记不清安放在何处。人生有多少不同的阶段,而每个阶段受到的影响又是多么的随机,就像借我磁带和CD的男同学,他们是否不经意间让我蜕变成为了不同的人。这里只是提到很少几个记忆中的音乐人和歌,大多数也许已经像Craig David一样,从时间的缝隙中流走了。 莫非只是想要感谢曾经馈赠于我音乐的人,哪怕是一首歌,一个名字,一本书,一个幸福的瞬间。
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So I’m back to Javier Marías. Your Face Tomorrow Volume III: Poison, Shadow and Farewell. At the point where he gave lengthy description and reflection on ge-bryd-guma after accidentally or premeditatedly sleeping with a young female colleague, an enlarging hole on whose stockings warranted numerous mentions as if that was the sole driving force of an eventful or tranquil rainy night. But now in Volume III, I’m finally starting to get what the title means or implies or insinuates. Time passes slowly in this book (one night in 50 pages or more? I’m losing count or sense of pages ever since I got used to reading on Kindle), while in reality, it might take years or decades to turn just one page. How do we know how our faces will be like tomorrow, tomorrow meaning an arbitrary amount of time later, be it a day, a month, a year or say, 5 years, 10 years, until one forgets when the initial counting point was? If I see your face tomorrow, would I be able to recognize it? Out of a crowd in a Sunday afternoon art museum, in a waiting line at an airport gate, or in a corridor inside of a gold-decorated concert hall? Does it make a difference if I do? How much time has to pass before a past has become a past and can no longer be disturbed or altered or continued? Will there eventually be a tomorrow where I will fail to recognize your face and you mine? The logical answer is yes, of course, a tomorrow far enough from a yesterday.
Maybe Marías was talking about trust. I was never sure what exactly he was talking about, as he never narrowed his adjectives or adverbs or verbs or nouns down to one definitive term. Maybe he was not able to make a decision. Maybe he did not see the necessity to make a decision. Maybe it’s just more practical to leave more options open, so that later on you can always say, but that’s not what I meant, or but that’s exactly what I meant. The other day I took out the music sheets of Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2 to play again after a few years, just a day before the concert where a variety of his pieces, including this one, were performed by the Wiener Symphoniker with a young gleeful Austrian conductor. I watched attentively at his movements and gestures that, as I recall vividly and confidently expounded by Cate Blanchett in Tár, define and dictate time. Time can go faster or slower or stop altogether. Time is not the same when confronted by music; it’s only the backdrop that is steady, perpetual, but colorless, irrelevant. She didn’t receive the Best Actress Award, but to me the part where she gave the lecture at Julliard and played Bach’s Prelude in Major C while interpreting each bar with a meticulously planned tone of voice was brilliant and a classic, for which she deserves all the awards in the world (but congrats to Michelle Yeoh). As my piano teacher repeatedly tells me, in the end it’s all about time and dynamic. But the most important thing is intention. Why do I want to see your face tomorrow? A school friend that I haven’t seen since university suddenly wrote me today, let’s arrange to meet if you’re coming back. Life is short, and we probably won’t meet many more times. I replied with a sad face. Maybe that’s why. I want to see your face tomorrow because if not, I won’t recognize you the day after tomorrow because the changes bestowed on you by time will be too drastic. Does it make a difference if I don’t? “The one charm of the past is that it is the past.” wrote Oscar Wilde (but of course, if you know the characters well from The Picture of Dorian Grey, this one came from Lord Henry). How can you start playing a piece without intention, without emotion, without expression. It always takes me quite some time to get what they exactly mean. I wonder if it’s a matter of habit of resistance to what historically warrants resistance, or subjective perception of the objective world, which is persistently and consistently reinforced through self-affirmation and the proneness to attribute all that’s not immediately comprehensible to the lack of intelligence or consideration on the part of others. The wrinkles around his eyes and basically all over his fatigued yet confident face caught my eyes and prevent me from making more eye contact than strictly necessary. I stare into the computer screen instead, knowing for a fact that eye contact in this particular case makes next to zero difference. What am I doing here. Where have the years gone. These are the two questions, to which the answers evade me at any given point in time, on both literal and figurative levels. I try to squeeze out a smile that can be loosely interpreted as an indication of respect, which he may or may not have earned based on the years that marked his life as half lived. How should I know. The loudness of his voice and the complacency that it carries gives me a sense of physical disgust mixed with indifference. My brain involuntarily and falsely stores the heuristic that this individual is the stereotypical man of the very country to which I don’t and won’t ever belong.
