Recent photo by Simon Schwyzer
Remember the novel "Sugar", published in 19 years, the speed and loss of control of language? Remember all that confusion and poetry? "Sugar" made the young readers at that time have a kind of black trembling in front of their eyes, which was a kind of reading pleasure that had never been felt before, just holding up the book, it seemed to join the rebellion of the times.
Although critics consider the author Mian Mian to be a model of body writing, readers remember that a magical woman used "Sugar" to ignite youth and desire, so that the long-suppressed self was finally released.
Born in Shanghai, Mian Mian, who began writing novels at the age of 15, her works and personal experience have made her one of the most alternative fiction writers in China in the past two decades, and her literary works have been translated into 15 languages and published, mainly literary works "Sugar" and "Panda"; at the same time, she has also dabbled in the fields of contemporary art, electronic music, film, and music album "2012 Practice in Motion".
19 years later, the once-frenzied young Cotton cotton has her own daughter, and recently launched her latest work "Missing Performance".
Middle-aged cotton cotton, the language is still cool and avant-garde, but mixed with more wisdom, time has not worn away her edges and corners, she is still a genius girl look. Asked why she could still be so "cool", Mian Mian said: "Because I didn't waste all my time in love, I left a little bit to make me a cooler woman." ”
<h1>It took many years to produce a new work because "writing has become very, very luxurious."</h1>
"The Missing Performance", first published in harvest magazine's Issue 3 of 2017, said, "This is a painful and necessary writing about how to deal with conditional constraints. ”
The story takes place in Shanghai, a country called "Inner Country" and places code-named xxx, xxx. The hero and heroine of the story do not have specific names, they are called "hero" and "heroine" respectively, and even the hero "may be Chinese may be European". The real protagonist of the story may also be the "hero's" close friend hong in Shanghai, a Shanghai writer who has been writing novels since the age of 14, and the protagonist of Mian Mian's famous work "Sugar", Hong.
It's a work about fear that brings out a new type of "downtown humans" who "all switch between the savior and the monster." It is also a work depicting the soul of the Night in Shanghai– a unique soul that miraculously mirrors Mian Mian's literary (fictional) view.
Why it took so many years to publish new works, Mian Mian admits that now "writing has become a very, very luxurious", she said that although she has been thinking about writing, she is also busy doing other things: "Also, my ideas are more avant-garde, and it is not easy to find like-minded editors." I have been doing various cultural and artistic work and projects, hoping to be creative and at the same time have income. But trust and communication between people is still not easy. ”
Mian Mian said that "The Missing Performance" was prepared and written as a relatively important long story, "preparing a lot of materials, and even thinking of publishing these materials - as part of the appendix to present." But in the novel, I want to illuminate the darkness within me and the characters with the driest words. If one line of words can achieve this effect, I should not use two lines. Writing can no longer take on any tasks other than writing. ”
<h1>Watching "Sugar" now scares me, not an autobiography, and there is no Sainin</h1>
"Sugar" is a novel by Mian Mian, centering on the topic of "freedom and choice", telling the story of a "problem girl" Hong and several young boys and girls with "problems" that she meets on the way to youth: the rebellious girl Hong dropped out of school due to the death of her friend. I met her favorite in a dance hall, an overseas Chinese boy named Sai Ning. So she loved what he loved, and she loved rock'n' roll. They live together, breathe together, sink together, and constantly separate and be together.
