詩，樂，夢: 一首新的詩作

前言:

自我檢討，寫詩始終還未能臻至大師境界。因為我仍在臨摹階段。可是在表達含蓄的感情，和修辭造句方面，肯定是進步很多，頗有詩人的風範。所以，這也是好詩。

作為詩人與音樂家，不單需要真情流露，還要用優良的技巧去表達這份情意，與讀者，聽眾分享。感謝國學大師胡適的詩作，夢與詩的笫一首詩。我臨摹其結構，借其修辭的形態，寫下這新詩。意念是新的，意境營造也是新的，可算是我近期的佳作。當然胡適提倡新詩的理念，就是詩作要如說話般淺白易懂，我雖不完全贊同，但我這詩的詞句，就只用了顯淺的字詞，外表意思是易懂的。表面上這詩雖只是一首浪漫愛情詩，可是，又有幾多人可以細心嘴嚼到詩中主人公在愛情中的無奈。詩中的 ‘她’ 和 ‘妳’ 同是偶然在那個 ‘我’ 的生命裡不同時間軌迹中碰到的人，一個已消逝，感情也只好在心中暗處冰封 ; 另一個卻在眼前，卻又無端牽起詩中的 ‘我’ 那內心的無限漣。可是，雖然兩個都是對的人，但卻在錯的時間相遇，所以開不到花，也結不出果。原來，這就是我們常說的無奈。。。。

其實這首詩所流露的情感，是自身的體驗。這也是詩的美所在。

因為詩中造句對人的感情世界含有高密度的描繪，所以，詩並不可能如胡適所言，是顯淺如話 ……

‘她’ 在這詩中只留有伏筆。’我’ 對 ‘她’的感情亦只能封印在那隱藏的失落裡。這已是多年的往事。還記得如康乃馨的 ‘她’ 嗎? 這就是了。可能是這個 ‘妳’ 不經意的出現，雖是在錯配的時間，卻又無奈地喚起了那 ‘我’ 那多年前那冰封了，失落了的對 ‘她’ 的感覺……

而 ‘妳’ 在這詩的出現，明顯的只在最後一句。對 ‘妳’ 是含蓄的情感，沒有刻骨銘心的浪漫，也沒有波瀾壯濶的激情，一切就在於 ‘平凡’ 這個字裡面。不能留在 ‘妳’ 的夢裡，只因在這錯配的時空上， ‘我’ 只能對 ‘妳’ 表達那平凡的詩，平凡的樂，平凡的事，以及那平凡的話。是那麼淡淡然的，不經意的…….. 雖是偶然的碰上，但又感情是那麼真摯，那麼動人。不能留在 ‘妳’ 的夢裡，這就叫做無奈…….

正文:

詩，樂，夢

寫的是平凡的詩

作的是平凡的樂

湧進了是這偶然的夢

變幻了這冰封的感覺

…………….

談的是平凡的事

說的是平凡的話

碰著了是那偶然的人

喚醒了那隱藏的失落

……………..

醉過方知洒濃

愛過始知情重

失過才懂珍惜

哭過才明心痛

她不能做我的詩

正如我不能留在妳的夢

……………..

梁大偉

於2013-11-04

(Published)

The Affective World of Troubadour’s Songs

Forewords:

The paper below is memorable. This is because it is the first academic writing in my previous university life. Viewing the paper from today, although the English is no good, and the expressions is overwording, I still like it very much, not only of ideas but also the first success of developing my thinking pattern.

Article:

The Affective World of Troubadour’s Song:

A symbol of the relief from religious restraint

From time to time, the artistic value of poem not lies in the elegance and sensuous words, but rather, the idea or symbol concealed behind these words. In a similar way, what the troubadours, a group of poet-musicians from the aristocratic class of France active from the 11^th to 12^th century, leaves to the world is a treasure of heartfelt, profound and consummate affectionate musical works. Although this affection is somewhat idealistic and unattainable, its influence is still far reaching till to many centuries, constituting part of what is now called European humanistic culture. It was in the 11^th century that the troubadours first began to appear. The combination of the ‘Heroic Chivalry’ and the ideal ‘Courtly Love’ that they contributed found expression in the daily words and deeds of the medieval people. The first troubadour of record was Duke William of Aquitaine. His poetry is said to contain all elements of ‘Courtly Love’, a kind of lovely affection commonly reflected in many troubadours’ poems. The nature of ‘Courtly Love’ is rather ambivalent, sometimes positive and joyful, but sometimes melancholic and miserable. Although many of the extant troubadour poems exalt the pure and passionate affection of the ‘Courtly Love’ between a gentleman and a courtly lady in the surface, such passions, however, always give evidence of presenting somewhat the religious symbolism as a personal emotional reaction to the social/liturgical orders and codes beneath.[1] In the following discussion, I shall examine the affective world of troubadours through their songs and lyrics, especially seeking the underlying tones of the words, so as to reveal how the ‘Courtly love’, was shaped and shaped the medieval musical culture.

It is almost impossible for us to understand the symbolism of the troubadours’ poetry without referring to the culture and religious situation in the Middle Ages. Medieval people lived under a restrained world of codes and rules. Treaties, guidance, manners, no matter on chivalry, on hunting, on table, on liturgy, subliminally directed their daily life[2]. In addition, the Catholic Church acted as the ministry of God’s representative on earth. It was the sole means of maintaining the divine, godly, order of the terrestrial world regardless of her ‘greedy zeal’ in accumulating their prestige and wealth incessantly. The Church doctrine and liturgy not only gave coherence but also restraints to everyday life.

The promise of salvation, the soul’s redemption from sin and its eternal life in a world to come, for instance, was assured by the Church through the ways of burdensome sacraments[3]. No matter is the ‘Ladder of Salvation’ of the wall painting of Chaldon Church, or the ‘Ladder of Perfection’ by Whicker, gives the impression of how a medieval individual should put in effort for the whole life but still wore an entire face of fear and uncertainty in the last judgment before the awe-inspiring God[4]. The rooted religious affection of the poets, therefore, like the common medieval people, unavoidably was a contradictive amalgamation of anxiety and devotion, as well as desperation and piousness. It is because of these underlying negative emotions that rooted unconsciously in the mind of the troubadours, the ‘Courtly Love’ that flourished in their poems becomes a kind of substituted and transformed affection, becoming a relief from the liturgical rigidities. In this sense, the poems of troubadour comprise religious symbolism.

According to the Webster’s Third New International Dictationary, the word ‘relief’ means that an feeling of removal or lightening or setting free of something burdensome, painful or distressing. One of the ways to remove the stress of the afflicting emotion, in general speaking, is to let the negative affection substituted by another positive one. In the daily experience, for instance, consoling by good friends or enjoying a nice trip can always assist to calm down, or to relieve from the vigorous and agitated emotions after the quarrel between a couple of lovers. It is because the negative affection is overcame, or substituted, by some positive affection. The same thing happens in the poems of the troubadours. It is obvious that the troubadour song presented a kind of love so-called ‘Feudalization’ of love. The lady was called ‘midons’ or ‘senhor’. Only a bad lord refused to protect and aid his vassal with pity. In some poetry of the troubadours, the lady is depicted as so lofty and unapproachable, somewhat like the God in certain ways, that the lover in aspiring to her is like a lesser, humiliate knight seeking a seat by a mighty baron[5]. It can be imagined that a medieval man who was zealous, heartfelt and devout but could not touch even the corner of the “Ladder of Salvation’. Where his affection could be released? It is not surprised to assert that the loyalty or honesty between the lord and the vassal in the feudal society resembled the dedicated love towards God. The more the man dedicated loyally as a serf to his lord, the ‘midons’, the more the man felt relief from the restricted emotion because of the more acceptance from the lord. In Pus Vezem, Guilhem of Poitou, also named William of Anquitane, stated:

Flowering fields again we see, the meadows rich with greenery, the

springs all rippling lucidly, the wind, the breeze

With every man that joy should be, which brings him ease…………

Obedience he must not spurn,

Bowing to many. In his turn he must do pleasant deeds to earn

The love he has to sought.