Speaking softly and tentatively of a lack of the sense of belonging, I look up from the piece of paper which contains an exhaustive list of over fifty human needs, some more fundamental than others. How can it be that they keep talking about it or at least keep showcasing how much they talk about it but still are incapable of empathizing or at least appearing to empathize when people are caught in moments of vulnerability and sentimentality. They nod agreeingly and absent-mindedly, as if I was simply recounting a not well remembered idle holiday in an uncharacteristic countryside. Over the years I naturally developed the tendency to have very low expectations from people, because people might disappoint you and hurt you if you let them. I watch them as we continue to discuss or make fun of other topics suggested to us by people that may or may not have a more profound understanding of human interaction. At least they try. And trying itself is commendable. Maybe if we avoid feelings altogether the world would be an easier place. I think reading Sally Rooney’s books kind of brought me back to a time when I was young enough to give my own random thoughts so much importance that I rambled on and on, regardless of the prospect of getting a considerable readership base. I cannot really say whether it’s a good or bad thing (especially since I’m starting to lose my ability to form a reasonably eloquent sentence in English without first resorting to a few words in German that sometimes appear superior in terms of precision of expression, but not to say that I’m capable of forming any eloquent sentence in German itself). I’m not even recommending her books, simply mentioning them. There’re more useful books to read or spend your time on. I guess I’m just grateful that the way she writes reminded me of the way I used to write, not that these two ways necessarily overlap – that’s beside the point. The florescent lamps are shining equally over me and others, just like the sun, I wonder why we don’t all feel the same. Recently I’ve been thinking about my grandmother, mother of my father. Only sometimes, that is. She was a very short peasant woman of few words. As a matter of fact, she was illiterate and lived a rather isolated life in the countryside. Apart from cooking food (even the extent of that is very limited - the ingredients available to a poor peasant woman were scarce in those years), doing domestic chores, and maybe cultivating crops or keeping poultry (I do not have clear memory of my childhood visits to their house in the village but I do vaguely remember a pig), she didn’t do much. Especially after my parents moved them to the city, away from the people that spoke their language. I was raised to speak standard Mandarin, and my grandparents only spoke dialect (and a very rural version of that). I never had any conversation with them that’s beyond food, weather and how is everyone doing. And I never considered that strange.
My grandfather, father of my father, was a tall and you could even say handsome man. He naturally assumed the role of the head of the family, even if his two adult children had clearly outgrown him. It was a custom in China, more then than now, more in the rural areas than in big cities, to respect, obey, and even worship your parents (or father). He couldn’t read, but he had authority within the walls of the family. He had authority over my grandmother. She did whatever he asked, without exception and without complaint. Outside the family he became vulnerable, because who would listen to you if you haven’t earned it somehow. After my grandfather died, my grandmother was alone. She lived alone in our previous apartment, closer to the city center, closer to us. My mother seldom went to visit her, and I never considered that strange. My father and I went to have lunch with her a few times a week. She would cook lunch (mostly noodle soup), and we would eat lunch. Maybe a few words would be exchanged, but she never managed a follow-up question beyond “how’s school”. Everything is fine, I would say. I never bothered to elaborate, maybe I thought she didn’t deserve an elaboration. Sometimes we invited her to have dinner with us, and she would walk fifteen minutes each way. Taking the bus was a waste of money for her, as everything else. She never asked for anything. She just quietly existed. I never knew what she did in all those years that she lived alone in that old apartment. She didn’t read, didn’t watch much TV (she couldn’t follow everything in the news or TV series), didn’t have friends to hang out with, didn’t have any pastimes, didn’t have a religion. Every time I went there, after