Music
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Zhong Lifeng, a free traveler, recently published another book, "The Handbook of the Plucker". It is a written work of Zhong Lifeng that has been in violation for two years, and contains Zhong Lifeng's reverie and caprice on music, literature and life in recent years.
The whole book is divided into four parts: "touching the piano, starting the tune, plucking, and off the strings", just like the process of a musician creating a song. Zhong Lifeng's writing is more full of romance and sentimentality as a musician than literature.
Speaking of which, Zhong Lifeng is also an old friend of folk songs and poetry, so we interviewed Xiao Zhong (less formally).
Wang Xiaohuan: First of all, I want to tell you that your latest published self-selected collection is very good, listen, and you want to cry.
Zhong Lifeng: I also saw that you forwarded one of the songs in the circle of friends, after reading it, I smiled dumbly, you wrote - from the first second, the ear is pregnant...
This is the most interesting compliment! In addition, regarding "pregnancy", I also feel that the creator is somehow a pregnant woman, a work from scratch, a little bit completed, like a woman pregnant in October, which is mixed with happiness, trepidation, joy and expectation, and finally fell to the ground, peace of mind...
I know that your words "to cry" are not because of mourning, but because some of the emotions in the song accurately and directly lead to the sensitivities of your heart. Some fans also say that these songs seem to tell a deep story like a mystery, and after listening to inexplicable sadness.
"You grieve and prove that you love." I've written that. Whether it's music, poetry, literature, or other art, it's sad the moment it moves you, when your heart resonates with the music like a trembling, sensitive string.
Wang Xiaohuan: Some people say that the women who appear in many of your songs are mysterious and sexy, and they are their favorite objects, and if they want to find a girlfriend, they will find that. Do you know?
Zhong Lifeng: Someone said that, I'm quite happy. Indeed, when I was writing a song, before I knew it, a woman would automatically walk into the song, and I couldn't figure it out, who was she? What will be left behind when you come in? So, it's usually like a dream, and when you wake up, you feel very happy, but also a little lost.
Some people first said that they liked the "boss lady" in "Fool's Trip" too much, she was the ultimate love fantasy of men-
But I remembered the lady boss last night
That sentence said,
My tears were like rain.
Someone asked me, in reality, have I ever met the boss lady in the song? Her words cause you to completely let down your guard and cry bitterly! I said, you think there is, she has it... In fact, perhaps everyone has a "boss lady" in their hearts - in your tired life journey, she solves the puzzles and removes the wounds for you with the gentleness and rich experience of motherhood.
Later, they saw her reappear in my other song "Blue Traveler", and they were even more convinced of the authenticity of this "boss lady"——
In the Blue Hotel,
I received a letter
This time it was the lady boss who was in tears.
Wang Xiaohuan: You hide an emotion, a woman, in the song, but you intentionally or unintentionally reveal something, is this as you said, "both told the secret, but did not divulge yourself"?
Zhong Lifeng: I think that although I am a creator, I am definitely not an "insider", and in the process of writing and composing music, I am also groping and moving. If I know everything, everything is clear, and everything is under control, such a creative process will have no interest or meaning. It is precisely because of an ambiguity, a kind of uncertainty, a kind of adventure and the unknown that we have the desire to continue. After a song is finished, the listener has the most to say, and the writer knows no more than they do.
For example, a blunt, cold fan left me a message, she said that in the song "Silent Southern Girl", she heard a taste of eroticism! (I was taken aback!) But because of that, she expressed her appreciation for my, secretly sexy. She said that on this sentence, ordinary, but implied erotic, imaginative -
She never said the words "I love you."
Even in the "deepest" night.
Wang Xiaohuan: Speaking of eroticism, you don't seem to shy away from this, I see you say in Weibo that you are an erotic, bitter, instinctive singer, similar to this. I remember you also told me that there was a girl who liked "Lancang River", "When the tide comes, you say you love me / When the tide goes, I say I love you." ”
The melody of dark surges, sadness, and waltz is repeated, and she carries her headphones and rides a bicycle, reaching the peak of pleasure again and again. But she's a Christian, and she's a little afraid of getting caught up in this kind of physical pleasure that music brings, so she's tangled and conflicted. But all of this I think is beautiful, it is all a true expression of human nature.
Zhong Lifeng: Yes, I will not avoid it, nor should I avoid it. Eroticism is not naked sex, it is also the "root cause" of human beings. I have written before that chastity and lust sometimes transform into each other, they are not diametrically opposed, and the chastity of youth will turn into desire when it reaches adulthood. Later, I read a sentence said by the French philosopher Georges Bataille, five bodies to the ground, he said -
Chastity, in itself, is a pornographic concept!
