The title of this song—我們都有問題—means “we have a problem,” but I’ve seen it referred to as “Our Problems” as well. Soft Lipa is a Taiwanese rapper who caught my attention in 2010 when I moved into the dorms at UCI and I heard his song called 收斂水 (“Lotion”) through the walls. Took me forever to find it and I only did because, like so many rappers do, SL branded 收斂水 with his name, singing “xì kàn zhè páizi xiězhe Soft Lipa” before the second chorus (line translates to “look, the sign says Soft Lipa”).
“Lotion” is a great song, actually pretty sweet considering American hip-hop’s typical themes, basically instructing the listener on how to live well—“nǐ chúle xūyào bǎoyǎng de rǔyè / wǒ hǎo xiǎng tuījiàn nǐ línghún de shōuliǎn shuǐ” (also, you need to use lotion / I want to recommend to you this lotion for your soul)—to take care of herself, to live purely (“occasionally you’ll want makeup, but think back to the simple”), to remember to relax, and basically to purify herself after descending into the clamor and pollution of daily life. The chorus translates to something like:
“when you need to relax, play this song
after the nightclubs, play this song
after a bath, play this song
on leisurely afternoons, play this song”
For as sweet as “Lotion” is, it’s the kind of song I want to listen to—well—when I want to relax, not when I need to get down to writing. And writing is work—this is a strange idea to some people, because it looks like I just sit in front of a computer all day kind of moving my hands so why do I get so exhausted afterwards? First, it’s difficult to sit still and force yourself to work on one thing for hours, and you can only do it if you have a pretty strong 1) mental resolve or 2) emotional tether to what you’re writing. Either way it’s hard work.
I chose to highlight 我們都有問題 because of its chorus lines:
我們都很好 (we are good)
我們都不好 (we are not good)
The song is basically about people who are in a relationship that’s both good and not good—they know they have “problems” but they ignore them, pretending they don’t have them—need each other, though. Before the chorus there’s a couple lines that translate to “we say we don’t have problems,” but then it moves into the chorus with an “actually, I just want to tell you—”. The song is confession, mourning something, but is also tender about it.
In Asian culture, there’s a big disparity between “face” and what’s inside—and this song is kind of heartbreaking in the way that it wants to break down those boundaries between what the heart really feels and what the face is allowed to express, ultimately embodying that sort of restlessness in the chorus lines “we are good / we are not good.” It’s just a reminder to me that the two things can exist at once.
There’s something kind of cool about the word “we” or “us” in Chinese—the singular first person is 我 (wǒ), and the plural first person is actually just 我 + 們 (men—pronounced more like “mun”), 們 indicating plural. So “we” isn’t so removed from “I” like it is in English, but it’s an extension of the singular first person in actual language.
Every story is, essentially, about characters, and how they relate to other characters. Even a story about a lonely person is a story about a person and their world, and all the other people with whom they don’t interact. Not necessarily for the exact story of the song, but for the feeling it gives me, this kind of restlessness and sadness, but also a tenderness and timidness…. It’s so important, when you’re writing, to do your best at pushing something beyond the easy, the obvious, the two-dimensional. You were put on this planet with your own set of eyes; there’s something only you can see about whatever it is you’re writing, but in order to do that, you have to be on high alert to everything your heart’s saying. This song can heighten these things in me: either the intensity of my emotions themselves, or my ability to understand my own impulses and thoughts.
No comments:
Post a Comment