we finished lunch, after the usual brief exchange had been made, we just sat there, quietly, so quietly that the passing of time became evident and then unbearable. Then we said, we gotta go. She always kept a mild smile on her face, enough for me to presume that she was not unhappy. I also never knew her name. I think her full name was only mentioned once in my entire life and it was never given any significance. In those times in some parts of China, the name of a married woman was insignificant, almost irrelevant. I only knew her family name was Wang. My other grandmother was a respected doctor, educated and authoritative. Her name carried so much weight because it was remembered by every person she helped and every prescription she wrote. But Ms. Wang had no name, and that was fine by everyone. Nobody gave it a second thought. Nobody thought it mattered, what the short peasant woman with a rural dialect wanted. I took the plane for the first time to fly from Beijing to Tianshui for the funeral of my grandmother. There was a parade in the far countryside close to where they used to live. It was not a proper cemetery, but my grandmother was buried beside my grandfather. On the way to the grave, according to the village custom, the relatives must cry as loudly as possible for as long as possible. My father and my aunt were walking behind the coffin, followed by other distant relatives I didn’t know. I remember my aunt and another woman crying extremely loudly, almost grotesquely, until their tears were dried up or maybe there were no tears to begin with. I couldn’t bring myself to cry, not for display’s sake anyway. But I was sad all the same. Losing someone is not easy, no matter how quietly they existed. Exactly how much love does one have to have to be able to respect everyone equally? 2020 is almost over. In a blink of an eye, that is. One might ask, what happened to this blog that I neglected or omitted to update for an entire year. It’s funny how long or short one year could seem, depending on one’s point of view. A year befitting for self-reflection, for soul searching (albeit minus the customary physical escape to a less familiar destination), for looking inwardly during quarantines, lockdowns, grey winter days, video conferences, temporary internet connection breakdowns, walks near the neighborhood or in suburban parks or mountains. During the silences after the night has fallen, the unprecedented has happened, the living has turned into the dead, gunshots have been fired, questions have been asked and answers have been attempted but not yet provided.
I remember the day I had lunch with three of my best friends from school time in a restaurant on the fifth floor of a shopping mall in Xi’an. One friend sent a dish back because it was too salty, and strangely I didn’t remember her as sensitive to salty food. They invited me to taste the milk tea from a popular tea chain shop, or was it a fruit tea that I tasted. I had to go to the airport to catch a flight to go back to Beijing and eventually back to Vienna. They dragged my big suitcase and accompanied me to the Didi taxi. The driver commented, you’re lucky to have so many people see you off. It was not a particularly clear day, I believe. The air quality in Xi’an is still suboptimal. I was indeed lucky to have been home in January, because after that, international travel, something to which we’ve grown entitled in the recent years, has become a luxury, and not only in the monetary terms. I’ve spent countless hours on airports and in planes leafing through newspapers that did not interest me much and reading books that couldn’t keep my very divided attention. Being amongst the tireless business travelers for long enough, I might have lost the curiosity I had when I was a mere traveler, maintaining a reasonable amount of excitement and looking forward to a destination that was actually chosen by me. The only travel outside of Austria I managed to have this year, of course apart from the one in January because that was to China and work-related, was to Italy. It also hardly counts as travel, because well, it’s Italy, if you know me. It was not my first time in Puglia, but we visited different towns and beautiful beaches. Italy never ceased to amaze me with its beauty. Just like Brazilians never ceased to amaze me with their positivity (the inconsiderable sample size should not overweigh the accuracy of the observation). Or maybe it’s just my cognitive filter that determines all these perceptions. Certain things reinforce themselves in our minds whereas others fade and disappear. Sometimes I’m shocked not only by how much I forget, but also