Liu Fang
[CHINA]
Horizons
When she plays she imitates a bird, or a fish
Fingers clad in plectrums, like liquid metal dripping from the hand
melodies like parts of a flower, or galloping horses their legs whirling across the plains, the asphalt, street -
The Chinese lute, once the travel-companion
of nomads and merchants
that followed the silk-road -
Open surfaces, mountain-ranges, rivers raining, glimmering strings of metal that sing, and strings made from silk that also sing, and the pear-shaped mahogany-instrument that is the outside of the universe, sometimes. The hard work every day, the discipline
virtuosity, light, simplicity -
Airport-bus, rail, telephone-wires -
Eleven years old Liu Fang leaves her home in Yunan to study music in Shanghai
Later leaving China altogether, for love Berlin Montreal Other cities
She meets new instruments, new worlds of sound: sitar, strings, oud, flutes -
Syrian, Vietnamese, African music,
expansion
Dragon boat
Autumn moon
Gold-embroidered tapestry
are the names, of some of her songs
Short moments almost nonchalant, calm, sad -
the journey, the sound, the feeling of wind gnawing against the tent or against hundred-story
hotel-complexes. Glass, streetlights -
Then there’s the philosophy, the horizon, the descent from heaven by way of the twenty-one strings, how sometimes it is as if there’s no time
The poet Bai Juyi writes in the ninth century about the lute that the sound from its strings is like mingled pearls being poured onto a jade-plate -
Birdlike motion, jumping fish, wandering home, over there-
Johannes Anyuru