Movie《The Voice of Time》Introduction to the original novel

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The movie《The Sound of Time》the original novel is called:《The History of Sound》(Ben Shattuck).

《Leave a Sound of Time》The original novel tells the story of two young men majoring in music during World War I. They met to travel across the United States to record the lives, sounds and music of their fellow Americans. Along the way, they also experienced profound changes.

Movie《The Voice of Time》Excerpts from the original novel

I was 17 when I met David, in 1916.But now it is April 1972, and age has no meaning to me.There are always some white puffy pom-poms floating in the window above my desk, probably the seed pods of some kind of plant, deposited on the sidewalks of Cambridge like the first snowfall.

The doctor suggested that I write this story.I haven't been able to sleep since I received a strange package from Maine.There were 25 wax gramophone cylinders in the package. Each cylinder had a label with my and David's names written on it. On one of the cylinders, there was a note: “ a few.I found these in the attic years ago and when I saw you on TV I knew these had to be yours.”I've written three books about American folk music, and they've all been well received because I've been doing a lot of visiting recently.(Presumably it was during these visits that he saw me.) To this day, I have not written about that summer, that story about David.And now, I think, it's time.

The first time I met him was in autumn.After my first semester exams at the New England Conservatory of Music, Matt, Lawrence, and I went to the bar to celebrate.David was playing the piano against the far wall opposite. Under the dim light, his white shirt looked a little yellow. When his arms lightly swept over the keys, his shoulders were relaxed and relaxed.

“what's on your mind?”Matt asked, tapping my shoulder lightly.                       

I didn't notice what he was saying.

“What are you staring at?”Matt turned around and continued to ask.

“I know this tune” I said: “《Dead of Winter Nights》, in Kentucky, my father once played this tune on the violin. The melody was very slow. My father said that its rhythm was like "a sit-inHuman breathing”.It's an old English ballad from the Lake District that I once studied.It tells the story of two lovers who got separated on a snowy night in January.

They ran away from their respective homes, arranged to elope, and agreed to meet under an oak tree, but a blizzard came. They called each other's names in the raging snow and wind, but to no avail. Their voices were drowned in the roar of the blizzard, and they could not hear anything at all.Unable to hear each other.In the end, they huddled under different trees and died alone: ​​“ On the snow, two footprints appeared, one leaving to the west, one extending to the east, two still figures, on the tree roots, in this dead silenceOn winter nights, we will never meet.”

When I think about this, I recall that in the summer in Kentucky, white moths flew around the porch, and my brother and I lay on our backs with our hands on our bellies, feeling the slow rhythm coming from my father's feet--—the sound of his boots on wood.The grasshopper on the tree blends the entire night.

“Get away for a moment, I said to Matt and Lawrence.

I walked through the crowd in the direction of the music.In the room, which smelled of soap, beer, and tobacco, I leaned against the wall, my butt touching the end of the piano, and watched David play.His eyes were closed, the cigarette in his mouth was almost extinguished, smoke slowly rose on his face, his black hair was combed back, his head was rhythmic with the chorus, I watched his figure.

”Where did you learn it?“I asked him as the song ended.

”Oh“ He dropped the cigarette on the ground, then looked up and said: ”In the Lake District of Kentucky“.

A very deep voice, speaking very quickly.He played the C chord with one hand and raised his glass from the floor with the other.

”I'm from Kentucky%I told him.

His hands touched the keys, and once again he raised his head and said, "Yeah.You are indeed from Kentucky, sorry, I’m David.”he said, holding out his hand.

“Lyon”.I said.

“Which college are you from?”That night at the bar, basically everyone was from the conservatory.

“Vocal Department”, I replied.

“Not bad” He said: “Fa——La——La, I am from the School of Music History, this————” He played the same melody again.“It's just a hobby.In the summer, you can get some inspiration”.

On the other side of the room, Matt and Lawrence motioned for me to leave, and I waved goodbye to them.

“Have you been to Harrow?”I said: “Where did I grow up”.

“Hello, I went there two years ago, it was summer, and I remember there was a sky blue pavilion in the city center.”

He didn't seem surprised by the coincidence, and neither did I.At that time, there were not many people from the South in the conservatoire, let alone from Harrow.Harrow is a small town of over two thousand people located between the Cold River and the Stately River.David has been there, maybe we've even met each other.At certain moments in my memory, I feel extremely nostalgic for my hometown.

“I studied lille there,”he said, “I think it was 《Maids of Killary》.”

“I know it, so you should also know《Seed of the Plow》?”

“Should I know?”he said.

I told him that it was a song my mother often sang.