by how much of that is what I once perceived as life-altering occurrences. You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. I guess as long as you can still remember a dot, you’re guaranteed to connect it someday somehow. Remembering it, however, can never be guaranteed. In Your Face Tomorrow Volume I: Fever and Spear, Wheeler talks lengthily about the campaign against “careless talk” supposedly in UK in the 1940s. “They were asked to give up the one thing they most love, that is most indispensable to them, the thing we all live for and which everyone, without exception, can enjoy and make use of, both poor and rich, uneducated and educated, old and young, the sick and the healthy, soldiers and civilians… Grammatical, syntactical and lexical skills matter little, oratorial gifts still less, and pronunciation, diction, accent, euphony, rhythm even less…” He was talking about talking. The thing we all live for. I took it out of the context and hence cannot assert its veracity. My intention might be rather to recommend this author, should anyone happen to be in need of a book recommendation. Or maybe I wanted to talk about something closely related to talking. Words. Written words. Another thing we all live for. We’ve already established that memory is unreliable, fickle. While I was on it, I discovered a nice quote. Memory is a fickle thing, a flickering light in a darkroom of possibilities. So what evidence do we have to corroborate our past, at least to convince ourselves, if not others, that it was not a mere invention, imagination, rendering? Nowadays we rely on photos and videos to remember facts: where I was in October 2015, what I had for dinner three weeks ago, who was present and wearing what on such and such occasions. Sometimes emotions can be recorded, though just peripherally and superficially. Who was smiling and who was not. There is a saying to this effect: I don’t remember you, but I remember how you made me feel. I think that’s when words come into play. Words transmit, convey, retain, preserve, precipitate and revitalize feelings. They do not waver. They do not wither. They can be a century old and suddenly bring tears to your eye. Without fading colors and without adapting diction. Maybe it has to do with the fact that, putting something in writing is in itself an act of commitment, even if the words state otherwise. An unconscious classification of importance. A determination for something not to disappear, even if the words say end, closure, farewell. That’s a contradiction between form and content. Who is to decide which one shall prevail. And the loss of written words is most devastating. A past without evidence. A memory without witnesses. Same as dancing without spectators. Then you’re free to remember whatever you want. How fortunate and unfortunately at the same time. On the airplane from Beijing to Zurich on November 16th, I put on the Airpods and some music too (because all too often I put on the Airpods and forget to play any music). I finally opened the Joni Mitchell book again and I cannot read this one without some music on the background that does it justice (some from Joni herself but Doc Watson, for example, would also do). I started the chapter where she moved to Sunshine Coast in Canada after becoming depressed and bought a stone house, beautiful and austere, to hide from the crowd and do some thinking on her own. She would listen to the sound of the water and light candles in the darkness and read Nietzsche and Beethoven. “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” “Without music, life would be a mistake.” “Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. If you get rid of the demons and the disturbing things, then the angels fly off, too.” When the intro of Dreams by Courrier Sud, the second song on one of my saved playlists on Spotify, started playing, I suddenly wanted to cry. I have just had a week without music in the dry winter of Beijing and listening to this bit of music felt like drinking water after severe dehydration. Every cell can sense the water running through it and how it’s been saved from drying and dying.
