小事 PROJECT "TRIFLES"
by Xiaotian Liu with friends
小事 trifles
CIIS MFA project | Songift 的缘起
“文化归属感”这样的概念是抽象的，我遇到的每一位在美国生活的华人却都是具象的。
跟他们交往，聊天，一些看似微不足道的小事触动我，成了这些歌。
The concept of "cultural identity", or "cultural belongingness" are abstract, but the Chinese people who live in the U.S. are not.
Each individual has his/her own vivid character and life.
As I interact and talk with them, the trivial matters in their lives touched me, and became the topics of these songs.
创作手记 notes from the collaboration
整件事源于一个瞬间。
The whole thing started from a moment.
有一天，我环顾厨房，看到暑假回家时爸爸给我买的，非常“中国式”的杯刷，突然觉得心被一股无法言喻的感觉强烈地冲击。
One day, as I look around my kitchen, I saw a bottle brush. It was a very "Chinese" one. My dad bought it for me when I was home for summer break. Suddenly I felt that my heart was struck by a wave of something I cannot name.
Among everything in the kitchen, what struck my heart was the bottle brush that dad bought me this summer when I went home.
This seven-year itch of life in America...
Can I brush it off ?
我在美国学习，生活，工作了七年。为了融入此地，我逼自己形成了一套行为和言语模式。这套东西像一层蜡膜一样附在我的皮肤上，甚至已经和皮肤融为一体。而我曾经熟悉的文化，语言，和行为方式，都被抛在一边，无所适从。突然意识到这些，我一度不知所措。能做的，似乎只有看看周围与我类似的人是如何处理类似情形的。因此，我有了采访在美国的华人的想法。
Having been living, studying, and working in the United States for seven years, I developed patterns of actions and speech to "fit in" the culture. I wasn't aware of the masks that I accumulated. But over time, I felt that they stuck on my skin like a wax coat and started to fuse into my real skin, whereas my original culture, language, and patterns of behaviors were left aside. This sudden realization cast me into a devastating state of lost. At the time, it seemed that the only thing I could do was to ask people like me, how did you deal with this? This was the initial motivation for me to interview Chinese living in the United States.
在与许多朋友了解，交谈过之后，我确定出十位。他们生于50 到 90 年代，都在中华文化中长大（即中国大陆和台湾），也都在美国生活过相当长的一段时间，可以说拥有双重文化的身份 (bi-cultural identity)。目前，他们都生活在美国。
After some searching and talking, I pinned down ten people. They were born in different decades -- from 50s to 90s, all grew up in Chinese culture (including mainland China and Taiwan), and have lived in the U.S. for an extended time period to form a bi-cultural identity. Currently, they all live in the U.S.
在开始了解他们的时候，我想要绕开逻辑／理性对于感受和想象力自由的桎梏。我怕那些带有我主观臆断的问题打扰我了解这些人。（比如“你是如何处理文化冲突的”这样的问题，背后其实隐藏了很多我自己的假设。）所以，我没有采用传统的采访模式，而是借用了心理治疗里的字词联想，将它改编成为一个游戏：
When I begin to interview them, I was afraid that questions with my biased agenda (such as "how do you deal with the confusion from bicultural identity?") would intervene the interaction and distort my understanding of them. I also wanted to avoid the limitation that logic thinking cast on imagination, intuition, and unconscious. Therefore, instead of a traditional question-and-answer approach, I borrowed a word-association intervention from psychology, and adapted it into a game：
首先，我和对方玩一个蹦词游戏: 我随意说一个字，词，或短语，要求对方听到之后，根据直觉，自由联想，用最快的速度“蹦”一个字词，或短语。之后，我再根据听到对方蹦词的联想，快速“蹦”出下一个字词，如此往复十到二十分钟。全程录音。之后，请对方听着录音选出最有触动感的词语，将这些词语扩展，造句，然后再将这些句子想办法连起来，成为一篇文字。最后请对方朗读自己的文字，录音。这些文字和录音就成为我创作的主要材料的一部分。从这个角度讲，所有参与游戏的人，事实上是在与我共同创作。也因此，我更愿意称呼他们为“合作者”。
First, I played a word-association game with the other person. The game goes like this: I say a word (or phrase) randomly, the other person say another word from free association right after he/she hears it, and then I say another word based on his/hers. We record the process for ten to twenty minutes. Then I invite the person to hear the recording and choose words that they feel most connected with, expand them into sentences, and connect the sentences into a piece of writing. Finally, I record him/her reading the text. The writing and the voice recording then became the major material that I compose the songs from. Looking from this angle, all of the interviewees were in fact creating the pieces with me. Because of this, I would rather call them collaborators.
在蹦词游戏和之后的扩展书写之后，我发现，虽然没有得到对方对于“双重文化身份” 这个话题的任何意见，甚至沾边的经历也不多，但是得到的却是我觉得更为珍贵的东西：从感性而细微的角度，我得以瞥见对方是一个怎么样的人，经历什么样的喜怒哀乐，以及如何面对生活。那些蹦词中意料之外的词语，往往能引导我进入对方那些隐藏在表面身份标签之下的，更鲜活的部分。
After the word game and the writing, I realized that, even though I didn't get much about the collaborators' opinions or experience relevant to "bicultural identity", what I got was beyond precious. I got to see, from a sentimental and subtle perspective, what kind of a person this collaborator is, what joy and sorrow he/she is experiencing, and how is he/she dealing with life. It was the unexpected words from the word game that led me into the more vivid, lively parts under the identity labels of my collaborators.
除了蹦词，这次创作也尝试了其他方式，比如 going home，是请对方在一个相对放松的状态下，录下一段自己随意说话的声音。这段声音和据此转录的文字便成为我创作的原材料。
Other than the word game, I tried other ways for free association. For example, I asked one of the collaborators to record a 15min voice doodle when she is in a relaxed mood. She ended up recording a 15min speaking and singing on her way home. Later, the text and her voice became the material for the song Going Home.
另一部分主要的原材料是我对与合作者的感觉和印象。我与每位被访人都有一定时间的接触和了解，所以自己的主观性在创作中占很大的成分。也许，我在他们身上感受到的东西，多多少少是我自己身上也有的东西。
Another important source for composition was my impression and feelings about each collaborator. Before the project, I had already known most of them for a good amount of time. Mu subjectivity inevitably took a big part in the composition. Perhaps what I felt from them is in fact what I have inside of me. It's only resonance.
全部歌曲做完之后，我发现，文化身份这样的东西对我似乎不再重要了。也许我只是想念说中文，想念那一套被放在一边的交往方式。至于归属感，重要的不是具体的家在哪里。因为不管在任何地方，心安之处即是家。
After the project is finished, I realized that the so called cultural identity didn't matter to me anymore. Perhaps I just missed speaking Chinese, behaving in the ways that I put aside. And as for the sense of belongingness -- home lies where the heart settles.