Because she wanted to adapt "Sugar" into a movie, Mian Mian herself read the novel again, "really scared by myself." ”
In addition to launching "Missing Performance" this time, Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House also republished "Sugar" and made revisions, and Mian Mian said that he wanted to change it, not the publisher's request: "I was too young at that time, and sometimes, for example, like David Finch's films, he would deliberately make the audience look very uncomfortable and uncomfortable." I thought the original Sugar did have this kind of fidgeting stuff, but I didn't know it myself at the time. ”
However, Mian Mian also said that she wanted to understand that era, to understand the young her at that time: "Sugar was written in 1999, really 20 years ago. I once asked a producer of the second season of "The Godfather" what "Sugar" made him feel, and he said that before watching "Sugar", he felt that Chinese did not talk like this, and I think this is the most typical feature, that is, before "Sugar", people did not talk to each other in literature. Like the first work of all young writers, there are a lot of ambitious ideas put into this work, and I write this story like an autobiography, but it is not my autobiography, and Sainin does not exist, which I think is particularly important. It is a very planned and strategic action that wants to make a splash. ”
What moved Mian Mian was that from the publication of "Sugar" to the present, there have been readers who have left messages for her, "On Valentine's Day, someone also wrote me a love letter in the name of Sai Ning, and there was only one sentence on it: 'You are my eternal lover'." I think I've got the most precious love and affection in the world, and that's what literature has given me. ”
Talking about the progress of the film, Mian Mian said that at present, the film has not yet determined the director, she has written several adaptations herself, and then adapted according to the director's intentions after determining the director, although many people have suggested that she direct the film herself, but she still hopes to find a male director who is more popular and younger than her.
"In different eras, I have made different versions of 'movies' for Sugar. Sometimes I would focus on the bad boys on South Street, sometimes I would focus on the whole love story of Red and Sainin, sometimes I would focus on the nights when Red and Bugs were in the Shanghai 97 Club, sometimes I would look at the story through the eyes of an American who had been to Shanghai that year, and once we found an article on the Internet about Shanghai nightlife, and the author of that article seemed to be familiar with us, but we didn't know who he was, so my good friend Casper and I thought, this is also a kind of perspective about "Sugar". Sugar is an archive that many years later people called culture. At this time, the "Sugar" in my heart is some dialogue and some songs when this pair of silky confused young people are in love, and the singers of the songs are Trojan Horse, Bianyuan, Jiang Xin, Tian Yuan, Xiao Yi... Although we didn't know each other when I wrote this story. But Sugar is not mine. It once illuminated the small universe of countless people, so much so that the reflected light became too intense and almost overwhelmed me. ”
<h1>Writers' works respond to times of great change, and my life is my art</h1>
Mian Mian said that her writing has always been in the center of the city, responding to the feelings that life gives her, the feelings that give her characters. "In the years after Sugar, blogs began to appear gradually, and there were microblogs, and I think this feeling is actually very shocking for a writer. Because before Weibo, I would still take it for granted that all people are actually the same. However, after the emergence of Weibo, I found that many of my very good friends have very different ideas from me. I think this kind of connection brought about by high technology actually causes more inability to connect people. Increasingly, everyone is becoming an island. So, in this sense, I think our literature has to respond very intensely. In response to such a reality, I feel that my life and my writing are in such a reality. ”
Mian Mian believes that every writer's work should respond to times of great change. Even if he is writing an ancient story, his perspective, his point of view must echo our current life, "I think this is crucial, including our films, our art, our music, I think for every artist, this is his work ethic." 」 ”
Mian Mian said that many of the actions she is doing are in a literary way, maintaining a creative connection with readers, "including when I will have different cross-border cooperation at different stages, I think it is a response to the changes in our cities and the changes in literary forms." Of course, it is possible that I have paid a lot and others do not know it at all, but I feel that this is not important, I am just such a writer. My life is my art. ”
Mian Mian said that over the years, she actually wanted to write an article against suicide, and she wanted to express: suicide is not the end. Suicide only complicates the problem. Suicide doesn't end the pain," you must learn the science of death, understand the process of death—I think that if you say this in a literary way, more people may believe it and be influenced, and then put down the butcher knife in their hands." Literature can help us reconnect with life. In fact, each of my novels took a long time to write, behind each novel is a heartbroken me, in fact, I never knew how to live, but I have always insisted. I think being alive is a really remarkable thing. I've never been able to sit down and write, I need to prepare, very much like a state of going into prayer, I hope to write to a friend I like. These are becoming more and more difficult, because the problem of writing is the problem of life, and the problem of life is the problem of practice, there are no shortcuts, there is no complaint. ”
<h1>The most valuable thing in the future is emotion</h1>
Some articles evaluate the society of young people in Japan, calling it a "low-desire society", for which many contemporary Chinese youth also resonate, and even many young people feel that they prefer a single life, prefer to stay with friends rather than lovers, no longer so keen on love, and marriage is a distant thing.