Without music, life would be very dry. The exquisite meals prepared by the Michelin-starred chef in the business class of Swiss Airlines cannot save it. The endless talk of economic development and business proposals and substantial financial gains cannot save it. The AI algorithms that can write sophisticated articles and calculate where to set up coffee shops cannot save it. The sun and the beach and the mountains and the forest and the furthest travel cannot save it. The most expensive purchasable item cannot save it. Life can be good with all these things. But good and dry are two different dimensions. I’ve taken so many flights that every time I board a plane, I can’t help but think, what if this one falls. And every time I land, I tend to think I survived this one, lucky me, but who knows about the next one. It puts lots of things into perspective, especially if you are a soul that’s been meandering around for too long to be able to draw strength from the pretense of belonging somewhere, with someone. (This was where I stopped.) 这次回国出差恰逢中秋节,在一个阳光明媚的星期五。今年第六次来北京,从深冬的阴霾到初秋的微凉,从怀柔的群山环湖到国贸的车水马龙,我印象中浓重的雾霾早已不复存在。也许只是巧合,也许只是许多存在的期限被我们主观无限拉长,最终无法分辨哪部分是现实,哪部分是想象。
星期六被邀请去参加一对双胞胎的百日宴。见到一些曾经街旁团队的核心成员,在二零一一年曾与我朝夕相处、吃喝玩乐。我想那是我最快乐的时光之一。即便我需要每天拖着沉重的索尼超大屏笔记本来往于二号线东直门和建国门之间,即便我需要每隔一个周六上班,即便我领着微不足道的薪资却常常需要去昂贵的餐馆和酒吧消费。现在大家大多都已成家,许多也有了小孩。宴席接近尾声,大多有家室带小孩的人都已离去,餐厅里剩下不过二十个人。YC的弟弟带了一把吉他和一只没有明显扩音作用的麦克风,Bill和Fred说,Pri来弹唱一首吧。于是我打开手机找到歌词(我不知道为什么我永远都记不住歌词),开始唱了起来。吉他并没有调准,但我想这也无妨。虽然起低了至少两个调,我还是坚持唱完了Towards The Sun,大家给面子地又录像又鼓掌。旁边一桌坐了三四个人,也很认真地听完了我唱歌,然后其中一个男生问我,你是专业的吗?我没有忍住哈哈哈哈地笑了起来。感觉好久没有这样发自肺腑地开心了。 某天下午打开朋友圈,发现好多人都在转发周杰伦的新歌,说好不哭,都在边听边哭。晚上回到酒店已经是十点多,赶快打开视频听歌。事实是,我并没有听哭,也并没有觉得这首歌有什么特别出彩或者特别感人的地方。但我还是听了好多遍,生怕自己可能错过什么重要的细节。其实喜欢一首歌,只要喜欢唱歌的人(尤其是当唱歌的人也是写歌的人)就够了。我这一代人,又有几个不爱周杰伦呢。没有他,就没有我们一半的青春。 周四一早我自己一个人先离开北京。我让礼宾部小哥帮我叫了一辆车,因为我在APP商店里始终没有找到正确版本的APP。在机场高速上我边听说好不哭边看向窗外,窗外道路两侧刚好是绵延的树林,透过黑色车窗玻璃外面的世界显现出一种凄凉的灰色。真的已经到秋天了吗,我还是不太确定。高空中有一轮巨大的太阳,剧烈的白色光芒透过车窗演变成一种无法描述的彩色,像是一条彩虹围绕在太阳的周围。这轮太阳跟随着我的车穿过密密的树林,在树枝间忽隐忽现。我很想把这种彩色记录下来发给谁看,谁都可以,一个平凡周四上午的小确幸。遗憾的是,照片与视频都无法复制这样的颜色。我想我应该把它画下来,尽可能还原我看到它的原貌。 可能也是因此,我们才需要画家吧。 I think I learned what love is yesterday.
I’ve read a peculiar set of books this year up till now. A range from You Are a Badass at Making Money (cliché commercial self-help book with a very green eye-catching cover; honestly, I picked it up from a store and paid the full price for it - what we in Chinese refer to as “tax for low IQ”, meaning you pay for something completely unworthy because you are stupid enough to fall for it - because I saw it on some list of recommended finance books; you can only imagine how I felt while reading it, especially having to painfully go through the language its author opted to use) to Shooting an Elephant (well, written by George Orwell, who like many distinguished writers in different times, gained his sophistication and ability to look at issues dialectically from copious amount of traveling and seeing how other people live and speak). From The Geography of Thought (lots of it is common sense to me but a person should really have some idea of what’s covered in this book to claim to be an expert in the other culture; cultural difference is beyond what translated language can convey, and language is the product and representation of how a cultural group thinks) to Becoming (a surprisingly touching read - there is something very compelling and relatable in the stories Michelle tells and she makes you believe a little bit more that changes towards the better are possible in this world). From The Fire Next Time (I need to understand the American history more to be able to fully comprehend this book; it’s a direct and honest account of the race problems in America and offers solutions that might still be relevant today) to A Heart So White (written in a stream of consciousness style that I happen to be able to follow well; the main plot revolves around marriage and relationship but it travels through time and invites readers to contemplate on right and wrong and the fine line in between and the intertwining of our imagination and reality). And some more. Then a few days ago I started reading Reckless Daughter by David Yaffe, a portrait of Joni Mitchell. I’m still in the first few chapters and so far I enjoy it a lot. She is one of the most talented and poetic folk musicians, and she actually started out as a painter. She said, I sing my sorrow and paint my joy. Believe it or not, I can relate to that. In the middle of the book, there are some photos from different times of her life with the presence of different people. She has had many lovers. One pictures was a close shot of Joni and Graham Nash, only their faces are showing but they appear to be very intimate. I haven’t reached this part yet, so I don’t know what exactly happened. I just finished the part with Leonard Cohen. In the caption of this photo it writes: “I loved the man, so I can’t say anything bad about him.” Love is not being able to say anything bad about that person. So here we were, at this little club (or a juke joint, as one might refer to it) called Red’s Lounge, on the corner of Sunflower Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard in Clarksdale. I entered it quite reluctantly, not knowing what to expect given the kinda sketchy people hanging out outside. As a matter of fact, I had no idea what to call sketchy in this part of the world. The sun had set not long ago and we came down with our rented pick-up truck, a white Chevrolet Colorado, which blended in quite well in the southern States. Andrew, the owner of the guesthouse where we stayed in Vicksburg, drove a Chevrolet Silverado. He said when he saw our car, he was really unsure whether we were the guests of the night or simply locals passing through.
