Lyrics

Adding salt to your silhouette

Pickling

Air-drying

When I am Aged

Going with Wine

Notes

This is a story about time; and the time is such an existence quite out of timeliness.

For most people, it makes little difference whether they live a year or a dozen; life flows on like a river, indifferent and unmeasured. Time, like air, is invisible, and because of that, it often feels inconsequential.

And so, rather than focusing on the fleeting life of an individual, perhaps we should consider the condition of an entire generation. In the previous generation, society inflicted harm upon its people, and in return, the people showed no mercy to society. Compared to them, our generation—the children of the 1980s—was blessed with ease and sweetness. Yet ironically, it was this very happiness that gave birth to our thirst for wild, even reckless revenge. And so it continues: entanglements, conflicts, violence... Until, unknowingly, we ourselves become the architects of this strange and distorted age.

Twenty years ago, the Taiwanese poet Hsia Yu became an overnight sensation with Sweet Revenge—a work that continues to resonate. Even in mainland China, long trailing behind the pulse of the world, people were swept up in that preserved joy and intensity. It proves a timeless truth: masterpieces are eternal.

This musical experiment aims to tap into the full potential of two performers. They sing, chant, play, rap, and tap—every gesture, every sound becomes part of their expression. And unlike the mutual suspicion and hostility so common in today’s world, these two simply love each other. In this vast, lonely world, at this moment, they have only one another.

In the final movement, time begins to pulse again, suggesting that annual rings, like time itself, are human constructs. And so, the television, radio, newspaper, and album—these become the archives of years gone by. Somewhere, at every second, something brutal and heartless is happening in the world. All we can do is bear witness and record.

Still, this melody is dedicated to my mother, who has given me everything over the past twenty years—and, with the grace of heaven, may continue to do so for many years to come. Though children can never repay their parents fully, I am grateful that I can at least offer this composition as a humble tribute to my mother’s love.

Chant Text of the movement VI - Don’t you feel the morning becomes her?

Don’t you feel

The morning becomes her?

Don’t you feel that it becomes her?

Running, for instance

Opening an old cookie tin becomes her

Reading all the old damp letters

She is the very image of a cork in a wine bottle.

Don’t you feel that bolting cross a starry sky becomes her?

Having a will of her own becomes her

And other things become her too

For instance

A graceful fall becomes her

Don’t you feel that you could rub her right away

She is just that kind of ink

But then you find her thumbprint reappearing right before your eyes

Don’t you feel that

Rubbing becomes her?

Don’t you feel that

Coming in the morning becomes her?

Don’t you feel

The morning becomes her?

Don’t you feel that

She is the very image of a cork……