Yes, like a serf he now must learn silence in court………

Interestingly, ‘Feudalisation of Love’ consists of certain elements of what is said to be called ‘Courtly Love’. The poet is about a serf and how he feels if he could gain more freedom from the rigid and aloof world by showing absolute obedience to the lady in regardless of whatever the pain brought. The rising of love is linked with the spring. The lady is the most beautiful in the world and the poet is submissive to her power.[6] With releasing of his obedient love, poet seems to gain the freedom from his restrained affection world, in the other word, from the very hypocritical and superficial religious orders, and those sacraments. Through the use of feudal metaphor in troubadour’s poem, the negative, unrequited affection towards God was substituted by a kind of positive and rewarding feudalized fidelity, though deriving from poets’ imagery, was still a way of passionate relief. In fact, troubadours showed no pretence of worshipping aloofness. They really wanted the consummating embrace. But not all the idealistic love in the poems give a perfect result from their ‘Midons’, or the lady.

Undeniably, many of the ‘Courtly love’ ideas presented in the poems flourishes with grief, sorrow and disappointment. To love is to suffer, and even it associates with distressing physical symptoms such as an inability to eat or sleep[7]. The tenets of such love requires a knight to prove his love for his lady by performing courageous, and often impossible deeds; he must even be willing to die for her. If this kind of affection is another form of affection to substitute the rigid and unfulfilled Christian love, we can understand why when Pope Urban II proclaimed for the bloody crusade in 1095A.D., albeit irrational, the response was a tremendous success that totally exceeded his expectation. However, what remaining nowadays is only a horrible and bloody historical record of mankind.

In the troubadour’s song of ‘Distant Lady’, the religious symbolism in the poetry, again, is obvious. The troubadour secularizes this highly self-devoted, vassal-like or even serf-like affection believing that the lesser he asserted his own will, the more he accepted by the lady, that is, he was closer to the top of the ‘Salvation Ladder’[8]. Jaufre Rudel, undoubtedly, depicts us a clear picture of the writer’s devout affection, his inner intense religious love and how it is sublimated and realized into the metaphorical feudal affection towards his ‘Lady’. The ‘Distant Lady’ in the song can be every woman truly loved and loving. The separation is not meant that she is unreal or unattainable but, on the other hand, it is the aim in life to seek or to discover, no matter for the poet or for the others. Rudel wrote:

When now the days are long in May,

I love to hear the birds far distant,

And when the song has died away,

I dream about a love as distant………..

Sad and rejoicing I shall part from her,

When I have seen this love far away:…………

He speaks the truth who I says I crave

And go desiring this love far away

For no other joy pleases me more,

For my godfather gave me this fate

Than the rich enjoyment of this love far away[9]……….

In a more concrete sense, Rudel’s poem shows us that seeking for the Courtly Love from the distant ‘Lady’ is the seeking for the love, or the pity from the angry God. The more he suffered in the course of seeking, the more godly devotion he had sacrificed, and thus, another way of relief of his onerous affection. This might be the aim in life of the poet, to some extent, the aim in life of every medieval man[10]in order to fulfill the unsatisfied religious heart.

As we have seen that how the metaphoric ‘Feudal Love’ or ‘Courtly Love’ plays an important role in troubadours’ poem and is related with their religious affection, it is interested to point out that the cult of the Virgin Mary in the High Middle Ages is also another factor affecting their underlying emotion of the poems. Ironically, Christianity succeeded ultimately in this period because it represented a return to the pagan way of worshipping the original goddess which devotion to the Roman gods or ancient earthly goddess had precluded though the Church had attempted to stamp out previously. The importance of the adoration of the ‘Mother of Heaven’ was not only meant that the rank of the woman, at least in the middle class, was exalted, but also the rigidities of fear underlying the medieval world-views dominated by the concept and image of God’ s harsh judgment, was gradually broken down. The adoration of the Virgin, therefore, satisfied some of the attitudes that went to the troubadour system with its worship of the ‘Lady’. In a more progressive sense, the ‘Feudal Lady’ in the poem of troubadour is now transformed into Virgin Mary who was defined as a human character that could really temper justice with mercy, even with a warm or a merciful smile. On the other hand, Virgin Mary, the intercessor for the salvation of wicked human soul, tended to be humanized. She was seen as a real, fleshy and attainable human of tenderness and compassion. No matter is the ‘Goddess’ transformed to “Lady’ or vice versa, the restrained religious affection is relieved through this religious symbolization process. In poem of Bernart De Ventadorn, the ‘Lady’ is transformed to become the Virgin Mary, Goddess of love, mercy and pity. The ‘God-liked Lady’ is all beautiful and amiable. She lifts all worshippers including the poet himself up to passionate perfection and completeness and never lets down his hopes. The poem states:

This love wounds me so gentle

In the heart with sweet savor

A hundred times a day I die of grief

And revive with joy another hundred………

good will be the reward after suffering

All the gold silver in the world

I would have given, if I had it

Provided my lady might know

How truly I love her………

When I see her, it certainly shows

In my eyes, my face, my color

For I tremble with fear, like the leaf in the wind

I haven’t the judgement of a child

So overwhelmed am I love

And toward a man who is thus vanquished

A lady could show great pity[11]……….

Ventadorn obviously expressed the devotion of a knightly servant to the ‘Lady’, but in one aspect as we have seen, the energies that had alienated into God struggling for salvation had been drawn to the ‘Lady’, a ‘God-liked Lady’ that was more attainable, more perfect and even more human-liked. In a more ridiculous way, the image that appeared before the poet’s eyes when he prayed was his human ‘Lady’, not the angry God swaying to and fro in acceptance of salvation.

On the other hand, in the song of Guiraut Riquier, Humils, forfaitz, repress e penedens, we explicitly find that the previous concentrations of love on the feudal ‘Midons’ turned to the Goddess Mary requesting for mercy and redemption. The Goddess, ‘Virgin Mary’, was transformed to become a humanized person, a real person in life that was more sensuous and attainable. He definitely wrote:

Humble, guilty, accused and repentant,

Saddened, unhappy to return,

I am, for I have lost my time on account of sin,

I beg mercy, lady, gracious Virgin,

Mother of Christ, son of the all-power, that you take no account of my sin towards you,

If it pleases you, consider the need of my miserable soul………….

Again, in another song of Riquier, he begged for love and pardon even more honestly. His poem Be.m degra de chantar tener states:

I should certainly refrain from singing,

For to song, happiness is fitting,

And worry constrains me so much

That it causes pain from all sides,……………..

My sense, my joy, my displeasure

My pain and my profit truly

For I scarcely say anything else good………

With a great umber of setbacks

From which it seems that He is against us

On account of disordered desire

And overweening power………

Lady, mother of charity,

Secure for us, out of pity,

From your son, redeemer,

Grace, pardon and love[12].

Goddess Mary is humanized in the poem. This upsurge of deep pagan elements that revived popularly in the medieval period was returned to the hands of Troubadours’. The expression of the poet’s deep and pious devotion of Mother of Heaven was now turned towards his ‘Humanized Lady’. He was requesting for mercy, for redemption, even for the salvation[13]. The goal of joy after redemption, seen as the motive force of love, is interpreted in terms of poet’s experience as he offered his devotion in the face of setback and disappointment. The previous unattainable desires for the religious affection of satisfaction are fulfilled through his own created ‘Virgin Mary’, a humanized Goddess.

In conclusion, it is because of this kind of substituted or transformed lovely affection, the ‘Feudal Love’ or ‘Courtly Love’, relieves the troubadour poets from the restrained religious affliction. Perhaps, this may be the reason why the music of the troubadour was so popular in the Middle Ages. The echo was clear. Whether the influences are directly or indirectly, the ideas of pure love lauded by nobility and idolized by the troubadours spread rapidly and extensively like diseases. Under the influence, Tristram and Ysolt, Wace’s Brut and the romance of Troy were written. Andress Capellanus, furthermore, viewed ‘Courtly Love’ which embraced in the affection world of the troubadours’ poetries, as an art of rules and he regulated these rules into his remarkable work of The Art of Courtly Love. Whether this work is satirical, sincere, or debatable is not the most important. Its recognition is nevertheless the golden testament of love to all medieval people. It is also regarded as the incipient of the ‘Romance Love’, which is the most essential love culture of the European world[14].

