White dove

The stars in the mountains are extraordinarily bright. Looking up, through the sparse branches in early spring, you can see them adorned on the surrounding hilltops one by one, like a crown like teardrops, stars hanging all over the field, and insects and birds singing.

Everyone else went back to the tent to sleep. Tong Tong and Shen Chen sat around a bonfire, took turns drinking a small bottle of local spirits, and stood there until the bonfire was reduced to embers.

I don't know if it's because the night in the mountains is too quiet, or because the alcohol soaked up the dusty past. I don't know how it started. Tongtong unknowingly told a story that was short but not short, long but not long. Listening silently, several times Tongtong thought he was asleep and stopped talking, but heard him urging: "And then?"

Then what?After being asked many times, the story finally came to an end, and Tong Tong said, "That's it, we separated."

The light of the fire reflected on his heavy face, which was darkly red. He took a deep breath, exhaled again, smiled, and said, "It's too cruel, Xiao Tong."

Shen Chen also called him Xiaotong. He was obviously only a few years older but he liked to pretend to be a big brother. He thought about it and said, "What happened when you were in your senior year is... five years ago."

"Yeah." Tong Tong nodded, sometimes he thinks about the time unconsciously, one year, two years, three years... After the third year, he didn't think about it again, and there will always be a lot in the future Years, falling into the palm is a handful of quicksand.

Biancheng, the name that has not been read, chewed, and swallowed for a long time floated into Tong Tong's heart again, slowly rising from an endless dark swamp, these two words seem to have become some kind of taboo code words, read it again One glance will cause trembling for no reason, making people timid, and the endless and bursting desire makes people just want to run harder and escape.

It's a spell.

Shen Shen just listened quietly and didn't ask more. After Tong Tong finished telling the only history of his life, he felt the darkness in his heart was getting thicker. The swamp kept sinking. He watched the name rise and then slowly drag it down. .

The sound of the waterfall came from a distance through the dense forest. They were at the edge of a jungle. It was still early spring, and the spring night in the mountains was extremely cold. "Sleep, Tong, forget about him." Shen Shen said.Tong Tong went back to their respective tents with him, with their own worries.

This is the third day they have been here, and the first episode of the "Singer" series of documentary projects was officially launched. Tong Tong met Shen Shen about half a year ago, and it was obvious from the first meeting that this guy is a passionate idealist Or, why would you partner with such a person?Tong Tong couldn't tell, maybe Shen Shen had a long-lost and rare enthusiasm, which could not be extinguished no matter what difficulties, he appeared with unconstrained ideas, which made Tong Tong's silent and numb heart a little turbulent.

At that time, Tong Tong had been selling real estate for four and a half years, and had enough capital to live a good life, but he seemed to no longer find the heart to live a good life. He thought, he really became a walking dead, and his job was stable. It went smoothly, and he never missed a single day during the most ferocious years of China's real estate development. This was driven unconsciously by the hand of fate, and he earned money, the money he had longed for so much.

Then what?Nothing Then, money is just money, it is not life, let alone an ideal.

This is four and a half years of life with no focus at all. Outside of work, Tong Tong has become more silent, with no desire to express, and no enthusiasm for communication. Once, he tried to contact people and accept others. , but no, not even a little bit close, this is a double rejection of body and mind, he can't control it at all.

After that attempt, he gave up completely, and Tong Tong couldn't figure out why he had no resistance and wariness when he was with the border town, and even naturally longed for those closeness, skin-to-skin touch, body-to-body fusion, but other things Man...he couldn't do it.

So, let it be like this, he proposed to resign from the company, and the director and the sales boss directly under him came to keep him. After all, he is the annual sales champion in the case field, and the final negotiation result was to give him a two-month vacation, so that's it. Tong Tong simply cleaned up and went out.

On that trip, he traveled a long distance, starting from Jerusalem in Israel, going to eastern Turkey, seeing the Mesopotamian plains and the ancient stone city of Mardin in the sunset, and then going around to Antalya near the Mediterranean Sea. Ya, I helped the antique carpet shop near the hotel to look after the shop during the day, watched the glorious sunset on the platform of the ancient city with the shopkeeper in the evening, drank together and bid farewell, after ten hours of night train, I arrived at the city of strange landforms with ravines Cappadocia, staying in a stone hotel, a local boy played the Sanxian, another pulled him up to dance, tossed and said goodbye in the heavy rain...

Seeing the glory of an empire in the glorious ancient capital of Istanbul, crossing the Bosphorus by ferry, and being in the greatness condensed by the long river of history, one's own insignificance and insignificance have finally been tolerated and released. A very strange feeling, admitting to be small, but calmly small.

