Meng Jing/Wen
The guest of this issue of "Reading China" is Zhang Guangtian, a musician, director and writer, whose more representative compositions "Mao Zedong", "Shake, Shake to Grandma Bridge", "Rhinoceros in Love", etc., he has directed the drama works "Che Guevara" and "Sage Confucius" which have aroused widespread discussion in society. In recent years, he has continued to write books such as "Plate Song", "Handball Record", "Sister Fang", "Both Sheng Lu" and so on.
His theatrical works are known as the "avant-garde theatre" of his contemporaries, and he is labeled as "the unruly descendants of music" to promote his artistic ideas in the form of "very unruly". In the field of literature, some critics have commented that his books are "strange books" and even labeled "traitors to literature".
The Economic Observer Book Review interviewed Zhang Guangtian to delve into some of the clues of his personal creations and why the art category switched to the boundaries between literature, reality and reality, fiction and non-fiction. Including his personal reading and reading experience, "books have very little effect on me. Now, it's mostly minerals, plants, or a flower that is out of season that is influencing me and educating me. ”
When talking about whether there are books that are influenced and moved by reading books, Zhang Guangtian said, "A magazine in the barbershop, an object in the county cultural center, a place on the propaganda page on the plane, or a scenery and a description of a scenery, will impress me." ”
One
Jingguan Book Review: Some of your previous representative works in music and drama, such as "Shake, Shake, Shake to Grandma's Bridge", "Che Guevara", "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist", etc., were warmly concerned and even discussed by everyone at that time. In recent years, however, it has begun to turn to writing and publishing books. How did you come with this shift and start writing full-time?
Zhang Guangtian: I originally studied medicine, and that was out of respect for my father. He came from "that era", and always felt that learning literature had to suffer losses and master some technology, so I went along with him and gave up the liberal arts to go to medical university. After graduation, I think I have fulfilled his wish and started to develop in the direction of my own interests.
My knowledge of literature and art also came from his private school teaching in my childhood and adolescence. He also hired a special music teacher to train me, so that I have a better musical foundation than my contemporaries. Therefore, when I first started to do literature and art, I first worked composition. First of all, I formed a band, then wrote film music, and cooperated with director Zhang Yimou on "Shake, Shake, Shake to Grandma Bridge", which brought me broad prospects.
After that, he began to widely dabble in the music of film and television dramas and dramas. In fact, my musical work is only a carrier, and I am more about completing the poetic part. I didn't tell this secret before, but I can tell you now. The music of a play is actually not important, nothing more than lyricism, an extension of the atmosphere, but a play injects poetry through music, but it is crucial. That's why my music is different from the soundtrack.
Later, I began to work as a theater director, directing a lot of new styles of drama, which are very different from the dramas in everyone's concept.
Of course, I do this on the one hand because of interest and learning, and on the other hand, I broaden the path of making a living. This is now fashionable to say, called transformation, cross-border. But what really means to me personally is growth and accumulation.
I have accumulated knowledge of language through music, because when I write songs, how to express complex content in concise language is the key. The help of drama to me lies in my kind of drama, which reflects a large number of different voices and ideological confrontations in society, which lays the foundation for my thinking expression. I need to be active in thinking and expressing, not pedantic.
Therefore, it can be said that the practice of the genre art has enabled me to complete the elementary, secondary and college of literary writing. Today, I'm a writer who has just graduated from school and am writing my way.
Jingguan Book Review: You have a lot of identities and labels, such as avant-garde musicians, dramatists, "first crazy directors", poets, and in the past, the media described you as "rebellious", "unruly", "extreme and avant-garde" and so on. Which identity do you prefer?
Zhang Guangtian: Identities are all labels that others have put up. Others need to know you and know you quickly, and they must position you in the way of simple fast food. This is a manifestation of social infernality. A barren crowd, no time to delve into things, rapid development, white colts through the gap, hurried smoke clouds. But when a society is more mature and stable, the label will naturally be much less.