The impact of the troubadours’ poems, however, was far beyond this limit. We find that more and more the secular used the religious symbolism that prevailed in troubadours’songs. Chretiende Troyes took over a great deal of the religious vocabulary and turned it to the use of sensual love. Love was adoration. In Gottfried’s Tristan of the early thirteen century there was a Cave of Lovers described as a richly adorned church with its shrine. In the center was ‘the nest of crystalline Love’ with design and proportions explained after the modes of the Gothic World[15]. As the time passed, more and more different kinds of sculptures, literatures, poems reflected in religious symbolism, and even frequently, gave evidence of hostility, or fierce attack on the social inequity and corrupted Church and thus, enforced the reformation of the Church. The poets, the artists tended to express their personal ideas and affection, at the same time, release their religious or social restrained emotions through their artistic activities. Therefore, through the contribution of the troubadours’ music and their ways of discharging the affection by using religious symbolism, it is undeniable to assert that the most precious and valuable lyric poetry in Western humanistic culture begins with the ‘Troubadour’.

Bibliography:

Andrea Hopkins, The Passionate Code of the Troubadours, New York: Harper San Francisco 1994.

Fiero Gloria K., The Humanistic Tradition: Medieval Europe and the World Beyond, 2^nd ed., Singapore: Brown & Benchmark Publishers, 1995

Goldin Frederick, Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouveres, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1983.

Lindsay Jack, The Troubadours and Their World, London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1976.

RosenbergSamuel N., et al., Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1998.

Stoner Kay, L., The Enduring Popularity of Courtly Love http://www.millersv.edu/~english/homepage/dincan/medfem/court.html.

Finished

David Leung (theorydavid)
2013-10-12 Published

[1] Gloria K. Fiero, The Humanistic Tradition: Medieval Europe and the World Beyond, 2^nd ed., Singapore: Brown & Benchmark Publishers, 1995, pp75-76.

[2] Hopkins Andrea, The Passionate Code of the Troubadours, New York: Harper San Francisco 1994, p15.

[3] Gloria K. Fiero, The Humanistic Tradition: Medieval Europe and the World Beyond, 2^nd ed., Singapore: Brown & Benchmark Publishers, 1995, p80.

[4] Jack Lindsay, The Troubadours and Their World, London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1976, pp214-217.

[5] Jack Lindsay, The Troubadours and Their World, London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1976, pp213.

[6] Jack Lindsay, The Troubadours and Their World, London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1976, pp15-17.

[7] Hopkins Andrea, The Passionate Code of the Troubadours, New York: Harper San Francisco 1994, pp6-7.

[8] Jack Lindsay, The Troubadours and Their World, London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1976, p221.

[9] Frederick Goldin, Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouveres, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1983, pp104-107.

[10] Jack Lindsay, The Troubadours and Their World, London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1976, p69.

[11] Samuel N. Rosenberg, et al., Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1998, p65.

[12] Samuel N. Rosenberg, et al., Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1998, pp172-173.

[13] Jack Lindsay, The Troubadours and Their World, London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1976, p215.

[14] Kay L., Stoner, The Enduring Popularity of Courtly Love http://www.millersv.edu/~english/homepage/dincan/medfem/court.html.

[15] Jack Lindsay, The Troubadours and Their World, London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1976, pp222-224.

時空交錯中的浪漫美學: KPop "那個女人" 的 MV 製作

前言:

我沒有太多製作歌曲 MV 的經驗。可是，這首 OST 歌曲， My Woman (My Man)，實在是曲詞唱都絕佳。可說是我的摯愛。所以，我嘗試運用 Contemporary Music 的作曲理論，加上 Proust 對時空，即 Time 和 stream of consciousness 的理論，Karol Berger 所提出關於貝多芬音樂中反影 Aesthetic States 的變化作用的概念，歌曲分析學中的 Text Painting，和德國文學家和音樂家在十九世紀文學運動中所提出的浪漫主義特質 — Distancing (遙遠) ，來製作以下MV 短片。在一方面，讓我可以熟悉製片軟件的各種特效和操作，另一方面，我也可以提升歌曲原本想表達的意義，增加其藝術價值。

值得一提，多數在 Youtube 上的 MV 業餘製作，都是以影片為主幹，往往忽略了音樂自身意義的特質，與樂音與影片中流露的 reference meaning 之間的相互關係。我這個 MV 嘗試，希望是可以拋磚引玉，打開多一種欣賞 MV 的角度。

因技術和經驗所限，有些地方還未完善，務請見諒。

正文:

首先，請聽眾先欣賞歌曲 “那個女人/那個男人“ ……..