“Come on, let me hear it too”.

“Nothing”I shook my head vigorously.

“What tune?”As he spoke, he began to play on the piano, going from one chord to another, and then he sat forward again.“What tune?”He asked again.Played an A key.

His eyebrows immediately rose, and I noticed a reddish scar on his upper lip. I later learned that it was from his father.

“Don't think you can pop it”, I said.

“This stage is yours”, he pushed away the keys, took out a cigarette from his pocket, and picked up a candle, the flame swayed on his face, and he waited quietly.

The first time I was told that I had absolute pitch, it was because I could accurately identify the pitch of my mother's cough every morning.I could harmonize perfectly with the barking of dogs across the fields.I was also the tuner on my father's violin, standing at his elbow and singing the key of A as he plucked the strings.At first, I thought everyone could perceive the sound, like the key of D, which was just a swaying blackberry-colored circle.I just have to adjust to the shapes I see and I'm ready to recognize the individual tones.When I was 13, the tone started to taste bad, and when my father played a bad B minor, my mouth was full of waxy bitterness.On the contrary, if you draw a perfect C note, it will taste like sweet peaches, while a D note will taste like milk.

I sang that tune to David at the time.

I always feel like that's not what I sang.Even though the sound came from my lips and throat, I always felt like the sound didn't belong to me.It's more like I stole him than I originally owned him.This body is indeed mine - I can feel the rise and fall of my diaphragm, the expansion and contraction of my vocal cords, the sounds that come from my lips and soft tongue.I can really feel all of this, but there is something that disappears for me.The sound sounded above my head, so the feeling in my skull was more real than the feeling in my body. It drowned out the vibrations of my eardrums and nose.It was no longer my own, but more like the sound of the wind passing through the woods or the sound of passing through a glass.In other words, it is an echo from my mouth that keeps repeating. I can't sing like that anymore. I miss it.Now I have this faint vibrato and no one told me this buzzing sound is bad.

As I finished singing the song, dusk receded into the smell of wet wood.

“Where did you learn”, he asked me in surprise.

I shrugged,

“If I had a voice like this, I definitely wouldn't bury them in school”.

When he stood up to get a new beer, I noticed that he was taller than anyone in the room, and until daybreak we stayed together, me singing and him playing.

I can hum the key of D in both octaves, but I've never met anyone with a memory like his.He raised his head, put a hand over his ear, and hummed a note or two as he sang the song with ease, only fumbled to repeat a line when he was completely drunk.

“I'll buy you another bottle of wine”, I said to him.In the faint morning light, I have never left the side of the piano.

“Okay”, he said: “You let me have a good night's sleep, you owe me”.

“Anything you want”, I stared at him and said softly.

“No, I'm tired.It's almost dawn now.I want to get some sleep. I live across the street and I have a couch there if you don't mind.”

His room was extremely empty, with only a bed, a piano, and a chair.There was no sofa at all, not even a table, dirty plates and cups and pages of musical notes were scattered on the floor, and I asked him for a glass of water because I felt like the room was spinning and I was drunk.He grabbed a cup from the kitchen, took a long sip, and sprayed an arc at me.I opened my mouth to catch the spray, and he kept doing this until the glass was empty and I was wet, but had drank some, and he dropped the glass on the floor, then walked over to me and took off my glasses., folded them and put them on the windowsill, he took off my wet shirt, and took me to his bed, where there was a pile of quilts and sheets. When I leaned forward to kiss his lips, I walked straight

The red scar on his lip appeared, and I sucked him in as he pressed his hand to my thigh, and he fell onto the bed, wrapping his legs around me.

When I woke up, it was already dawn and David had left.I still had a headache and the whole room was still spinning. I'd been drunk before, but never like this.I got up from the bed and saw a note on the ground "See you next week".I drank big gulps of water from his water tank, then took a full glass and walked into the bedroom.I lay on the armchair, drank the glass of water in one gulp, then went back to bed and covered myself with the quilt.When I woke up again, the sun had set, but he still hadn't come back.So I put on my clothes, and before leaving, I folded the note he left and put it in my pocket.