In addition, some labels are thrown by myself, and I am growing up, in the face of such a society where information is piled up and constantly covered, I need a distinct and deafening voice to attract attention. Therefore, what "rebellion" ah, "not abiding by the rules", ah, ah, is easier to use. If it has a negative effect, it has to be recognized by yourself.
In fact, it doesn't matter which identity it is. For those who are interested, they are very happy to be able to let their interest grow in a certain industry and benefit from the learning and development of interest.
"Sister Side"
Zhang Guangtian/Author
Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House
August 2016
Jingguan Book Review: What is the similarity and difference between this kind of literary writing and your previous theater and stage director and music creation? How has previous creative experience in other art disciplines helped inspire literary writing?
Zhang Guangtian: Our musical, dramatic, and literary experiences have been very bad since May Fourth —what I call "bad" refers to aesthetic aspects, that is, exaggeration, whitewashing, and insincerity.
Drama needs to be live, it needs to happen, it needs poetry outside of everyday life. Therefore, my dramatic efforts, whether starting with the confrontation of ideas or emotional imagery, will eventually converge into poetic presentation. Music, drama and literature, all the experiences made me the one who struggled to pursue poetry.
The Leningrad Monument is a stone with the inscription on it: "O stone, may you be as strong as the people!" "That's poetry. Because when I read this, I will suddenly feel that the indomitable people in the defense of Leningrad in World War II have been revived. If, O people, may you be as strong as a stone, it is mediocrity.
Before I wrote, these were what I pursued and recognized, and it naturally continues as an experience in the creation of words today.
Jingguan Book Review: Many of your works are read by the post-70s generation to be nostalgic, but you are not expressing nostalgia. The book ends with "Man takes his hometown as a boat and sails to the destination of his heart." Do you have nostalgia?
Zhang Guangtian: The hometown was abandoned by themselves, abandoned by most of them. They do not love themselves and their way of life so much, and they call that kind of life ignorant and backward, superstitious and closed. Even so, what a hometown to talk about! They deserve no homeland.
The homeland is a land where food can be produced, and at the same time sin and suffering can be born. The root of love is actually the self. My hometown is myself. Without me, is my hometown still called my hometown? Zhuangzi once said, "Do not forget what you have come out of, and do not seek the end." We now always gain face in order to make up history and transform our identities, and they are afraid to remember their hometown.
Speaking of nostalgia, it is a contradiction, a conflict that wants to forget the source and has to turn around. I am not such a person, here, I have no contradictions, so, I have no nostalgia. In addition, to repeat, "Sister Fang" writes about the hometown, but it has nothing to do with the hometown, it is a book about how people fight against time.
Two
Commentary: In your philosophical thinking, is it to provide a solution to a real problem, or a way of thinking?
Zhang Guangtian: We always care more about the solution. Sounds very rational, very practical. But this rationality and reality rest in the mind that needs the mercy of others. The solutions are all won, not heard. "Braveheart" Chinese Leice's pursuit of freedom and liberation was not requested from the English royal family, but was won by the bravery of opening the stomach and dissecting the stomach.
So, what can I offer? I can only record my experiences in my own darkness and in breaking free from my own darkness. And the value of such experiences is not experiences themselves, but the a priori before they witness experience. Each of us experiences the world as a testimony to the only truth that precedes us above us. That's thinking. However, in the actual experience, people are often confused by one experience to witness another experience, which is sinking.
For example, there are many discussions in the book about current Chinese issues: the problems of the elderly and children, the youth issues, the women's issues, and the thinking of China's modern and contemporary reforms, and even global issues. What kind of deep propositions do these thoughts point to?
Zhang Guangtian: These problems are all appearances, and the fundamental problem is that we must sort out the relationship between "humanity" and "heavenly way". Since humanism, for more than eight hundred years and nearly a thousand years, we have come out of the superstition of theocracy and royal power and looked at the world with people as the center, but when this achievement is so great that we think that man is everything and can solve all problems, man has come to the edge of the world, the edge of energy, the edge of materiality, and even the edge of morality. As a result, various crises have emerged. At this time, we should probably look back and look at the inside from the outside.
