Moaning in Bed and Singing
2007/1/7 15:15:06
Just got back from Huairou -- the tofu there is quite good, different from the city's. As long as nobody takes advantage of you, eating tofu requires no Qu Qiubai. And today's weather is as good as Chinese tofu: though the city sky isn't as blue as Huairou's, for a winter day in Beijing, for a Beijing after its first snowfall, it's already superlatively tofu-good. Looking out the window at the icy surface glistening under the winter sun behind gray willows, I suddenly felt like chatting about a topic not quite as tofu: singing.
In an age without beds, there was certainly no lack of bed-moaning; in an age without records, there was equally no lack of singing. The relationship between singing and bed-moaning is like that between fermented mung bean juice and tofu. Anyone can moan in bed, anyone can eat tofu, but singing -- real singing -- is as intoxicating as fermented mung bean juice.
Good mung bean juice is nearly extinct, and good singing likewise. Ever since electronic amplification systems became sophisticated, the human voice has become increasingly bed-moanified. The only distinction is like Huairou tofu versus city tofu -- quite good already, but once compared with mung bean juice, it can only be bed-moanified tofu-style.
The characteristic of bed-moaning is a certain muddy indistinctness, a certain electronic sharpness and monotony. In bed-moaning across all timbres and frequencies, no matter how it rises and falls, there is only one common theme: agitation. Ears trained by electronic bed-moaning can probably only reach climax after climax amid such moaning.
Forget about popular music singing -- even the once-rich and colorful folk songs, after bed-moanification, have been reduced to uniform bed-moaning. In an age where one-night stands are fashionable, bed-moaning needs no differentiation -- everything has become electronic, industrialized, globalized. And who, in the busy rush of one-night stands, has the time and energy to distinguish the similarities and differences between this moan and that?
Homogenization -- the ultimate homogenization of capital -- constitutes the sole characteristic of this era. The homogenization of bed-moaning, the bed-moanification of singing: this is the inevitable result of capital's homogenization in the musical domain. When people have only moaning and no singing, when all manner of moaning rises and falls across stages, channels, and karaoke rooms, the capitalization and mechanization of humans continues to tofu along.
Chán Zhōng Shuō Chán 2007/1/7 15:24:22
Everyone, get some rest. It's the weekend -- don't be thinking about stocks. Relax your mood. Stocks are only one facet of life.
Heading out first, let's talk stocks again tomorrow.