The “hotel” where we were staying in Clarksdale was only a few minutes’ drive away. It was a historical shotgun shack (might be around 100 years old?) at Shack Up Inn, a nowadays quite popular place to stay in Clarksdale, ranked high on a Google search. In our shack Fullilove, there is an out-of-tune piano and some out-of-place pictures and decorations that reminded us of a time we didn’t know. It’s not very sane to visit the South without the sea at this time of the year. The sun started dancing around long before our waking hour. Yet the striking contrast between nature's temperature and the manmade (excessive) coldness made the sultriness seem more bearable. The staffer at the reception table light-heartedly informed us at check-in that we were allowed to loan a guitar from the collection on display. I didn’t take one, for I don’t play any blues tunes. But I fancied the idea that some man or woman had played one of those guitars on one of those porches many years ago, and the same songs are still being played today, with alterations and improvisations and all but they never went missing. They were never lost and hence the people who created them were never gone. The person singing the song is, at the moment of singing, the sum of everyone that has ever sung the same song in the history of the existence of the song. How miraculous is that. I don’t even know why I had the idea to do a blues road trip; some do it as a pilgrimage but for me it was just another tour of discovering what I knew too little. Doesn’t mean that I ended up knowing much - just knowing one more thing or word or name or song or place would render it meaningful enough. Learning gives you the ephemeral burst of satisfaction that for a brief moment you could say you know, as if that would count for eternity. We entered Red’s Lounge and were surprised by how red it actually looked (because of the lights, that is). It was smaller than I expected; smaller than most of the bars I’ve been to. We were asked to pay seven dollars’ cover each, and then we sat ourselves at the far end of the room at a long table against the wall, which was still within 5 meters’ distance from the stage. There were a few tables and other seats closer to the stage, and most of them were already taken. The red lights might have induced me to look at the same people in a different light; they all seemed mellow and at home. Maybe they were literally at home. Different people in the room took turns to take the stage and each sang a few songs. They changed roles and many of them played harmonica (and so heartbreakingly well). The bassist, a black man with a narrow white beard and wearing a hat that concealed the upper part of his face, seemed to have a physical condition that hindered his ability to keep his neck up straight. It was hard to guess his age. Initially I thought him to be really old. Then at some point he took on the role of singing too and he looked up a few times in spite of his physical condition and revealed his eyes. There was a certain sparkle in his eyes, kind of a combination of self-assuredness and perspicaciousness and high-spiritedness and playfulness. I don’t know what he sang but he sang the best blues I’ve ever heard. I guess most of the patrons there are either musicians themselves or regulars so it was extremely easy to identify strange faces. Two of the many musicians, one old and one young (certainly too young to sing among the others), came to us at different times and asked each of us how we were doing and where we came from while heartily holding both of our hands. It was hard to be there and not feel content. Maybe it was the singing and dancing of neatly-dressed old-aged people full of youth. Maybe it was the white and black men joking about and with each other. Maybe it was the harmonica. Who knows. I always say, a large part of understanding a language is understanding the culture. It was so true. Many times I couldn’t understand a simple “how y'all doing” not because I didn’t know the language, but because I’m used to a culture where people I know don’t even