Every Tuesday night after that, David would show up at the piano smoking a cigarette, and I would use my scholarship stipend to buy us drinks.Even if it wasn't a Tuesday night, I would sometimes stand in front of his apartment, looking up, trying to see who might be around his apartment, telling myself that it was just out of curiosity.I really never thought it was jealousy, and I've had that problem in every relationship I've had since I met David.Like Clarice, who I was dating when I was 40, left me after she admitted to sleeping with my friend, but I told her that I just wished she had admitted it earlier and that we could have worked it out together,But she started yelling at me as if I was the one cheating on her, and I didn't care about her anyway, so why would I stay?Most of the men I've been with - Alex, William, Alistair and the rest - haven't lasted more than a few months, but Vincent was the longest.I met him in Rome. I was in Rome for almost a year between 1929 and 1930. He was from Milan and had a quick wit.He was charming to every stranger we met, with a gap between his two front teeth, and a laugh that echoed through every narrow street in Rome. Vintson was a cellist who couldPractice in the church where I sing.When I was going back to Boston for my career, all he said was: “Yankee”, like it was the worst word he could think of.

I don't want to go into detail about what happened when David left, but it was 1917, a year and a half after I first met him, and the United States entered the war.The class was dismissed and he went to Europe, and

I did not go because my eyesight was very poor. In his diary, I wrote down the address in Hello and told him to remember to send me French chocolates.

I returned to Harrow, to the farm, to help my brother, who also left for Europe not long after my return, and perhaps these were my last days with David.On a dozen Tuesday night dates in Boston, I thought of him again in a youthful way: in the early morning, lying on my back listening to the birds singing, soft sheets tangled around my thighs, as I waited quietly in the kitchen The water in the kettle boils as I prune, graft, stake and string our fruit trees, as I walk by the creek listening to the frogs chirping after get off work and sit on our porch listening to the thunderstorms Clear your throat with three notes on the horizon, breathe in the scent of earth after a thunderstorm.Sometimes, as always, when I wake up, his face appears before my eyes, and I reach out my hand to touch him.I try not to think about it, but his mark has been engraved on my body, gray-blue eyes, a ring of brown around the iris, freckles on the eyelids, scars on the lips, Adam's apple as obvious as a broken bone, hisHis hair smelled like tobacco, his neck like fermented fruit.I didn't experience the guilt that some men of my time had. I just loved him, that's all.My mistake was that I thought David was just one of many firsts. I had tasted love and I was eagerly looking forward to the future. How would I know the rest of the people in my life - Alex,William, Alistair, Sam, Crawleys, Sarah, and most recently George—all later brooks after that first flood.

Summer and autumn have passed.Winter arrived and it snowed, but not like Boston.I spent months writing some crappy music, drinking a lot of coffee, and taking countless walks.I imagined that life would return to its normal state, that the war would cease, and that I would return to the North, to college, to Boston, where I was sure David would return from service.

Sometimes I would visit my grandfather, who lived on the outskirts of the city in the house his father built for him and his six brothers.My father died in the orchard here a few years ago. When my brother found him, he was still holding scissors in his hand. Because of this, my mother started walking, sometimes even until late at night., my brother and I were not here, so this house seemed extremely deserted.My grandfather would sit in an armchair by the fire, summer or winter, wrapped in a blanket, and we would drink coffee and talk about the war in Europe and whether I had any news about my brother, and then he would make me sing a songsong, but he never asked me about the conservatory, he didn't like to talk about anywhere north of Kentucky, he served in the cavalry at Antietam and watched his comrades being mutilated, heNot a bad guy, he was just angry, he lost his friends and his wife, and I'm amazed now, just writing this, how much war has hit my home life.

In June 1919, David's letter arrived at the farm.The return address was Bowdoin College in Maine.It was written on the back of a piece of staff paper, with two quarter syllables on the front, arcing through the treble clef, and only one sentence:

My dear silver-voiced ally:

I hope this letter reaches you, how are you doing on the farm?For now, I'm back from a hiking trip in northern Europe, God willing, but things are getting better and better, and I got a position here at Bowdoin College, right here at Evergreen, last month, with theThe man visited the college and showed off a prototype of a newly invented phonograph.My tutor thought it would be great if I were chosen to record folk songs for the college in this northern wilderness.I can't lug this gramophone by myself - how about a walk in the woods this summer?Head north for pine needle beds and birch beer under the stars!Don't think about it, come on.

Also--do you have money?Here, there's nowhere to go around.

I turned the paper over and looked at the two syllables I could make out, a melody that touched my heart: Every letter I got from David ended up being an instruction:Zhou Jian“, he wrote it on the first morning.Then: ”Don't think about it, come on%.David gave me instructions, and I followed them.

That night, I was lying on the bed, putting the letter on my face, and I told my mother that I had got a job in Boston and that I would be leaving in a week. At that time, there would be no one to take care of this farm and this orchard.There will be overgrown weeds, and no one will lay the nets. If I can't come back for a long time, these fruits will be overripe and scattered around to rot. But I don't care. I leave as if to escape, get on the train, and go from there.Louisville to New York, New York to Boston, Boston to Portland.