So concise, profound and powerful. I immediately announced that I was a "Batayer singer"! As for bitterness, I think that many moments of people themselves are bitter, but bitterness can also be transformed into a kind of humor or detachment, such as my self-selected song of the same name in this time, "There is a person you know who has come and gone", the last sentence is like this (some people even associate it with the end of Stephen Chow's "Journey to the West") -
I saw him on his way away,
A snowflake fell on the tip of his nose
Look at it from a distance
It's like a joke.
Wang Xiaohuan: Speaking of this anthology, do you have any selection criteria for these songs? Judging from the feedback from fans who currently like you, they all like your "return to basics", especially by your "bell jazz piano", although these songs, the instrumentation is very simple, but it is very rich in sound, and each capital is intriguing, listening to your works, making people think that you are a mysterious person. How did you do it?
Zhong Lifeng: I think there may be several reasons why I recorded this anthology.
1, I think because over the years, these songs I have a different understanding, there were several works before, I have always felt regrets, at that time did not express well. I am confident that if I re-orchestrate and interpret, it will definitely show more charm. Music is the art of time.
2, because I have been immersed in classical and jazz music in the past few years, I would like to put some elegant, free, improvised and sensual things in my music... A few years ago, I accompanied a friend to buy a piano for his children. As a result, I saw a piano with a relatively "quaint" appearance, and I immediately liked to buy it, so I didn't play my cards according to the routine every day and practiced according to my own feelings. One day, I suddenly remembered, what would happen if I recorded an album that I played the piano myself?
3. During that time, my friend Liu Quan, a geography teacher and saxophonist, installed a recording studio "Wu Ling'er" at home, although it was far away from me. But I was happy to look for him, because he was a friend of twenty years, so he was very relaxed, chatting, playing the piano, singing, just like playing.
To make music, the most important thing is to relax. I basically set off the first afternoon, recorded the night, slept a little, and returned the next morning, each time back and forth, the time required on the road (the subway) was six or seven hours, and I felt like a short trip.
During these "trips", I read a lot of interesting books and was very happy! Because every time I take the subway, I have to change through Beijing South Railway Station, once, I had a sudden idea, followed a familiar back, bought a ticket to another province, and disappeared for several days...
Wang Xiaohuan: Our mutual friend Yu Lai said one of your "piano adventures", about the flight attendants.......
Zhong Lifeng: Oh, when I first bought the piano, I was fascinated, and I had the urge to play all the time. Sometimes as soon as dawn comes, I get up and play.
One day, bouncing vigorously, someone knocked on the door, opened the door, and it was a woman, her sleepy eyes were hazy, very unpleasant feelings, saying that I affected her to rest. As you know, she is a flight attendant (where I live, not far from a few shows, there are often flight attendants less infested), she lives downstairs from me, her schedule is uncertain, often, she comes back in the morning, just lay down, and hears my overwhelming piano.
I quickly apologized, saying that it really shouldn't be, it was indeed too early, I told her, then I played later, nine o'clock can right? She said emphatically: No, it's still too early! Hey, I'm speechless. According to her schedule, it is possible that at any time it will not work...
A few days later, about ten o'clock in the morning, I carefully bounced up. Not long after I heard a knock at the door again, I guess it must be the flight attendant again, very angry, I went to open the door, a look, not the last time, but it seems that it must be the flight attendant no doubt (later learned that they live in the same house)! I was angry and just wanted to say, this point can always play. Unexpectedly, she opened her mouth first, and she said: I have been listening to you play the piano for a long time, it is very good, can I learn from you...
Wang Xiaohuan: What about later? Like a novel, two women in the same room have very different attitudes towards you!
Zhong Lifeng: Later?
Wang Xiaohuan: Yes, later, I mean, did the flight attendant learn the piano with you later?
Zhong Lifeng: Oh, you said this later, I think...
Wang Xiaohuan: Wait for you to think well, tell me, back to this self-anthology "There is a person you know who came and went", this album cover is very flavorful, I see that there are fans "very sexy"... But I think that in fact, the hearing of the whole album is tacit and consistent, there is a low-key, introverted but gripping atmosphere, these aspects, are you grasping by yourself?
Zhong Lifeng: The cover is a photo taken in the study with a mobile phone. I thought that since the album was new, I asked my wife to help me take a few recent photos and give them to the designer. Designer Ms. Yufan, she has helped me design the essay collection "Book Traveler" and the album "Long Live Love" before, and she knows my expression. The album went online, and she, like you, also made a pleasant sharing, she wrote this -
The whole loop never stops,
Uncle Zhong is like an iron that irons the folds of your heart.