In this regard, the "avant-garde" Cotton Cotton believes that low desire should be based on a kind of cognition rather than repression, "We do have a flood of material desires, due to the chaos of the credit system, many people are spending their credit, overdraft in advance." What our nation's young people lack most is an education of love and emotion. Japan I don't know, China is far from the stage of low desire. Repression is not low desire. Desire is an energy. Without the education of love and emotion, the energy of desire will not dissipate. As for being single and not getting married and the high divorce rates, that's for sure. Because the development of connections has brought more alienation. This is why people need literature more! Literature begins from within man. Now most young people watch stories like vibrato or live radio, and many people give up doing what they have to do. ”
Modern society technology is changing rapidly, and Mian Mian believes that all technology should help us to know more about ourselves, as well as our own brains, "this is the most important, and this is also an important value of literature." ”
Mian Mian said that he has been "working on" deep learning neural network systems, "I and my good friends and engineers have developed an artificial intelligence, and at present, technically, it is already possible to write with this artificial intelligence." ”
Cotton and the team's current experiment is to say three words at a time, "For example, what is love?" Or what is Red and Sainin? You can also ask questions, but they are all three words, Love is the... I was dreaming...... And then look at what the system writes, and I think this is a way to understand myself, so I think all these things about high-tech artificial intelligence are there to help us understand our brains and our inner beings. ”
However, Mian Mian believes that artificial intelligence is absolutely impossible to replace the brain, because the human brain has emotions, "I think the most valuable thing in the future is emotion." Literature and art are meant to respond to emotions, always using the infinite mystery and infinite possibilities of emotions to respond to our increasingly material and high-tech, seemingly controlled world. ”
Photography by Simon Schwyzer
<h1>I want to say to myself at that time: "Everything has a way, like a dream bubble." If dew is like electricity, it should be viewed as such</h1>."
Mian Mian's life has changed a lot now, she lives in the countryside of Europe, often returns to Shanghai, but every time she goes back to work, "every time I go back, I feel that everything is too fast." The big change in my own life is that I haven't been drinking for 5 years, and I don't eat any animals. Quit drinking, smoking, eat vegetarianism and learn Buddhism. I get up at 9 a.m. every morning, and after that, I have coffee and look at WeChat. Then chant. Make lunch afterwards. After watching an American drama or hanging out for a while. Then work, all kinds of phone calls to make in order to make money. Then make dinner at 8 o'clock or later, go for a walk down the hill, and come back to chant until late at night. ”
Ask her why time has not worn away the avant-garde avant-garde feeling in her body? Cotton replied, "Because I didn't waste all my time in the love question, I left a little bit to make me a cooler woman." ”
But Mian Mian is not against falling in love, "because falling in love is the best opportunity for us to observe our own inner beings, the parts that are lost in each other's body that have not been illuminated by ourselves." ”
Mian Mian said that her inspiration mainly comes from the heart, but when she establishes the shell and core of a story, she will do a lot of research, "Sometimes this survey is calculated in years, and it used to be really luxurious, so in fact, my writing is very expensive." 」 I like very real details and dialogue. However, I like very abstract story shells. I am a person who is sensitive to both light and darkness, but I want to be able to stay in the ultimate goodness, which is still far away and needs to be practiced. ”
What does Cotton Cotton want to say to herself back then? Mian Mian replied, "Everything has a way, like a dream bubble." If dew is like electricity, it should be viewed as such. These four sentences are my heartfelt words, because everything is changing, and it is necessary to let go, but it is not to be distracted. ”