I write about the elderly and children in order to emphasize the purity of both ends of life outside of man-made social relations, which reflects the hearts of the people of The Heavenly Dao. I write about youth in order to dispel the superstitions of youth. Is it true that only youth is beautiful in life? Why are people so obsessed with the beauty of youth? In fact, it is all to emphasize that people themselves can dominate the world. Youth is still the same, and the idea of obsessing with youth is old. Life is like four seasons, the poor and the rich are just the timing of spring, summer, autumn and winter, and the old has the beauty and strength of the old.
All these questions point to the beginning of man, that is, the original is not the past, or even the future at all.
Zhang Guangtian drama poster
Three
Jingguan Book Review: Whether you have done music, drama, or this book, you have not avoided the Chinese element and related topics, and you were called a representative of the "New Left" by the media when Che Guevara was called, but you don't seem to approve of this title? Now that you have entered the year of knowing the Destiny, do you have a different understanding and attitude toward China's 20th-century revolution and the socialist experiment? Why do you keep paying so much attention to China?
Zhang Guangtian: China as a specific environment and a concrete way of my existence, so I can only look at all issues from this point of view. They all grew up learning Lei Feng's diary, who talked to whom! At present, which of the elegant and Republican models did not graduate from the public school of the crappy colonialist system? When it comes to knowledge reserves, I still graduated from a private school that my father's ear and traditional masters teach me face-to-face. I grew up reading the Four Books and Five Classics and the English Shakespeare during the Cultural Revolution. My English teacher, Miss Shaw, was the widow of a poet in London, and my English accent benefited from her constant corrections, and I was even a candidate for the airdrop red soldiers.
But at the beginning of the last century, whether out of the space gained by self-confrontation or from the reality of China, I had to re-examine the topic of revolution. Is the revolution over? If the revolution can end, then the counter-revolution is also over. This is a basic question of common sense, how can so many so-called scholars be obsessed with worshipping the "final conclusion of history"?
China's revolution in the 20th century was a need for social existence and was once in line with the needs of people. Slaves were liberated and given land and dignity, as Promised by God. However, victory does not support "man's victory over heaven", and we need to re-examine man's liberation and the motives for man's liberation.
Commentary on the Classics: "Revolution is the return to the Heavenly Dao" This is what Xia Yushu, a character in the book, said. How do you see China's reform and China's problems? Are you a reform supporter?
Zhang Guangtian: Revolution is a return to the Heavenly Dao, and I don't need to explain it more, whether it is the original meaning of ancient Greece or the original meaning of Chinese history books, they all support this modern Chinese expression. In "Sister Fang", I toss xia Yushu's mouth, but it is a repetition of the old tune.
Reform is a big topic, and I don't want to argue about it. But I would like to say that more and more facts have made me understand that the reform led by the market economy is a continuation of the previous cultural and political reforms. What the previous cultural revolutions failed to do ——, allowed the private sector to gain wealth and vitality was partially realized in market reform. Therefore, the so-called leftists in China are now rightists, and those who are named as rightists represent the position of the people.
Four
Jingguan Book Review: Is Your Writing satisfying your own pleasure? So what is the experience of reading and reading? What book have you been reading lately? Can you share some of your feelings during your reading, or an impression of what you've seen?
Zhang Guangtian: If it is to satisfy yourself, is it not related to others? This kind of question of following the clouds, before it was raised, was set at the level of a famous name that attracted people's attention. Often books that come from interest will be good books. I don't love fame, but that doesn't mean that fame isn't important to me. It's just that there are more important ones. Or, if fame serves my more important purposes, then I never reject it.
I'm most afraid to answer questions about what books have influenced me. Are books used to influence people? Someone who reads a book and suddenly feels enlightened and finds a direction in life overnight, which feels terrible! We don't read books as slaves. Strictly speaking, most books are reference books, and the more thoughtful books, the more reference books. They are the crutches and pines that help us advance in the darkness of nocturnal walking, and they cannot replace truth itself.
What kind of book will impress people is a valuable topic. I'm often struck by obscure books, even ads on a certain page on a touring plane. This kind of impression is very personal, very special, not to mention.