I've never cared much about objective things, like broken dishes and my house being ransacked a few years ago. To be honest, I don't feel bad. What bothers me is the expense. The walls of my house are completelyUndecorated, I asked my friends to never buy me a Christmas or birthday gift, which might be considered frugal or meaningful, but that was a problem when I was younger.I used to lose things all the time, I left my coat on the church pew, I lost my textbooks, I dropped an ax on the grass, I gave away tons of toys to other children - my father's rosin violin,coin.The most unlucky thing is my dog ​​- I liked a boy at school. One day I took the puppy to his house and tied it to a tree on his lawn. I forgot about it when I came back, so IMy father also beat me.

I still have the note David left for me, the note asking me if I was going north.There is still the note left on the floor of his house, there is still the freshly rolled cigarette he left on the piano one night, there is still the matchbox from the place where we met, I did not leave behind what I leftThe statue that Winterson gave me when we were in Rome, or the gold watch that Cloris gave me for our anniversary, or the landscape paintings that Sarah painted for me, or the seascapes that Alex and I collected together on Cape Cod.Glass, but anything about David makes me like an insatiable magpie.

Standing at the Portland train station, I saw him before he saw me. I was not far away, looking at him: he was wearing a bright blue T-shirt and a dark jacket., he put his hands in his pockets and smoked a cigarette.He had grown a beard and looked thinner, his cheeks more angular, and I felt my heart race as he stretched his arms over his head, waving like an organ that didn't know it needed to fall back into place, and he used his fingers.Holding me like a gun, wanting to fire.He was surrounded by recording equipment.

We walked 100 miles from August to September 1919, and we collected a collection of ballads and tunes from the rocky coast to the endless colonnaded interior of the forest and back again.After passing through the misty swamp, the forest was filled with the sounds of frogs and moss that almost made us slip.Along the sea road, where the wind was so strong that it almost blew us over, we visited small towns and of course granite quarries and farms, where we heard better songs than ever, David alwaysThe one who introduced us and I backed away smiling.

We worked through the plan, someone's cousin probably knew someone's aunt 20 miles north, sometimes we stayed at the recording house, more often we would sleep outside, in a david tent, IIt was a clear night - just like those summer nights - and we had no tents, so we slept in the fields or under the pine trees.Our limbs were tired from the day's walking, and at night we fell into a deep sleep.

My grandfather once said: “Stories do not mean happiness”.So I don’t want to dwell too much on the first few weeks.Even though the heavy gramophone strap dug into my shoulders, the black flies left bloody marks on my neck, and my boots gave me silver-dollar-sized blisters on my heels, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier—in one way or another.Such a plain, dull, decorative way cannot be expressed further.He appears in the image: as we pass through rain-slicked Highfield, the sun emerges from the clouds, raindrops glistening in the sunlight and surrounded by singing birds.David bathed under the waterfall and then we hung out on the boulders.When the food was gone we looked for blueberries, like a gift, and we ate them all the afternoon, disgusting and happy at the same time, too full to move forward, where we took a nap until a woman called with her bootTo wake us up, that night, in the lavender twilight, he asked me to stick out my tongue, and then he also stuck out his tongue to show me that we were both purple.I thought of Harrow, the untended orchards, of the birds eating the fruit, of the weeds growing in the orchards, but I didn't care.

My job was to operate the machine: remove the wax cylinder from the paper; brush the surface; install it on the spinner; point the horn at the singer's face so he or she sings along the tube; move the stylusApply wax; turn crank slowly.Once the recording was complete, David transcribed the lyrics and notes into a booklet, along with a short interview about the characters and the origins of the song.I like the songs, but not as much as David does about them.I don’t know where the passion comes from – he didn’t grow up listening to music, unlike me and my brother.But then again, I knew very little about David’s early life—whenever I asked, he would shake his head, wave his hand like a black fly, and say he had nothing to say.All I know is that he was born in New York and he lived in London for a few years as a child because of his father's job - I don't know what his career was - and he moved to Newport before going to conservatoire.He did once mention an uncle in England who played violin and took him on a week-long trip to Ireland.Maybe that's where his collection began - now, at sixty-two, I know that most of the things we love were sown before we were ten.When I asked him what he liked about these songs, especially the ballads, he said—and I remember his words clearly—that they were the most passionate pieces of music he knew.I knew what he meant, the songs were filled with and transformed by the voices of thousands of singers, they were always the stories of people's lives.It was not like the Baroque music that I had come to love in conservatory, which was sharp, abstract, ornate, like a perfect piece of coldly shining jewelry.Folk songs are soft and delicate, and the melody alone makes people choke.The emotion in the song; nothing fancy.In the years following our collecting journey, I didn't want to sing those old songs, for obvious reasons.I turned to choral music, to solo arcades in cathedrals, which is why in 1929 I found a position in the choir in Rome.It wasn't until I lost my voice in my fifties that I discovered that the only thing I wanted to write about was American folk music, a tradition imported from Europe that kept blooming and changing into something new.By sheer chance, my writing coincided with the folk revival in New York and Boston, so my books sold well.Not beyond my comprehension, I wrote them as a kind of memorial to David without mentioning his name.Honestly, I started to fall in love with music again, the old Scots-Irish songs of my hometown and all of Appalachia, in a way that I hadn't in a long time.