This is probably what it feels like to reconcile with yourself.

The person who had never left Yijiang longed to see the world. Now the world is in front of him. Tong Tong felt that the missing part of his heart was filled, but the other part... He once said that he should take all the beauty and badness on the road, Both the ordinary and the great are shared with the distant lover, but when he really stands in front of all these, the lover becomes a fading memory day by day.

Tong Tong took many, many video records. These are his "eyes" and "memory".

The wandering singers and musicians were photographed after entering Italy. Tong Tong is not very friendly with people in life. Except for work needs, he has nothing to say to most people, but in the world In the strangeness of life, he didn't expect that he would be so keen to spy on and penetrate into other people's lives. He chatted with those wandering musicians, listened to their songs and stories, and sat in the square drinking together late at night. Like one of them, sometimes he thinks of Leng Chao, who was once a vagabond with lofty aspirations as soon as he graduated. Leng Chao didn't go vagabond in the end, but he really seemed to realize a dream of "false vagrancy".

There is a retreat, and then desperately move forward without looking back, and have a short dream.

He met a homeless man who played the piano by the seaside of Naples. He had a long beard and hair. With knotted eyebrows and eyes in his hair, he starts to play a broken piano every evening on the open-air platform near the sea. There is always a bottle of beer next to the keys. After playing a piece, he will drink half of the bottle in one go. , the guy in the bar not far behind will automatically come over to refill his drink. He can't speak clearly, but he can play very sad and beautiful tunes.

For three days in a row, Tong Tong came to listen to him playing the piano. The two of them would drink each other silently with one beer. Tong Tong took many videos of him, and the guy in the bar told his story intermittently. A musician with a happy life, his wife and daughter died in a car accident. Since then, the musician has become a homeless person, dragging an increasingly dilapidated piano, across the ocean from the southern hemisphere, and playing wherever he goes ,Cosmopolitan.

Tong Tong was very sad when he heard it, but he saw the pianist's expression was calm. Maybe he had let go of everything in the past, but he didn't want to return to a "normal" life. These years of wandering have become another kind of life. destination.

Tong Tong recorded all of this, and then cut it into a short documentary and posted it on Weibo, coupled with his travel notes serialization. Unexpectedly, it became a big hit, and many people left messages, it was him!I saw him once in New Zealand!I saw him in Greece!The god of BBS who used to be a big S student began to glow faintly again on the new social platform.

I met a lot of people like this along the way, the Spanish boy who carried a heavy hand disc and performed in the open air played the best hand disc music that Tong Tong has ever heard in his life, and the girl who played the violin in the back of the art gallery was full of energy , it doesn't matter where they come from, it doesn't matter where they go, whose future and past are not the same, but at this moment they are engaged and happy, and the present is forever.

Tong Tong envied them in his heart. During this short journey, he could pretend that he was also them, dreaming an unbridled and free dream.

Shen Shen frantically commented on Tongtong's Weibo documentary "The Wandering Pianist", and then bombarded Tongtong's private messages. At first, Tongtong thought that this person was either a marketing account or crazy, so he sent it Every word is full of fanaticism, "I have an idea that is in perfect harmony with you!" "Brother! Do something big together!" "After so many years, I finally found someone who can do business with me!" "You are here Where? I want to see you!"...

After he sent dozens of messages in such a mess and with high spirits, one of them finally mentioned a specific idea: "I want to make a documentary project about the submerged and forgotten 'singer', you know, when the text is Before the invention, human beings used sound to record history and life. The only language that people communicated with was music. Music is invisible but can describe everything. Natural mountains and rivers, love and hatred, those who use sound to "record and express" something People are the subjects I want to track and shoot, let’s record the sounds that really come from nature and the land, and shoot world music that is not found in China!”

This serious expression moved Tong Tong, so he wrote back to Shen Chen privately: "Come back in half a month, we will meet then."

Shen Chen made an appointment with him at a small tavern called "Banpo" at the back gate of Nantah University. When Tong Tong arrived, a group of people inside were discussing something, and a man surrounded by him seemed to have drunk too much, and read wildly and passionately. Wrote a poem: "My candle burns from both ends, it won't survive the night!"

He stood staggeringly and said to the crowd: "How wonderful is Milai! This woman is very poor, very poor, poorer than all of us, but very happy, very happy, happier than all of us This is to live, to live is to burn, my candle burns from both ends!"

Tong Tong was shocked in place, he felt like an abrupt intruder, with an aura of incompatibility, entering a crazy little world that had already formed its own school and was incomparably self-contained. Looking at the intruder at the door, he waved his finger and said, "Who are you?"

