Quotations from the Orient II

Quotations from the Orient II

“She’s not evil, it’s not evil music. It’d about the dark side of things. Like when you see something dark and beautiful you still love it.”
Quanxin explaining the beauty of Sainkho Namtchylak’s music, a female Mongolian throat singer. We were listening to this song called “Night Birds:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CnH5Nnm32w&noredirect=1

“If you hate someone you punch him for blood. If you’re merciless you just kill him.”
Quanxin, joking.

“A warm hand to guide her to a new world.”
Houzi, then we laughed. He was going to teach a girl how to use drugs but dropped it.

“It doesn’t matter if we have sex or not, just being with her is happiness. That feeling is beautiful. It’s in your chest, it just floats around. But in reality we live in different worlds.”
Houzi. He had just re-dreamed a recurring dream he has occasionally about a girl he has known since childhood. He feels some ineffable understanding of the girl’s soul that cannot fully be explained except empirically.

“When an artist wants to paint something beautiful, like on a stone, he goes to the mountains [to get it.] You can’t get the right stone anywhere else, to paint beautiful pictures on. You’re a good stone.”
I was excited about playing drums and starting to understand music, really understand it, during a conversation with Wangxu in a taxi. He felt my enthusiasm and powerful feeling and said this, following shortly after with, “You’re so fucking young too, still 21!”

“It is the best way to approach my soul.”
Anhui about yoga, reading, and silence. She, Quanxin, and T.R. do not speak English particularly well but sometimes come up with the best, most poetic or aesthetic phrasing that perfectly captures the meaning they wish to convey.

”You’re in a room with 50 bosses that all want to fuck you. What a cruel world.”
Anhui, at the failure of a joke I told her. My memory lacks the context but it’s still pretty funny.

Wangxu and I were talking about giving concerts and he described the feeling thus:
“Try your best to make love to the listener’s ear.” Laughter
Quanxin and Houzi said in November that if I can get good enough at bass then we could give a concert together. I told Wangxu I wanted to and I was excited and nervous and happy and he said, “Prove to me that you are alive.” God damn. Two days after I left the other two gave a concert- God damn.

Wangxu called me one night very drunk and we talked for half an hour. Great conversation, meaningful and hilarious. I thought he was at a concert, outside talking to me, but quickly learned that he was actually in his girlfriend’s car when she said something muffled to him.
“You’re my bro, I love all my friends, you and T.R. and everyone…
You are a cool laowai (foreigner), not like other shabi laowai (stupid bitch foreigners), you’re different, you’re a good friend…
I want to play music right now, I can fuck anyone right now. I won’t use drumsticks, I use my dick. You can use a high speed camera and the cymbal will look like water moving. Oh God, I like a black people, yo yo, hey man!”
And when we were hanging up I told him I loved him too in the way friends care for other friends and he told me, “Don’t say more, it will be cheesy.” And hung up.

The last day I was there we had a party at Wangxu’s apartment that ended up being one of the best days of my life. My Chinese was better that day than any before which was most gratifying after a great length of learning and a bit of frustration that proved healthy as it was also encouraging. The conversations at the party were incredible and fun was abundant in many forms and faces. Quanxin, Houzi, and I had a particularly good talk that lasted about three hours.
“The universe has many eyes, ears, noses, mouths, hands. You are one of them.”
A small part of Houzi’s epiphany.
“If you go too far away [from yourself] you must know the way back. Do not get lost.”
Quanxin about drugs. When used correctly they can be used to take drastic and fantastic steps away from one’s self and consciousness but you must “know the way back.” If you “get lost” you can go crazy and perhaps never find yourself again. In a conversation earlier in the year he said, “Drugs are a gift from God.” To which Houzi added, “But a gift like fire is a gift. Dangerous.” Useful and beautiful but dangerous and potentially harmful is not used with care and caution.
“The mind and reality are always dancing. If their movements are beautiful your life will be beautiful.You must be strong to confront reality.”
“If you have a strong heart your love will be strong.”
“The easy way in life is the weak way. (i.e. the way of the Conformist) You must be strong and take the hard way. Challenge life.”
Houzi’s thoughts and epiphanies. Never has the difficulty of life and the difficulty of naturally and truly being oneself been so clear to me as on that red couch, talking with them. I believe something my Chinese friends and I all mutually respect in each other is that we understand that each of us has already begun to tread the “hard way” without knowing it. Each of us has unconsciously set out to learn of ourselves, to grow into something we fashion with our own will, and to simply be as naturally as we can.