Of all the recordings made during that summer of 1917, I feel we missed the best sound.I'd like an audio log of our work.The sound of a storm coming from the valley.The sound of pine branches passing overhead.The sound of eight children's wooden spoons banging against wooden plates on a table south of Augusta; crackling lard surrounds the side of flaming meat in a frying pan.I want to record David's whispers, “Holy Jesus”, as we first come to the fields where fireflies flicker; a snapping turtle's claws scrape across a table in Lincoln; in Cooper's preface, Nora Teitel and her three daughters were all eager to have their songs recorded while singing completely different songs, each Teitel trying to outdo the others until David had to flatten bothThe pots were knocked together to silence them.Love Williams of Southwick sat in the center of the kitchen, singing a modal tune while I tried to repair the gramophone, her six children and five stepchildren all sitting quietly around her until LoveWhen the second chorus was sung, the children couldn't restrain themselves and came to their mother one by one.Twelve singers, four harmonies.

I wanted to capture all the vanishing chiseled sounds, the vibrations that had been released into the world, but had never been on the tubes and needles of the gramophone, never been waxed.I also want a recording of the voice from years ago: the first time David said his name to me in a bar.David asked me to come to his apartment.Asked me late one night if he should go to war, I said yes because I thought that was what he wanted to hear.The history of sound is being lost every day.I started imagining the earth as a wax cylinder and the sun as a needle, placed on the earth, depicting the music of the day - the sounds of people arguing, cooking, laughing, singing, moaning, crying, flirting.After that, a silent sweep of millions of sleeping people swept over the earth like static electricity.

As the weeks went by, I noticed a darker side of David that I thought he tried hard to hide.His hands were shaking a little. He had a hard time rolling a cigarette several times. When I woke up, I saw him standing not far from us. He was like a stone pillar under the moonlight, like an ancient stone pillar.Like in the ruins.As we sang on the road from town to town, he would stop in the middle of a section and repeat the last line, looking for the next line.Once I walked up behind him quietly, and he jumped up as if he'd been electrocuted.I think it was war, as it was for so many people.

One day, when he no longer wanted to be silent, I asked him if he had shot someone, and he just raised his hands in the air without answering.

At the end of August, a week before David was to return to teach at the college, we had only three wax cylinders left and were on our way to a house near a coastal town near a granite quarry.We found the house of John, who was the cousin of a woman named Mary William. Mary said he had a bunch of songs in his head and his wife Rosemary was the best cook for a hundred miles and she would arrange everything.appropriate.

Some kids from town took us to the end of a long dirt road. It was a very cold summer night, and the wind from a few months ago had chilled the land.The fog we'd seen over the water all day had lifted and the house was nestled in the woods or rather a shack, a corrugated metal roof made of clapboards with dozens of antlers nailed to the outside,A dog, chained to a stake in a muddy yard, was suddenly awakened and ran toward us, barking.In the end, because the chain was very tight, he could only swing back slowly. A flock of black birds flew up from the rain-soaked trees around the house, and then disappeared in the woods further away. I had an ominous premonition.

David knocked on the door, but there was no answer, so he wandered around the house and then into the woods.

“let's go”.I said to him when he came back.When I think about that house now, I seem to remember that it didn't have any windows.

The dog kept barking, pulling at the chain, he kept jumping, letting himself be pulled until he couldn't breathe, panting, a giant dog, I think a bear dog, it was black and brown, its chest was white, the ears look like they have been cropped.

"Shut up," David yelled at the dogs, "Let's wait until they come back," he said, turning and staring at the road. "I don't think we can keep going. I feel terrible."

We are very thirsty and we have no water, so we wait here.“

He put down his backpack and sat on the steps in front of the door. He patted his pockets and took out tobacco. Then he rolled a cigarette. He closed his eyes and leaned against the door to rest.

