Quotations from the Orient I

Quotations from the Orient I

“Love is beautiful, the only thing. Love is very big, the upside of a cloud [above the earth].”
– Wangxu, about love. During a separate conversation he adds:
“Love is pure and beautiful but relationships add something dirty. [For instance] parents love too much. Why do I play Rock n’ Roll?”
The “niai,” or overbearing love, of parents must be escaped through music.

“And they fuck little angels but they don’t ask.”
T.R. about “liumang” people who sneak into heaven. Liumang being a quality of a person society generally views as evil but sometimes may be “ Rock n’ Roll” if the particular person is just and authentic.

“Mp3 is like having sex. Vinyl is like making love.”
Wangxu

“How good it would be to take acid at a campsite with a girl. How beautiful!”
T.R., sitting up suddenly from a coma, leaping into the conversation, and immediately escaping into the reclined state of a deck chair on the roof.

“To think that all the people in your life were made for you, that maybe your world is the only one is amazing. Maybe that’s life; it’s beautiful.”
Wangxu telling me about having the random epiphany earlier that day that he is alive.

“I live for Rock n’ Roll because it’s something I can trust.”
Quanxin about why he plays music. When government, society, and other people cannot be trusted one must find something objective to trust. For some it is God, for him it is music.

“To understand the darkness makes you better understand the light. Dark things include people’s hearts, bad things in the world, and the deep blue of the ocean. Darkness is beautiful.”
Anhui, when a conversation about watching scary movies turned into a conversation about aesthetics and the importance of understanding evil in order to better understand good.

On campus one day I climbed a hill to find a secluded spot to read and listen to music and think about how to play it. A woman appeared behind me on the ridge I had just descended and asked me what I was reading. We began to talk. The first English work she read in full was The Bible and from her calm and wise demeanor I remember thinking that she must understand the tenets of Christianity on a very pure and spiritual way that means much to her. Some quotes:
“Life is an ever-searching process. That is good. Reading literature is like life, always adventurous.”
“Play your own music—music from Heaven.”
We discussed the story of “The Grand Inquisitor” from Brothers Karamazov and my understanding of Chekhov’s thoughts of human life, both of us simultaneously feeling the mystery of existence as well as it’s beauty. She looked up through the green leaves turned golden by the sun to the sky beyond and said, “This is our state.” The smile that appeared as she said this expressed a deep contentment with that moment. And though I couldn’t see myself I imagine my visage was similar, because my feeling certainly was.

“I like to see other people have feelings, just young and powerful.”
Wangxu about seeing emotion budding in others.

“When you play music you can feel some amazing, powerful feeling. Even you don’t know where it comes from. It’s magical. What do you want to say [with your music]?”
Wangxu

“In a strange city we saw the world for the first time with our own eyes and just feel disappointed and we started to cry. Quanxin stopped some guy and asked him, “Do you know who you are?! Do you know what you do every day?!”
Wangxu recollecting a moment in his and Quanxin’s life when they felt an immense, shared “disappointment” at the state of the world, with the common people they met and could not understand, and the lack of absolute freedom they still feel every day in China. They also drunk.

“On this earth for all people there is one language—that’s feeling.”
Wangxu. The conversation was originally about Rock, then about how music makes people feel things, and finally about the Ultimate Communication.

“You are living our dream.”
Quanxin about the freedom Americans have. Such freedom to the Chinese is a dream.