Before Tong Tong could say anything, the man waved again: "Whoever you are, if you come to Banpo, you will burn!"

Everyone laughed and pushed the man down: "Old Shen, you drank too much!"

This is Shen Shen?Tong Tong was puzzled, the tavern was very dark, and he couldn't see clearly from a distance. Shen Shen was tall, with half-hanging hair on his forehead, and a loose bun on the back of his head. His outline was deep, thin and sharp. , Tongtong’s heart skipped a beat when she turned her face sideways, like someone leaning over to hit a ball at the dim pool table on Green Island, Tongtong’s heart was pounding, she walked closer and closer, her breathing became heavier .

When he came to the front, when the whole heavy face was clearly in front of him, Tong Tong's heart almost jumped to his throat, and his heart suddenly fell again, fortunately, it didn't look like it.

He said to Shen, who was already drunk: "You are so Shen, you invited me here, do you remember?"

The people around started booing: "Old Shen! You still drink so much on a date? Don't you just forget about someone after you have a date?"

Shen Shen seemed to turn a deaf ear to the noise around him, and stared straight at Tong Tong, asking suspiciously, "Ye... Tong Tong?"

"Correct."

Shen Chen suddenly became sober, and he stammered: "You, why do you look like this? It's not the same at all..."

"What's the difference?" Tong Tong was a little confused.

"I, I, I thought you were a half-old man with a shaggy beard and a shaggy beard, the kind who ran around the world." Shen Shen still couldn't speak fluently, and he didn't know where the surging passion of reciting the poem just now had gone. He looked up and down: "Why are you so young? Ah, huh? Like a daffodil."

The people around laughed even harder: "Old Shen, are you still crazy at this age? It's terrible, the old tree is blooming and the old house is on fire. Are you trying to flirt?!"

Shen Shen brushed aside the hand next to him that was tugging at his sleeve: "Go away, a group of people have nothing to do all day long, they just goof around and brag and criticize each other every day, I've made an appointment with someone to talk about serious business."

He dragged Tong Tong to another corner, explaining in a hurry: "Don't listen to them, these people just have nothing to do to mess around."

Tong Tong didn't care, the atmosphere of this bar is very strange, although it is open for business, it seems to have a natural magnetic field that outsiders can't enter, but once integrated in, it feels as comfortable as at home, he is a little like here.

Shen Shen stammered about his documentary plan, and Tong Tong thought it was a very powerful idea, which touched him and motivated him to invest in it.

A friend at the other end shouted for Shen Chen to come over, and he said to Tong Tong, "I'll be right back, don't leave."

Tong Tong took out his mobile phone and searched for the name Shen Shen, and the various news that popped up shocked him a bit. At the FIRST Film Festival, he made a big splash with a documentary filmed for ten years. The film was about his homosexuality and changed again. The father of the sex, he was gay for ten years, and later he became a woman. He faced all the malice, slander, and sporadic understanding and warmth. With this film, Shen Shen won the international documentary award. But suddenly disappeared... Tong Tong browsed briefly, and decided to look for this movie to watch when he went back, and at the same time, he had some admiration for Shen Chen.

Shen Shen came back after a while, and assured Tong Tong firmly in his eyes that there are already big platforms interested in this project, and they will help them attract investment and find money, and even buy at the worst. All they have to do is to do it boldly, and he The reason why I found Tong Tong was not only because of the crude homeless pianist film he wrote, but also because the travel notes written by Tong Tong are concise and warm, which is exactly the style that Shen Chen likes. He needs a very powerful plan And copywriting, music and words are the most emotional things in this world, Shen Shen wants these two to collide with sparks.

Tong Tong decided to join in that night, and Shen Shen appeared at the right time. The "Singer" documentary project is like a floating board for drowning people. Tong Tong, who lives without taste, needs to rely on it to breathe.

Love is no longer available, so we must pursue something, then create, creation makes people alive.

The author says:

emmm, they are separated, and they have been separated for a long time...

This period of separation is very important to both of them, especially Xiaotong. He has to gradually understand what he has done, what he has missed, and how to reconcile with himself. This is a necessary growth experience. With this experience , any catastrophe in the future will not let them separate.

Borrowing the words from when I wrote "Jian Ke", "I love Xu Le very much, and I will give him a lot of warmth, but it may not be Jiangshan." I also love Xiaotong very much, and I will give him a lot of warmth. country.

He is going to start a career, and he will experience a lot in the process of career creation, and he will find a part of his lost self.

Ah Cheng is waiting for him.