I carefully placed the recorder on the ground and sat next to him.

Then, for the first time since knowing each other, he asked me if I thought we would ever see each other again after this trip.

I said, I hope to meet again.

He asked if he was worried about what we were doing.

I said no because I never thought about it.

He rubbed his head against the door as if he was getting a massage.Dirty beads of sweat beaded on his forehead, and he leaned forward with his legs together on his chest, resting his chin on his knees and closing his eyes as if in prayer.

”I envy you“, he said.

The dog kept barking and the leash jingled, and I was about to ask him what he was going to do when he yelled: ”Shut up“ at the dog, then got up and strode towards it.

As David walked into it, the dog raised his head on his hind legs, the tight leash forcing him upright like an ax about to fall.

”What are you doing?“I said: ”Be careful!“

David stretched out his hand and approached slowly.The dog was suffocated by its collar.David stood looking at it, only a foot away, and flicked the cigarette to the dog's feet.

Then a man shouted from the edge of the forest, ”Hey!“

I jumped up.David turned around.The dog became quiet.

The man had a long beard, mostly white but with black streaks.He carried a long pole over his shoulder with a dead rabbit hanging from it.He held a gun in one hand.

”What on earth are you doing?“ he said, lowering the pole and raising the gun with both hands.

”Hello!% David said cheerfully, as if no gun was pointed at him.“I'm David Ashton and this is Lionel Worthing.Are we friends with your cousin Mary Conway?”

“Mary.” John Winslow said.“Um?” He put the gun at his side and picked up the cane with the rabbit tied to it.

“You must be John, ”David said.“We are collecting songs, Mary said how many do you have?”

“Not interested, ”John said.I noticed that he came toward us in the slow, purposeful way of some lumberjacks.It's like he senses the length of the day more than the rest of us, and the need to rush.

“It just takes a little time, ”David said.“Can I ask where you learned the song?”

“Not interested, ”he said again, leaning the pole against the side of the house.The rabbits—there were three of them—must have been recently killed.Blood dripped from a rabbit's mouth and slapped against the dead leaves.

“Mary said your family were from the west of Ireland?” David said.

John didn't answer.Pulling a knife from his belt, he chopped the rabbits from the pole and laid them side by side on the porch.

“Which town?” David asked.“I stayed there for a while, on my way back.That's where I first learned "The Shepherd's Song".Maybe you know?"

”Look now, “John said, staring at David for the first time.I saw that one of his eyes was filled with blood, which I thought was coming from a blood vessel in the eye.His cheeks were sunken.His whole face twitched, tensed, and unclenched.”I'm not interested.I told you once.I told you again.I don't mean to be rude, here.I see you've come a long way, if you're coming from Mary.Come back later, maybe a little later.A week or two, I can help you then.“

I think David's gift for persuasion was simply that if he wanted something, he couldn't stop pursuing it.If not for Mary's impassioned suggestion to record John, and the fact that we wouldn't be near his house for a week, I think David would have called it a day.John didn't seem like the others, who always said no at first out of shyness or suspicion.Instead, he refused in a final, ruthless way.With his back to us, he cut open a rabbit with a knife and began to rip off the fur.

”Is your wife here?“ David said.”Maybe she likes to sing?rosemary?“

The man turned to David, knife in hand and covered in blood.Behind him, the rabbit's skin hung from its hind feet.

”Or water, “I said.”We've run out of water.Can you give me some water?“

He sighed and kicked the ground.

”I'm a Christian,“he said.He placed the knife on the porch and shuffled up the stairs.Opening the door, sunlight poured into the room, illuminating a woman's body lying flat on the table in the center of the room.When he walked to the back, toward the kitchen, he didn't close the door.The woman's skirt fell off the table like a tablecloth.The hem billowed in the wind coming in through the door.She wore a bouquet of flowers on her chest.David and I didn't talk because we both just kept looking.I turned and stared into the woods when I heard John turn off the water.

He came out with two wooden cups.

”Thirsty musicians, “he said.

”Thank you, “I said.I avoid leaving blood stains on the rim of the cup.

He picked up the knife and continued skinning the rabbit, finally pulling the skin off the feet.When he threw it up the stairs, it landed wet.

”Is this what you do, go ask people to sing in a pipe?“

”Um,“ David stammered.”Yes, I like it.But he he's not.“ He pointed at me.”This is a singer.He might have the best voice in New England.“

”is that so?“ said John.Stick the knife into the porch so it stands upright.With his hands, he tore off the skin of the second rabbit.”bring it on.Then sing us a song.“

The water tasted metallic and bitter.