ask me how I am doing, not to mention people I don’t know. One unthinkable thing happened when I was standing in front of the Business & Money section at the Amazon Bookstore in New York near the corner of 5th Avenue and West 34th Street - a young man standing beside me asked casually, you read any of these books? I was a bit taken aback and then took a few seconds to browse through all the books in my sight again to evaluate exactly how many I have indeed read. Uhm.. a few, I answered reluctantly, have you read lots of them? Yeah, I just like to come here sometimes and try to stay at the forefront (or something to this effect). Right, I said. Then without making any further remark he vanished, perhaps because I wasn’t being such an excellent conversation partner under the circumstances. I stood there for another long minute, stunned by how simple it could all be. A big black man with sunglasses and a cane walked to and fro inside the bar a few times. I guess he was not entirely blind but couldn’t see well. He knew almost everyone and was ready to laugh at every joke that was told on stage. We were under the impression that he was actually the legendary Red (now that we know about this place). He wore a T-shirt that wrote on the back: backed by the river and fronted by the grave -- Red’s What does that mean? We tried to decipher this piece of code for some time. The river must be the Mississippi River, very obvious. I was quite certain that it meant we, as mortal human beings, are all going to die sooner or later. The grave (death) is in front of all of us, whether we like it or not. But we are nurtured by the mother nature, embodied by the Mississippi River, long and winding and passing through ten states and bearing witness to the history. So before we die we have to appreciate what we have and live fully. It seemed like a sound theory. Later another musician solved the puzzle. It was simply describing the location of Red’s Lounge. Behind the bar there is a small river that’s definitely not the Mississippi River. Its name might be Sunflower River. Right across the street which Red’s is facing, there is a cemetery - Heavenly Rest Cemetery. As simple as that. Last night we went to an English stand-up comedy show in Vienna. In a small, packed, overly-air-conditioned and unevenly-lit room at the back of a bar at the Gürtel, we were sitting fairly close to stage, which might be the only advantage of such a so-called intimate setting. The light in the center back of the stage aimed directly and glaringly at the center of the audience, which was approximately where I was sitting. I was lit and the woman on the right side of me remained in the darkness, safe and protected from an embarrassing joke that might find its way to one of us. Under this unexpected spotlight, I tried to maintain a respectful and self-assured facial expression throughout the show while smiling politely even if what was being said was not particularly amusing.
The comedians took turns to make fun of the lack of humor of Austrians, even the comedians who themselves were actually Austrian. Some of the non-white Americans inevitably told some race-related jokes; all of them inevitably told sexual jokes. Ever since Netflix decided to push stand-up comedy shows into my life, I’ve watched quite a lot of them. I don’t find the excessive use of curse words or extensively detailed and graphic account of sex stories very funny. Sometimes they verge on being unnecessarily vulgar and yet as a comedy spectator you are expected to have an accommodating sense of humor and laugh when it’s meant to be funny. At some point one American comedian said something about meeting her wife on Tinder ten years ago and having an open relationship or something. I was trying to process this piece of information so for a second I forgot to smile. The guy looked at me and said, this ma’am seems to be shocked. I was confused for a second whether he was talking to me or some ma’am equally conspicuously lit by the stage light behind me. The comedian reacted quickly and said, and she doesn’t even understand English. A few people laughed, for reasons they didn’t quite know. I felt bad for the comedian for having a non-interactive spectator like me. Maybe I really didn’t understand English. I used to think the funny must be the unexpected. But then I listen to the Trevor Noah show on Spotify every day and the joke about Trump’s hair never gets old. Maybe it’s not so much about the joke itself but the person that tells it. Some are funny, and the others try to be funny. It’s the trying that takes the fun out of it. |
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