含有對白的MV (較多合唱 Layers)

由於有影像提供了text，所以，聽眾欣賞時也會看影像和歌詞字幕去了解個 MV 的意義。
歌詞是我跟據韓文 CD內的中文譯文翻上翻的。

以下是製作音樂和影片的設計和 underlying idea and concepts。

但為了妨止阻礙聽眾發揮聯想空間，並作自由解讀，所以我只簡略說出整個 MV 的基本設計和要點。

1. Music:

The Male and Female voices belong to different sound tracks. They do not sing in duet, instead, they sing in solo with different keys, but similar tempo.

Each individual song is rearranged in the form of collage, superimposing as a pseudo-duet bitonally. The two Chorus Sections become a duet-like passages, creating a climax to the moment.

This implies a meaning that: Two lovers are distanced, and cannot go on hand by hand.

Music often articulates the meaning of each stanza, and even provides text-painting to some particular words, or word phrases. For example, the lyric in the Chorus section ” 就在內心中….” is highlighted by the eyesight of the male protagonist over the just found key (symbol of the love). Another lyric phrase ” 那個男人依然在妳身旁” is paralleled with an imagined scene of “The Man” who shows his deep concern with his beloved under the falling rain.

The nature of the music is story-telling, notified by the opening and closing scenes in which the young boy singer performs live in the garden. He is the character that sings the story of this unattainable love (19th Century German Romantic sentiment) between “The Man” and “The Woman”, who are also the audience in that particular moment.

2. Video:

Timeline narration is designed in the linear way. Readers/listeners should be aware of each event moving in different temporal-spatial states, albeit without a logical trajectory.

Temporal-Spatial spaces crisscross the states of the present (reality), the past, and the future (mental imagination or dream).

The Present State: Indicated by without using any additional effect in the scene.
The Past State: Uses of black-and-white screen or faded yellow screen background.
The Future State (imagined dream): Uses of soften effect, overblown light or cloudy effects to make the images vague and soft. The overall effect creates a distance between images and viewers, romanticizing the imges and the scene to a certain extent.

Additional FX effects are added to emphasize the particular moment when there is a sudden shift of the temporal-spatial spaces over the stream of consciousness of the protagonists’s minds.

Montage (small window) is frequently employed in the climatic moments, adding extra-reference meanings to the scenes, for example, a “Kissing” polyphony (counterpoint) is used in the final climatic scene. The small frame of the scene shows the kissing of the lovers a second prior to the large frame of the scene in an imagined dream.

Montage is also a technique to create a stream of consciousness of “The Man ” and “The Woman”, showing their mental journeys vascillating between the past memory and the future imagined dream.

3. Story-line:

A new story is created throughout the MV. Each event has certain linking to the next following event.

Readers/Listeners can create their own understanding of the story through referencing to the time line events.

我想我的討論就到此為止。不然的話，太多的解釋反而窒息了聽者的感受空間，解讀故事的多異性也減弱了。

全文完….

David Leung (theorydavid)

2013-09-12 (published)

珍惜百歲與千載的緣: 藝術工作者應有的情操?

前言:

葉明媚博士的詩 “消遙 ” ，就如其人一樣，可堪是風華絕代。我喜歡用的一句形容片語 “幽幽的擁容”，就是想起她的詩和影象而創出來的。她的“消遙 ” 起頭的第一段詩是這樣寫的:

煉百歲方能共舟
修千載始能共枕
千載前枕落的一船相思
從烟遠無詩的古代
撑往今生
細語喁喁的夜……

很美吧!

我在二十多年前讀這詩時，心裡就悸動不已。
於是借其意境，寫下了我第一首對 “愛情” 這奇妙東西的感想的古詩。

百載同船千共襟
幾番修道始緣深
顰盈耳語枕詩畔
還予消遙萬世生

……….