”I don't know what to sing, “I said.My mind was still filled with the image of the woman on the table.

John started working on another rabbit.”I'm sure you can think of one, %he said.

The first song that comes to mind is Lord Randall, one of David's favorite songs.He taught me that on the rare mornings we lay in bed in his apartment, the ones he didn't leave before I woke up.

“Oh, Lord Randall, my boy, where have you been?” I sing.I closed my eyes, tasted the burnt butter, and saw a light green color.“Where have you been, my handsome young man?”

“Oh my God,”I heard John say from somewhere a hundred miles away.Then I realized I hadn’t sung the entire journey.

“I went to Greenwood.Mom, make my bed quickly.

Because I was tired from hunting and wanted to lie down.

"My boy, Lord Randall, what did you find there?

What brings you, my handsome young man?”

“Oh, I met my true love.Mom, make my bed quickly,

Because I was tired from hunting and wanted to lie down.

The ballad is long and repetitive, with the mother training her son with questions, trying to figure out why he feels so sick and tired.He told her that his lover had cooked him fried eels for dinner and that when the dogs ate his scraps, they all died.His mother told him that he had been poisoned.He agreed and again asked her to make his bed so that he too could lie down and die.He told her that he would leave the family's cows to her, the gold and silver to his sister, and the house and property to his brother.The mother then asked: "My son, Lord Randall, what have you left for your true love? What have you left for your true love, my handsome young man?" He replied,

”I left her string on your apple tree so that she

Hang on it.Mom, make my bed quickly,

Because she poisoned me, I would rather lie down.“

When I finished and opened my eyes, both John and David were looking at the ground.The sky appears purple.

”I'm sorry for your loss,“ David said to John at the time.

”Thank you for saying that, “John said.

David looked at me.” is pretty good at choosing songs, “ he said.”Poison in love.“ His arms threaded through the straps of his backpack.”I don't think you'll always remember that.“ He lifted his backpack and placed it on his shoulders.”The strange thing is that he calls her his true love until the end.His murderer.“ Then he turned away and walked down the road, past the silent dogs, without waiting for me.No goodbyes or thanks were said, as he usually did to our hosts.

Even though John was upset about David's sudden departure, he didn't show it.

”A beautiful song, boy, “he said.”I also know this song.However, you adapted the ending.“

”Yeah?“ I just sang what David taught me.

”The ending is usually, "I left her, leaving behind fire and hell.“ Not apple trees and rope.I think I like your version better.A little milder."

”Thank you,“ I said, walking over to the gramophone and putting it on my back.

His whole body was moving, as if what he was about to say was stuck in his throat.”Good luck to you, boy.%

Another cold wind blew through the woods, as if August had passed.

At the Portland train station, I told David I could stay in Maine a little longer and help him catalog the recordings.If he needed help, I could find an apartment near campus and stay there until the fall semester.But I should be more direct.This time, I should be the one showing him the way.If he didn't live in Maine, I could have told him to come to Boston with me.Maybe things will get better.Instead, he shook his head for reasons I later learned and said we would collect songs again next summer.He told me we would record it in one session.

September through December is the busiest time of year for Kentucky orchards.David didn't respond to a letter from me during that time, so in January I wrote to the Bowdoin Music Department.I explained that I was David's research assistant and a conservatory graduate, and that I had been on the song-collecting tour with him last summer.I asked if he could send me his address because I might have made a mistake and there were some files I wanted to share?Lies like that.

A few weeks later I received a very kind reply.The department chair wrote that he regretted being the one to deliver the news of David's death in the fall of 1919.He went on to say that he was sorry to say that he had no idea what gramophone I was referring to - David's job had been to teach music composition, not ethnomusicology, and the college had not sponsored a song collection trip.I'm sorry I can't be of more help, he wrote.If I find the gramophone you mentioned, I will be sure to deliver it to you in the same way you left it.

I folded the letter and walked outside toward the orchard, then realized I didn't want to go to the orchard, so I walked to the blue gazebo, but that was

Not where I want to be.I ended up at my grandfather’s house, a few miles out of town.We had tea.He showed me a new trick his dog had learned - holding a stick against his nose.I didn't tell him about the letter.He said I was in a daze and asked me if I was drunk. When I said no, he poured me a glass of whiskey and said, "Then you can get drunk."“ I slept at his house that night and several more nights after that.

In follow-up correspondence with the hospital director, I discovered that David had a fiancée and that he had been engaged the spring before our trip.