Wang Xiaohuan: Whenever a new work comes out, will you let your friends in the circle listen, for example, everyone knows that you and Li Jian are "gentlemen's friends freshwater", and some friends laugh and talk about you as "good friends".
Zhong Lifeng: It was still many years ago, when everyone was very young, each of them wrote a song, and they could not wait to sing it to each other, because they were young and dazed, and they did not have a special "grasp" of themselves, so they needed the cheers and encouragement of their friends.
As they get older and more experienced, everyone is self-contained and has their own clear artistic expression, so they are not as childlike as before. But it is also mutual "thoughts", this self-anthology came out, Li Jian listened, we exchanged, I told him almost with a "play" mentality, the completion of this album, including the books to be published recently, are completed in a very relaxed state, without any pressure.
Li Jian said that listening to these songs, you know that you are in a good state and have been improving. He also modestly said that he wanted to learn from me. He has always been the image of a humble gentleman, very relaxed in doing things and living.
In recent years, I have spent some time on writing, so writers and artist friends seem to be closer to me, for example, when the first song in the anthology "Man Without a Past" was launched, Xu Zhiyuan shared it for the first time, and he heard the idleness, wandering, and intellectual temperament in the song. I myself feel that when I express these songs, I am more introspective, and I look at myself and the outside with a writer's eye.
Wang Xiaohuan: When you talk about literature and books, we all know that you love books, and some of your fans, even before they only knew that you were a writer, came to mind, "Oh my God, he is still a singer, he has produced so many albums!" "What do you think about that?
Zhong Lifeng: I think it's quite fun, composing music and writing have a kind of game feeling for me, just like reading, I first enjoy the fun, and then enter the imagination and thinking in it, so as to enrich and simplify myself... In addition, as a songwriter and a folk songwriter, he is also a writer, which is actually quite normal.
Folk songs and folk songs, it is the source of the "wind" in the "Poetry Sutra" "Wind and Grace Song", customs, customs, and landscapes that appear and hide one by one. We hear, to collect wind, is to collect stories and songs... Just mentioned that the medieval troubadours are actually folks, they understand the simplicity and complexity of human nature, they collect human stories, polish them into simple but meaningful ballads. Therefore, such singers must be very humanistic, understand human nature, and understand the wanderers of life.
Wang Xiaohuan: Back to the beginning, since everyone said, "If you want to find a girlfriend, find the song in Zhong Lifeng!" ", you have too many works, let's talk about this anthology, in which song do you most appreciate?" I tell you, I like the one in "Love, Girl" —
But girl, very sad,
This sadness comes from unsure desires
Zhong Lifeng: Why do you like her?
Wang Xiaohuan: Because, this lyric, you have caught the psychology of the common girl. ... it seems to be a very ordinary sentence, but it also hides philosophy, a sentence of "uncertain desire", which makes us want to enter her, understand her, and feel her.
Zhong Lifeng: Yes, uncertain desire makes people sad.....The previous version of Liu Sen's arrangement has a gentle female flower cavity running through it, which is a very gorgeous feeling and also makes people want to be desired. This time, I used a kind of guitar (flustered, crazy, like myself) vibrato, sliding strings, to secretly probe her mind, trying to unlock the secret. However, the woman's secret, like a poem, cannot be explained, only to feel.
Wang Xiaohuan: In the song "Shanghai", there are many women, but they are all women who floated on the beach in the last century - Butterfly, Zhou Xuan, and The prototype of the heroine in Ang Lee's "Color Ring", Zheng Pingru, and Zhang Ailing, the owner of No. 195 Changde Road... But what I'm most interested in is the other one —
That time passed you (Shanghai) and went to another city
Someone tried to invite me to stay with her
The corners of her mouth raised a little lonely and sexy
May I ask, is she a real person like the above women?
Zhong Lifeng: It's real... I sometimes wander around in a different place, and when I see the corners of my mouth rise and show a little loneliness and sexiness, I feel as if she is, and I have the urge to rush up and talk! Later, when I heard that she was married and had children, my heart slowly grew cold.
Wang Xiaohuan: Listening to you say this, it is like a sentimental story!
Zhong Lifeng: Just like "Sad like a sexual encounter". Every encounter in the world is sentimental, because the end is separation and disappearance... The more beautiful things are, the more they can't be retained. When recording this version of "Sexual Encounter", I thought of the French writer Camus, when directing a play, he said to the heroine, "You just need to walk through the stage, say your lines, don't have any psychological activity, emotions will naturally flow out." ”
Not only this song, but other songs I have adopted this interpretation, letting the song speak for itself... A person's long or short life is just a sexual encounter, no matter who it is, he will understand that in the next life, there are far more regrets than good.
