Musical Planetarium

A different piece of music is randomly picked every ten minutes. Among all 10, here is the piece numbered 2.

Cover of the song. A portrait of the ancient Chinese poet Su Dongpo standing among the willow leaves, with the Chinese title of the song written in brushstrokes beside.

As If Green Hills Heave in Sight

如见青山

潮汐-tide/冉语优

役于物得失患　役于形不超然
(Attachment to possessions accentuates vicissitudes)
(Attachment to appearances hinders contentment)

A story between the ancient Chinese poet Su Dongpo and the monk Fo-Yin. The famous pun lines “狗啃河上骨”, “水流东坡诗” — “Dog eating a bone on the river, water carrying a poem east of the slope”, which, based on the pronunciation, can also be interpreted as “dog eating the bones of the monk, water carrying the corpse of Dongpo” — are a joke between the two. Of course, the depth of their friendship goes far beyond a song or a paragraph of text.

Immersed in the information age, one starts to be fascinated by people’s relationships in the past. After Su Dongpo went to the capital for his exam, it would no more be clear when they would meet again; for Dongpo, the monk became an unreal blur of memory and language, and then every hill he saw seemed to have the monk in it. Should he eventually meet the real Fo-Yin, the monk would start to overlap with the hills, with the monk’s Buddhist insights blending into the wordless nature, unifying the two —

At the end of the day, however, none of these debates matter. It is Su Dongpo’s carefree spirit — “who cares that it’s difficult to be together”, “find peace in wherever one is placed” — that is the most touching.