There is such a thing as "Meiya",
And for the layman,
There are even greater harms.
Meiya
Text | Wang Xiaobo
Not long ago, I saw an article in the newspaper about "kitsch" and "kitsch". The author believes that Milan · Kundera used a word called "kitsch", which refers to the artist's abandonment of artistic style in order to please the public. He also said that some small jokes in our country have created a new word "meiya", and I don't know what it means. I know the meaning of this word, which means that the public is seduced or misled by some people, blindly pursuing the style of art, and not asking whether they can bear it. I have some experience in this area, all related to enjoying music. The elegant music is very high-styled, and there is probably no doubt about it. I myself have a very low taste in music, and I can still listen to country music, and I can't stand it no matter how high.
About ten years ago, I was in the United States and once went to Boston to see a friend. It was the height of summer, and in order to avoid the traffic jam, I drove out before dawn, arrived at dark, found a friend, and was about to go out. He said that there was a church not far from his house, and every night there were free elegant concerts in it, and I asked me to accompany him to listen to it.
To be honest, I didn't want to go, so I pushed back: listening to elegant music requires a suit and shoes, and sit on the front. I drove for a day and was exhausted, so forget it. But he said the concert was casual and was of the nature of a rehearsal by teachers and students in the university music department. After you go in, as long as you don't doze off and don't leave the scene halfway. I went, and when I got to the door, I realized that I was playing two of Bruckner's symphonies. My friend also pulled me to sit in the middle of the first row and listen to these two tunes—sitting here, not even having a chance to yawn. I think these two pieces are not salty, no light, no oil and no salt, the players are blowing and hula, and the conductor is painting in Hubby, and the whole feeling is similar to seasickness.
God forbid, I drove for more than ten hours, sat in a hot and stuffy church, and as long as I had something on my head, I could fall asleep immediately; but I still braced myself, and my eyes rolled round, from seven o'clock to nine thirty! There is a paragraph in the middle that I really hate not being able to touch to death... Bruckner's two bird songs are really boring!
As mentioned earlier, I have no cultivation in classical music, so I have no say. Maybe the spring breeze of Bruckner's music is good, not into my layman's donkey ears. But I always feel that even if it is elegant art, there are skills and levels, and it is not possible to generalize. The threshold of elegance is unconditional goodness as soon as you enter it - so it is melancholy. One can hold a mesmerizing attitude, but your senses immediately disagree, giving you some guilt...
I am more sure of the next example – not because I am vulgar, but because of the low level of people who perform elegant music. This time I listened to Bach's chorus, and I had no opinion on the song, but I didn't worship Bach's name, I heard it myself. This time I have a bit of an opinion on the choir.
The reason for this was that my wife taught a Chinese class, and one of the students in the class, the horn players of the Pittsburgh Amateur Orchestra, invited us to the rehearsal, and we went. Although it is not a formal performance, as an audience, you can't be sloppy, because there are few audiences at all. So I dressed up in earnest — in a three-piece suit. The vest of the dress was a little thin, but my wife said that the thin clothes were spiritual to wear; so I forced the beef-eating belly down, causing my diaphragm to rise an inch, a little breathless.
So I came to the small auditorium of the Conservatory of Music and sat in the middle of the front row. When I saw the choir, I felt that there was a misunderstanding: there was an old lady standing in the middle of the choir. I was with her classmates in several classes—not eighty, seventy-five—and I remember that she was funded by a U.S. government program called "Return to the Classroom for the Elderly, and she didn't read well, but the professor always let her pass, and I had no problem with that. It seems that she mixed another class in the music department and sang with her classmates.
Unfortunately, when people are old, the organs of reading will degenerate, and the organs of singing will degenerate, and this song may not be sung well. But since we have come, we must also listen to this concert well with this old man who knows us well—we have this kind of mesmerizing determination. To put it in good conscience, the level of amateur orchestras is... Believe me, I sat there and listened to this scene very seriously before smiling and clapping. All the wild and vulgar laughter was swallowed into my stomach, and as a result, the internal organs were shattered into pieces. For the next three months, he often coughed up a lung or a slice of liver. But because he was young and in good health, he didn't die. At this point, the author intends to end it. My conclusion is that there is such a thing as meiya, and it is even more harmful to the layman.