緣，不是如小說所言是由天註定的。反之，是須要人為的不斷努力和付出，方成正果。

如果要結為夫婦，真的如葉詩所說，要付出千載修行，要成為知己而共舟，也要煉百歲方成，那麼，能成為師生，能啟迪自己一生的緣，雖說此緣可能只是某人生命旅途中的一個短暫驛站，可是需要雙方修道多久呢?

作老師二十多年，竟還收到學生這樣的一封來信，實在感動難言……..

正文:

只是有緣上過一次葉博士 (她是民族音樂學的PhD，也懂彈奏古琴) 的堂。當時是聆聽她解說中國古代美學，從中國傳統舞蹈和繪畫看何為意境。那是二十多我前的事了。我並沒有緣跟她說過一句說話，她也更不知我的存在。可能跟她的 “緣” 只是修過數載吧了。

後來她請了當時在香港甚有江湖地位的老前輩作曲家林聲翕先生(林老師是我當時的作曲老師) ，為這首 “消遙” 譜成藝術歌曲用廣東話演出。當時我就想，”死啦!”。坦白說，林老師不是那些善於表達深情的作曲家，特別是寫那些浪漫愛情的曲調。

我現在也不便評論這首歌曲。

只知道後來葉博士移居法國，也沒有聽到她的消息。我偶爾會翻閱她評論古琴的書和她寫的詩，可能跟她的緣就是到這裡為止。可是，每逢我寫作時，用到在前言中提及的一個片語 “幽幽的雍容” 時，我就會想起她的風姿。說起這個片語，來源是來自葉博士原詩中的一組短句: 我雍容地以幽幽瞳靈，千千明媚，還你以一生的消遙……“。

真的很美，很美!

我這 “幽幽的雍容”，不是形容華麗，也不是描寫貴氣，更跟這些庸俗的形象扯不上關係。恕我詞窮，不能以文字解釋其含意。請讀者自行體會。在我的寫作中，用過這組詞三次。兩次是用來形容一群人去完成他們的特別工作。只有一次是用來形容我的一位學生的氣質，她當然是個女孩子。

離開了做學生的生涯，既當了老師，當然也教過不少學生。

在現代生活中，為了糊口，教學也不免要收學費。但學費還是小事，不收也沒有關係。總希望能有緣教導一些有潛質，特質和氣質的學生。可能在她們的漫長人生旅途中，上課的時日就只是一個驛站而矣。這也不打緊。就好像與葉明媚老師結的緣一樣，雖是短暫而久遠，卻對我的思維有一定的影響。我的 PhD 研究，就包含了中國傳統文人美學。還引用她的著作哩。

最近的教學生涯裡，又讓我再一次體會到師生的緣。緣是認識，是”因”，那麼，要結果的話，是要人有多少年的付出，執著，和努力呢? 不收學費就可以嗎?

以下是一個學生的來信，也請讀者自行領悟，結緣需多久?

“i’m sorry, maybe i cannot go…
my parents and i discussed for a long time, more than once we quarrelled…but is not for the price,we all think the price is suitable, is actually they did not support me to learn music.

im really really disappointed,i also did not know until now.

真係不是我不想學，我比任何人都更加想學作曲
但直到今天我才發現父母既支持原來是如此地重要，

因為如果沒有他們的支持我根本沒有能力做任何事。真係好無奈

我真係好失望，只有以後靠我自己，但是我絕對不會放棄絕對不會

i m so sorry i wasted of ur so much time

just hope u can understand

很高興能夠做你的學生，我的人生應該沒有幾個老師能夠向你這樣給這麼多機會,

but just soooo sorry”

(來信 1引錄)

這是我的回信:

沒有一個人生是一帆風順的。

一個人若能還是奮鬭，

無論遇著甚麼事都不可怕。

但若只能在那裡等著而沒有希望，

那就太可怕了。

生命的智慧往往在乎於這兩個片語: 等待，希望。

學生再回信:

thank u for ur support and understanding
i cried a lot about it……
but now relieved a lot
i will always remember what u said and encourage myself
although now i cannot change parents’ decision
but i will use my own way to persevere:)
anyway,
always put your words FIRMLY in mind.
Looking forward to the future with you to learn music
it will hv the opportunity.
pls take care of urself
i will always contact u and send my work to u
feel free to find me