An empty altar similar to Sima Xiang

Sima resembles an empty altar

Text/Figure Canaan

I never understood whether "Feng Qiu Huang" was written by Sima Xiangru to Zhuo Wenjun or by posterity to both of them. However, this does not affect my love for this guqin song. At the age of not talking about love, no matter who he asks for, what I like is the charm of the song, small songs, small sorrows, small thoughts, but it is restrained, buried, and peaceful. With the laying out and flamboyance of Sima Xiang's writing, I don't quite believe that he wrote this piece, but I know that he must be a master of the guqin.

There is no wonder that the ancient literati and scholars played the standard of that era. But modern people play tradition, serious play thankless, do not play seriously on some vassal style, after all, that time and space will always go, the blood is dry, the ancient wind is difficult, we are just borrowing a prop, nostalgia for the simplicity and lightness that Chinese once had.

To tell the truth, the guqin is born to be a good thing in the mountains. I've always wanted to play the piano in Matsushita in the mountains, and I feel the right way. Never went.

Twice, friends came to the mountain house to play, I brought my own guqin to sacrifice ugly, was playing "Phoenix Seeking Phoenix", someone asked: What is this song? Someone asked: Where is this cup? Want to answer, want to play, helpless, defeated. I'm not a good pianist, and they're not a good listener. Perhaps, if I were a good pianist, they would be too atmospheric to breathe.

So, I'm still honestly a listener. In his hand, there are two piano music CDs, which are the repertoire played by the old violinists of Guan Pinghu's generation. I deliberately brought it to the mountains to listen.

In 1961, The Swedish girl Lin Xili came to Peking University in China to study, and in her spare time, she studied guqin playing at the Beijing Guqin Research Association. At that time, the Chinese people were starving, the bad luck of the guqin and the violinists was coming, how she was created, learning the violin was actually free, when she went to class, the teacher used the Tang Dynasty violin, she used the Song Dynasty violin, and when she returned to China, the research association gave her a Ming Dynasty violin. Fortunately, she is worthy of this generous gift, half a century later, she has been a Chinese general, wrote a popular book to Westerners, called "Guqin", all the signs of traditional Chinese culture are stuffed in, comprehensive, but shallow, but the accompanying 21 piano music recordings are dry goods, when she wanted to record the old violinists playing, but Beijing can not find a tape recorder, after several twists and turns bought from Hong Kong to record.

The old violinists played, simple, calm, not as fancy as modern people. We must listen in the calm aura to be worthy of the sincerity of The Lin Girl. The stillness in the mountains is the most appropriate for the Piano Song.

Before, I was always listening, except for the birdsong everywhere, which was the sound of fruit falling.

Usually it is noon, and the villagers who return from work are gradually silent. Suddenly, the sound of "fluttering" was chaotic, the decibels were not high, and the soft persimmons landed on the ground. The big persimmon tree in front of the door, although it has been a hundred years old, but the branches are lush, the persimmon landing is the landlord busy with the work of picking the garden, there is no time to take care of it, the persimmon fruit is with insects, only yellow can not hold the root. Sometimes, it is a sudden "boom" sound, short, blunt force, that is, the apple of the old woman who lives alone diagonally across the door, can not resist the gravitational pull of the earth, since the death of her old wife, the fruit tree is unmanaged, happy to spoil the bugs. Of course, this season, there are still figs and dates in the village, and there is also a layer under the tree. The sound of them touching the ground was too low in decibels for me to hear.

Sound has the knowledge of sound, human beings must not think that people are omnipotent, much higher than other animals, the low-frequency sound waves of blue whales and the ultrasonic waves of dolphins, are not heard by humans, the sound emitted by African elephants is less than 25 hertz, experts call infrasound, which is also what we cannot hear, every time before the arrival of thunderstorms, humans are still unaware, African elephants have met and fled. Because they can hear thunder at a distance of 500 kilometers, while people can only hear it from 30 kilometers away, because the atmosphere filters out the infrasound part of the thunder.

People are no better than elephants, and the pollution of noise in modern life damages people's hearing. The easiest thing to hear in the city is artificial sound, dry and flamboyant, arrogant and domineering, if not needed, it is a kind of interference and aggression. At home in the city, what I had to listen to was the roar of cars on the road, the noise of the people in the courtyard of the neighborhood, the cough of my father in the next room, and the noise of the television. And the sound of fruit falling, "fluttering", "boo", innocent, low-key and humble, the warmth and simplicity of the trees and the moist breath of the mountains, all remain in the heart, spreading to the liver and lungs.

Therefore, I sometimes come to the mountains, purely to listen to the sound, birdsong, wind, leaves clicking through the window, the fish seller's roar is long and tortuous, the crow is dumb in flight, its voice is not good, the reputation is not good, but the sound gradually drifts away, but there is also a vague beauty, which also alleviates the unhappiness of the association, when it comes from a distance, it drops two calls on the roof, like a passing traveler, and it also makes people feel sorry for others.

What highlights all this is the stillness in the mountains, and it must be explained that this kind of stillness is emptiness, emptiness, emptiness.

The same birdsong, in the mountains more clear and graceful. The same piano music is even more distant in the mountains. The guqin also has infrasound, and it is not in the air that can be captured. So, I don't practice when the noise is falling out of the window in broad daylight. Lin Xili's book says that in order to amplify the sound of the guqin, the ancient qin people had to put several empty urns in the piano room, and there were nine empty altars buried under Sima Xiangru's piano platform. Why nine, not eight or ten? Nine, plus empty, is worth imagining. Or the ancients were more intelligent, knowing that emptiness is empty, and emptiness is wonderful.

Empty mountain sound good. Good tone. I have some understanding of what the Sutra says: The sound can be heard as true, universal and perfect; all sounds, whether near or far; the smell of the root of the ear is not possessed by the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body, and all sentient beings have their own wonderful sounds, which are inherently far away from the two functions of birth and destruction, and are truly and permanently existent.

But no, I was sitting in the hut of the mountain house, ten birdsong could be heard at the same time, across the courtyard wall, I could still know that persimmons and apples had landed. We are accustomed to chasing flashy sounds, and we are lost in our own nature that we could have smelled, so we circulate in a cycle and cannot be liberated.

Two days ago, on the street in the city, I saw the rear window of a car pasted: "At first I didn't understand the song, and then I listened to it. I laughed to myself. The owner of the car dreamed too deeply. He should have known that the last line of the song was: "The song ends with people scattering early and becoming empty." ”

This is not decadence, it is the way the world is.

I really know that to return to the pure source and hear the wonderful sound of self-nature, I should turn myself into an empty altar. Before there is time, props are still necessary, empty mountains are props, and guqin is props. One day, all the dust phantoms will be clear, and my hut in the mountains is just a prop in a big dream.

One point number Canaan