After studying and performing overseas for many years and returning to China, Li Xiaoluo published the song collections "Yulanting Street" and "The Cauldron of Plenty", and also published the novel "The Narrative of the End". Recently, Li Xiaoluo's latest works, a collection of novels composed of twelve stories such as "Mr. Hyde", "Huang Qiuying's Murder", "The Original Appearance" and "Jasper Hairpin" have been published.
The whole book uses stage thinking narrative, connecting the past, present events and characters to form images, which enriches the level of literature and drama, and restores the narrative itself from the opposition of narrative. As a creator, Li Xiaoluo's "ambition" seems to be outside the story, she writes a story for a play and a murder.
One of the chapters of "Paper Stage", "Jasper Hairpin", was originally a traditional play, and Li Xiaoluo used it as a base to reconstruct a new story with the daughter of a Siamese timber merchant entering the Central Plains as a clue. In "Broken Bridge", Li Xiaoluo writes group portraits of women, who live from girls to women one by one, and it is difficult to grasp their hopes and destiny:
So jealous, the woman who chose a man is desperate, she doubts her husband; Doudou, a girl in a white dress, is sad, there is a crack in her chest, she is good with the boss but cannot be public, walking with the boss along the West Lake, kicking each other's toes, until the boss's toes begin to bleed; The most beautiful girl in the store, Xiao Tao, was desperate, she let herself die by the beautiful West Lake before she had time to experience any hardship...
In an interview with Li Xiaoluo, she bluntly said: "Characters and characters are all for narration. If the narrative is lost, the characters and characters are fragments... I mastered the secrets of narrative from music and drama, and that's when I moved on to literary writing. Li Xiaoluo believes that in a sense, the language of narration and music are not different, "both are centered on rhythm." ”
Li Xiaoluo, writer, songwriter. He is the author of the novel "The Narrative of the End" and the novel collection "Paper Stage", and has published the song collections "Yulanting Street" and "The Cauldron of Plenty".
I come from music and theater
Mastered the secrets of the narrative
Yan Yan: Can you talk about your upbringing?
Li Xiaoluo: Every time I come to an interview, someone asks me about my upbringing. Actually, I hate answering these kinds of questions. My experience is simple and clear. I am a simple person, reading, studying, traveling, working. Of course, there is something else underneath this thread, and that is the emotional and spiritual clue. This should not be much of an experience, this is the more important unspeakable trajectory of life.
My dad was an intellectual and very serious about his studies, but I don't think he had any artistic skills. So, he went to my mother and devoted himself to singing and dancing. Moreover, he mistakenly imagined that I also sang and danced.
When I was a child, I suffered a lot about this, and I learned rhythmic gymnastics, and pipa, and I learned to be a host, in fact, I hate these things very much. He was wrong about me, I'm actually a girl who likes to be quiet. When I was a child, I read very well, I didn't need to be supervised by adults at all, and I did my homework in class and outside of class very well.
I thought that if I had been reading quietly, I should have gone to physics. However, when I reached the age of junior high school, my father's fantasy swelled again, and he sent me to art school to learn dance; It's not that I'm not in good condition, but I have a great dislike of jumping up and down, that is, I don't like dancing.
I've loved writing since I was a kid, and I'm very keen on getting paid for submissions. I always thought that I should live by this in the future.
Li Xiaoluo.
Of course, as you all heard, I went to Japan to study singing and dancing, and it was just an opportunity. At the time, I was seventeen years old, the age where I had to see the outside world, and my main purpose was to go to the shops and eat all kinds of weird things. So, I was mainly mixed in Japan, but I still learned some Japanese.
Yan Yan: How did you turn to literary creation later?
Li Xiaoluo: My turning point was that I was going from Tokyo to Beijing that year, and I was about to transfer to the next station, I overslept and missed the plane, and then my classmates led me to meet teacher Zhang Guangtian. He is a very special teacher, in a word, his teaching is to let the soldiers read "Dream of the Red Mansion" and let Xiucai repair the earth.
I don't like dance, and I don't like parents' fantasies, but that doesn't mean I don't like art, I followed Teacher Zhang into the door of art. In those days, I studied drama, music and literature with him. Drama, in fact, is not a plot understood by the public; Music is not a smooth tune for entertainment on the market. From a professional stage, I learned the narrative nature and poetic core of drama and music. I performed in Copenhagen, worked at the Odin Theater, went to Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Rome, Innsbruck, Munich, rehearsed all the way. Travel is the rehearsal of our troupe.
I finally broke free from my parents' illusions about art and returned to the art that I wanted to be.
Yan Yan: What kind of art is this?
Li Xiaoluo: Art is not a dream, but an ideal, that is, whether you have it in your heart. Yes, there is; No, it's useless to experience it. Many people think that acting is playing a character, but in fact, the characters and characters are all for the sake of narration. If the narrative is lost, the characters and characters are fragments. So, I mastered the secrets of narrative from music and drama, and that's when I moved on to literary writing.
Writers of my previous generation
Both are obsessed with shaping characters
Yan Yan: Can you talk about literature?