Wang Xiaohuan: Just like people say, light is always stored in the dark. That's what you're singing in this song—
Everything has miracles, just experience it with your heart
A lighthouse, two or three women,
A child lifts a sunflower in the wind.
Zhong Lifeng: Yes, "two or three women", I also wrote this in another song "Are you someone else", in the creation, this repetition is interesting, it is a unique symbol of the author! It's also like at a party, you meet an acquaintance, take a look at each other, and then slip away—
Spread your palms and you find
A blackbird,
Rushed through two or three women
Wang Xiaohuan: Interesting, it feels like a mirror in the palm of your hand... "The Man Without a Past", although it feels like the focus is on men, the woman inside is also quite seductive, is that right?
Zhong Lifeng: In this anthology, this song is the most tragic, with a Japanese tragic flavor. I see music fans who use it as the story of men and women in Junichi Watanabe's "Paradise Lost"! I remember Wilde saying this, he said that usually women always like a man who has a "future".
This means that whether he has a past or not, what his past is, women don't bother to care! And most men like a woman with a "past", because there are women in the past, there is femininity! The most important thing about women, to put it bluntly, is femininity, what do you think? In this way, women need a future even more.
Wang Xiaohuan: The song "Wild Strawberries" is most like a sketch, but it makes people think of it, because the metaphor of eroticism that you have always used well has appeared again-
Wading through the river of love,
You suck on my loneliness
I want to watch movies with you and eat wild strawberries
Zhong Lifeng: This erotic imagination was first obtained by a friend, this friend, not to mention his real name here, called him Old K Bar, he called himself a traveler, but did not like to go out, used to be a carlimba thumb player, and later it was said that he fought with his ex-girlfriend or a love enemy, the left thumb was injured, very serious, could not play the piano, so he joined an amateur theater troupe.
Others are not very reliable, but he said a word, I think it is very right, and do not pretend, he said: men's loneliness, frustration, loneliness is nothing more than the lack of sex, once satisfied, everything is fine, normal, willing to happily invest in life.
Wang Xiaohuan: Does Old K like these works of yours?
Zhong Lifeng: In the past, Old K often took me to some parties, activities, and also took me to see their troupe rehearsals, he did not say that he liked my songs, but once he strongly recommended that the director arrange a play based on my "Song of Love", he thought that this song was completely a good one-act play. After this re-arrangement, he also listened, and he felt a little eager to try to rehearse the play of the same name with the director.
Come in through the door and out through the window
There was a pool of blood and a sack of helplessness under the street lamp
The cuckoo gradually brightened the night
The first taste of Adam and Eve wafted in
Wang Xiaohuan: Back to the song of the same name in the anthology "There is a person you know who came and went", you wrote that-
He has clean hair,
There was a faint hint of her next to her
He stands under your eaves, waiting for the snow to fall
I kind of understand that the reason why this song is liked is exactly what you said, everything is not very certain, so that people have thoughts, hopes, and desires that come quietly. Even though you write "vaguely about her", this feeling is much better than the full exposure effect! I even think that the one with "clean hair" will often be sweetly "trampled" by this "faint" woman.
Zhong Lifeng: Very strange, that time I recorded this song, when I sang these few sentences, I thought of you and Tingting...
Wang Xiaohuan: Ah....this....Well....There is a sentence in "Farewell by the Sea": You came from the north / Luggage was left on the taxi / Along the way absorbed the warmth of human fireworks... So warm!
Zhong Lifeng: If the listener does not carefully appreciate these expressions, he will not be able to feel the taste. In my heart, there is always such a girl, she is alone on the way, because of the search, and lost... When she feels depressed and hopeless, the excitement of life — the warmth of "fireworks along the way" — has unconsciously taken care of her.
I think we all love such a woman and always long to meet. There is also a sentence in this song that is quite interesting: at the seaside / A fisherman girl, / Did yoga........
Wang Xiaohuan: It's too graphic. Back to the beginning, "If you want to find a girlfriend, look for the one in Zhong Lifeng's song!" Do you approve of it yourself?
Zhong Lifeng: Men like a woman, not only because of her beauty, but also because of some inexplicable temperaments in her body, like music, poetry, giving people imagination and making people reminiscent... Similarly, her sexiness, her seduction, not only comes from her stature and appearance, but more importantly, her mystery and melancholy, just like a good book, read it again, how can you fully understand it!?
You need to spend a long time and repeated reading, and every time you read, there is a new discovery! In this mystery, there is also something brisk and mischievous, like a chord accent, an echo of a dream!
All this is both living and artistic. The women in these songs are different, but they all have "the mystery of poetry and the magic of musical notes".
Therefore, it can be said that if you want to find a girlfriend, look for the kind of Song in Zhong Lifeng.
Author | Ah Gung
Image | Internet
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