After writing the above part, several days have passed.Yesterday I called a friend at Harvard's Peabody Museum who I knew had access to a gramophone.He asked me to come over because the thing was too heavy to haul to my house and he wasn't sure he could get permission to take it out of the museum.

I walked the five blocks to the museum with the box containing the wax cylinder and met him at the door.He leads me past the new bird collection, past skeletons and glass flowers, and into the back office.

”I haven't used one of these since I was a kid,“ he said, sliding the dust sheet off the gramophone.

He helped me install the first wax cylinder on the spinner.He hooked the tube onto the base of the stylus and placed the stylus on the cylinder.Put your hand on the crank and turn it.What came from the speakers was the voice of a man from 50 years ago. He was born in a seaside town north of Portland. He sang a song that was as clear and unforgettable as the first time he heard it.folk songs.

The end of each cylinder was marked with the name of the singer and the date of recording, which is why my eyes lingered on the last box: October 20, 1919 - the one I said goodbye to David at the train station.The date after the month.

”Let's hear this“.I said, pointing to the wax cylinder.

”Hello, Leon.“David's deep voice came from the room.

My heart ached, as if I had been kicked.Those unforgettable things are just like when I was in a car accident a few years ago, which made the blood boil in my thighs, and the stinging pain made my thighs tremble.

The metal horn of this gramophone pierced the silence, and I sank deeply into the chair.

”are you okay?“my friend asked.

I smiled and nodded.

”This summer, thank you“.David said.this comes from

The sound of 50 years ago.”I'm sorry about last year.I know that I was a little different then than when we first met.Something happened, but I couldn't change it.In some places, decay is inevitable.

The extended silence seemed to be forbidden. He seemed to be thinking, and the silence seemed to be in the key of G.

"I couldn't see around me," David said. "The horizon kept going at its own speed."

More silence, then he began to hum.

“What is he singing?”my friend asked.

“《Deadly Winter Night》”.I said.

I closed my eyes and leaned deeper into the chair.

One leaves towards the east and the other extends towards the west.”David sang in his deep baritone: “ Deep in the roots of the tree, there are two still figures.”

I tasted salt and tobacco, saw an indigo circle turn into a deep orange stick, then suddenly turned into a black dot, filling my mouth with the taste of a moist gem.

I don’t know what I expected to hear or what I wanted to hear, but a famous story about the phonograph came to mind. The phonograph was Edison’s only machine that was used as soon as he invented it. He proposed that the stylus vibrated on the surface.concept and had engineers simulate this and it was implemented the first time.It was it—its austere materiality, those hair-thin slits created by David's voice—that I focused on him, looking at the skin-colored cylinders on the spinner. Edison didn't think he was going to beFor music, he imagined what David did: record a message by placing it in front of a dying man to hear his last words, or record a baby's teeth and then record him twenty years laterVoice, then a voice of old age.This way you can have your entire life in one artifact.

He will be a comfort to those who are alive, but it is not a comfort, he is only a reminder of the things I thought I had let go of, that I should have left in the train station in Portland, or forcedHe went back to Boston with me.He just reminded me that I still truly loved David, that my feelings for George and Crowleys were thoughtful, and that he was so insignificant compared to David's voice that was engraved in my bones.How will I let go?A definite grief, not sentimentality, not sadness, but the sudden and obvious fact that my life was an inch shorter than it was.When I was 20, the best years of my life, walking to the museum with my wax cylinder, I thought I might comfort myself, soothe my grief, by flipping through the sonic memoirs of that summer, listening to Mary Conway or the Teitels.The sound would close the wound, just as Cloris and I met in Harvard Square after we broke up, and I was happy that what might turn into a lasting friendship was like George, who regularly sent me messages about his life in Savannah., he just wanted to say thank you for the days he spent with me.But this gramophone reminded me that I was missing something I didn't know was part of David, that real life.He was so ridiculously short, only two months old, and those memories of fireflies and skinny-dipping under waterfalls seemed to leave nothing behind, but they left a wonderful and lasting impression on the film of contentment I had built up over the years.A long gap - a happy family, a successful career, good neighbors, good friendships, a wasted life. This may be why people started using phonographs to record music: why listen to the one you loved who is dead?human voice.

The music stopped and so did the needle.

“Do you want to hear anything else?”my friend asked as it removed the cylinder and wrapped it in paper.

“Is there any one that is more special?” He rotated the cylinders and consulted the labels.

Even though I was breathless, I wanted to hear more, like a dog gnawing at a bone until it reaches the marrow.

“Then let's listen to it from the first one.”I said.

I looked out the window at the street, still fluffy white bubbles on the sidewalk, looking for a place to stay.

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