Li Xiaoluo: Literature has a threshold.
When everyone hears the threshold, they may be disgusted. In fact, the threshold of social class is not terrible, it may be transformable through struggle, and the threshold of art is non-social, fateful, and irreversible. What this means is that I can create literature because I am a genius. I mean genius, not to boast, but to deprecate, to the minimum. Because, the talent of talent comes from heaven, but it cannot be helped by me.
You are a genius, what else can you do personally?
Li Xiaoluo.
All those who want to rely on their own actions to enter the door of art are delusions, according to the words of the common people, you are not this material. Therefore, I write with talent, not by experience, experience.
Many people who have read my book will have the impression of why a young female writer has such deep experience. As I said, I write by gift, that is, the apocalypse leads me and my heart leads me. A person's heart is bottomless, and it is much farther and deeper than the experience that the outside world stretches out. I often hear people say that I have been in the countryside, I have fought wars, wandering, and turbulence, and I can't talk about how many experiences I have experienced, and how I would be able to write a book. Is this literature or a personal archive? Literature is literature, the study and practice of narrative, not content. Content only destroys the narrative technique and does not help the narrative in any way.
Yan Yan: For writers, how should they view the relationship between content and language?
Li Xiaoluo: Narrating with sound and words is a reality that Chinese and Chinese cannot get rid of. I mean, if you write in spoken language, what's the difference with music? It's all about rhythm.
In the reality of Chinese and Chinese literature, it is challenging to write words, that is, to balance the relationship between writing and sound. In fact, not many people care about the issue of language and script now, everyone uses Chinese characters to memorize sounds, and Chinese characters are actually symbols, and it has little to do with what sounds are pronounced. However, the reality of the so-called language is to attach importance to both form and meaning, as well as pronunciation. Learning Beijingese, or basing yourself on Beijingese, is just one specific aspect of phonetic writing. If you understand the principles of music, you can really see the essence of language, music is the highest level of sound expression.
Yan Yan: Tell me about the newly published novel collection "Paper Stage", which story do you most want to recommend to readers?
Li Xiaoluo: There are 12 articles in this "Paper Stage", and I can't say them all again. Besides, if you write it, what is the power of saying it yourself? Put the content there, you just go and read it; Visitors have their own interests and gains.
Paper Stage, by Li Xiaoluo, Zhejiang University Press, September 2022.
I'll just tell you what I have in mind. "Mr. Hyde" I want to write about the heart, but I have to write about the character. The character I am talking about is not the character of the characters you understand, but the character of the story, the character of the scene and the character of the narrative. The human heart is one, but it is witnessed by different personalities. The meaning of literature is to grasp this character.
Let's talk about "Jasper Hairpin", this is not a rewriting of a traditional opera blueprint, nor is it looking at the Central Plains through the perspective of a foreign timber merchant's daughter, this is actually a lifestyle contrast. I focus on being different to accomplish an identity. I particularly dislike the integration of multiple elements, the collision of East and West, special perspectives, personal history narratives, these dazzling, obscure, and unsimple concepts. Conceptual art was aggressive when it first came out, it never thought of it, and now it is also a cliché.
In fact, my favorite is "True Legacy". But I'm sure most readers are indifferent. How many good works in the world are never felt, so I don't care. I think it's good because I get a calm rhythm to lay out all the unexpected results. Because of my calmness, reading may not produce any waves. Rice is always a flavor and dishes can be ever-changing. But can a person go a day without eating? The more prosaic, the more indispensable. I'm glad I have the determination to be conservative and bland, and I get a lot of pleasure in writing.
"Broken Bridge" is also what I want to recommend to everyone. The characters that appear in it, the things that pass, are the most familiar to people at the moment, or you yourself, but it is only the background of the broken bridge. The protagonist is not a person, the protagonist is a broken bridge. I don't like to write about people. People are not that important, broken bridges are important to me. My previous generation of writers was obsessed with creating characters, but I was obsessed with creating a bridge, something, or something. I'm bored, aren't I? I didn't surprise you, did I? You can't get along with me, do you? That's right, because I pursue normality.
Yan Yan: Two years ago, you published the novel "The Narrative of the End", which tells the twists and turns of the life of a Nanyang student named Wang Yifan. What is the biggest difference between this work and the new work?
"The Narrative of the End", by Li Xiaoluo, Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, October 2020.
Li Xiaoluo: Before "Paper Stage", I wrote a long story called "The Narrative of the End". I write about the magnificent narratives of my previous generation, the fierce narratives, unfortunately, the narratives of desire, the narratives of wealth, the narratives of scars, the narratives of rivers and lakes, the narratives of urbanization and anti-urbanization, and the curtain ends overnight, and the world seems to be unusually silent. In turn, they blame our new generation for being low-desire. Mountains have high and low, the moon is cloudy and sunny, and people also have low desires and high desires. Excessive superstition of the role of desire, looking at normal people think that it is low desire. We are the normal generation, without distortion, without mutation, normal is the most beautiful and the most urgent of this era.
Writing/Yan Yan
Editor/Shang Chongming
Proofreader/Zhang Yanjun