I was at home. It’s my boyfriend’s birthday today. On the very end of 2006.
Winter this year is hardly cold at all. It rains not as much as last year either; not a typical Taiwan winter. You can still feel a dangling bit of breezy warmness in the air. Neighbours outside our window were chattering. A sense of leisure was floating between them. It felt like a normal weekend, as no one actually knew tomorrow would be the first day of a whole new year. But anyway, what the difference a day makes?
After wiping the dust off my desk (maybe the new year thing still got me), I carefully ripped off the plastic package of the newly bought CD; Summer Lei (Lei Guang Xia)’s “The Light of Darkness”. As the routine goes, I skimmed through the booklet and label copies, which I denied to be an addiction gained through my occupation, but is a habit I acquired long before I got hired to work at Universal Music. Among all these familiar names of local musicians and sound engineers, a German name caught my eye: Hendrik Höelzemann. Listed as a music video director for one of Lei’s tracks, it dawned on me that I had probably heard of him before. I turned to the page which had the lyrics of the track “Bie Ren De Tien Shi” (Someone Else’s Angel); beside the lyrics were printed a sidenote. This track is indeed inspired by the film “Off Beat” by Herr Hendrik Höelzemann. It really paid off to read the booklet before I actually listened to the album, because I appreciated it more.
My boy called to say that he has finished his haircut and is going to spend some time at Greensteps, the coffee shop where we first met. I thought he wanted to relax, read and do a little writing there, so I didn’t join him. The daylight was failing. I could of the sound of jet plane flying by, accompanied by dog barks from around the corner of the lane. I put in Summer Lei and her music created a deep feeling of serenity, along with the soft yellow glow from the lamp beside my desk. To keep my annoying allergies from ruining the beautiful poetic moment, I made myself some hot tea.
Unfortunately the mighty YouTube didn’t have the video of Höelzemann’s video yet. However, the video of the first single has been uploaded already. “Wo De Ba Ling Nian Dai” (My 80s) opens with enduring piano chords; after the strings slides in, Lei’s voice comes in and syncronizes in perfect time. Her background of being the classical radio host and growing up in a literary family adds more poetic influence to her music, even her voice. She sings like reading a narrative poem. With all the people holding their photos of their 80s, the video with the floating music became an enormously retrospective landscape whispering a silent nostalgic story. My sight became blurry.
Could I be in tune with the moment even more? Altough it’s not the best Happy Birthday song, it’s the best end-of-a-year soundtrack.
