The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations (23 page)

“That’s crazy!”

Under the circumstances, all I could do was accept the inevitable and go back to China. Before I did, I wanted to give a concert to thank everyone who had helped me. The next evening, the small hall where I was set to play was overflowing with people. News of my predicament had spread across town. At the end of the concert, my friends came to say good-bye, each one trying to think of a way to help me. Thom and Gregg were there as well, and they took me aside.

“Xiao-Mei, we’ve thought it over. If you want, you could marry one of us. It would be a marriage of convenience, but it would allow you to remain in the States. You just have to choose which one of us you prefer. Think it over and tell us what you want to do.”

It took me a long time to decide. I was caught in a bind: on the one hand, there was China, my anxiety about the future, and the shame of having to confess my failure to my family. On the other hand, there was a marriage that was a lie, a farce, and the risk of throwing in my lot with someone I barely knew. Finally, fear and shame won out. I went to my friends’ house and accepted their offer.

“All right, which one of us do you want to marry?”

What a question! How do you decide such a thing? My selection criteria were not those of other women. Since Gregg had a family name that I just couldn’t seem to pronounce, by process of elimination, I set my heart on Thom. Neither of them complained.

“All right then,” was all that Thom said. “Let’s start immediately. There isn’t a moment to lose.”

He was right; for our marriage to seem credible in the eyes of the immigration authorities, we had to pay attention to every detail. Our first concern was about the minister who would be performing the ceremony. The simplest thing to do was to explain the situation to him. As he listened to us carefully, he looked at me—what was he thinking? As we were leaving, he drew me aside for a few seconds:

“I know what you must be feeling. But rest assured. In fact, what you two are doing is an act in support of freedom.

For this reason, it will be the finest wedding I’ve ever presided over.”

But neither he nor Thom could allay my fears. The night before the ceremony, I panicked, and it was terrible. All of a sudden, I saw myself as I really was: alone in a little American town, far from my family and my country, without a piano, without a visa, and about to take the name of a man with whom I would never start a family—all in order to deceive the authorities of a country that had taken me in. Beijing, Zhangjiakou, Hong Kong, Los Angeles—everything passed before my eyes. I was thirty-three years old with only a diploma from the New England Conservatory to my name. I had only ever given a few informal concerts. None of this made sense. The next morning, when Thom came to get me, I barely had the courage to go with him.

But there was a surprise waiting for me at the church. Thom’s and Gregg’s families were there, along with countless friends and total strangers who had heard about my situation. They had all turned out to “lie on my behalf,” their arms full of gifts, which could be used as hard evidence of the legitimacy of our marriage. I was overwhelmed, but also galvanized.

We entered the church to the strains of Fauré’s
Requiem,
which I had chosen for the occasion. As we approached the nave, I looked at the faces of those present: their eyes were wet with tears. During the ceremony, the minister chose the most tactful and apt words. Then he gave us his blessing before we exited the church to the sound of
In Paradisum,
also from Fauré’s
Requiem
. The guests cried so much you’d have thought it was a funeral! Thankfully, the evening that followed was a great deal more festive, thanks to several excellent bottles of wine and a huge wedding cake in the shape of a grand piano.

The first step had been completed, but the biggest challenge still lay ahead: the Immigration and Naturalization Service interview. Our union, it must be said, had all the signs of a marriage of convenience. The lawyer who was advising us gave us advance warning: the test was really tough. We would be placed in separate rooms, and we would have to answer the same questions in an identical way. I couldn’t trip up on anything, including the brand of Thom’s shirts! I prepared for the test, learning “the man of my life’s” biography down to the last detail.

On the day of the interview, Thom was even more nervous than I was. I sensed that he, too, feared the worse. But he sailed through without a single error. In fact, it was on my side that we came close to disaster, and all because of one little mistake. The name of the Unitarian Church where we were married escaped me, and when the official asked me about it, I innocently told him that I had married Thom at the Vegetarian Church! But his interest in the Vegetarian Church didn’t go much further than that; he jotted down my answer without much of a reaction.

We had made it through! I would be able to get my green card, stay in the US, and start my career. Little by little, I came up for air. After all, weren’t marriages of convenience also a part of the story of human beings who sought to rescue one another? Was it really so crazy? In its own way, wasn’t it an act of love?

That was when I received a letter from my father.

My mother and I exchanged letters every week, but my father had only written me once, a short time after my arrival in Los Angeles. I had been extremely touched by his letter. He told me that he regretted not having a son, but that, through what he had witnessed of my courage and my ability to withstand hardships—to him typically masculine qualities—it was as if he now indeed had one.

I wasn’t hurt by the silence that followed. I knew that my father considered all correspondence to be needless. One should never, ever leave a trace.

I was thus very surprised one day to find in my mailbox a letter in his handwriting.

Xiao-Mei,

Since the last time I wrote, I have not felt the need to share my news with you. I understand from your regular correspondence with your mother that everything is going well. I also understand what “everything going well” means: I imagine that your life can’t always be easy. I can’t completely know, here in Beijing, exactly what you are doing, but I have faith in you. I know you.

As for me, now that I am over sixty, I have begun to comprehend the secret of the Tao.

Thanks to a friend who remembered my knowledge of ancient languages, I have had the chance to take part in a research group. This group is responsible for editing texts from sacred Tibetan Buddhist books, the
Da zang jing.
As soon as I began reading these texts, I felt that I had finally discovered my life’s purpose. Until now, my life has been a disappointment. Although innocent, I’ve been subjected to many trials and humiliations.

Thanks to my work on these texts, I have understood many things. The need to rise above the day-to-day, to not become distracted by worldly things and money, to not seek professional success or recognition. You must be yourself. And as one nears the secret of the Tao, one discovers the truth.

To reach it is part of one’s destiny. If you have upheld what is good during the course of your life, it will be given to you. If this does not occur, it is because you have not suffered enough and you must continue searching. But my intention is not to try and convince you. One day, I am sure that you, too, will be given the chance to experience this truth.

Please know that I don’t have any regrets and that I am now very contented.

Father.

I read the letter over a number of times, with a growing sense of confusion. The man who had written it bore little resemblance to the one I had known as a child—cold, strict, and often violent.

However, the more I read it, the more I sensed in it—over and above the mystery it represented for me personally—a gentle invitation. An invitation to discover, during my exile, the wisdom of the great Chinese philosophers. To seek the truth in their reflections by deepening my knowledge of their writings. From far away, from across the ocean, my father was taking me by the hand. I wanted to follow him, in order to be with him for a moment. And also to discover this sense of serenity. If my father, the most pessimistic, resigned, and depressive of men, could find this inner peace—to such an extent that he wanted to write to me about it—there was no reason why I couldn’t experience this grace as well.

From then on, I set aside time to meditate and to study the great seminal texts of Chinese philosophy. Little by little, without knowing it, I began to undergo a change. I experienced far more than a connection with my father, or a sense of reconciliation with someone whom I had hurt. I discovered that, in turn, I was calmer and more peaceful.

By constantly practicing, without casting about or forcing the matter, insight into life and how things worked emerged without my conscious awareness of it. This is the essence of Chinese philosophy: something that can be experienced without always needing to be explained. The Chinese path to understanding is quite different from that taken by Westerners. It is more intuitive, less strictly rational. The Chinese believe that many things do not need explanation because they are natural phenomena. Unlike their Western counterparts, who see understanding as a prerequisite to practice, Chinese people see practice as one way to achieve understanding. They are skeptical about any single-minded search for an ideal or a truth. The life of the great philosopher Shijiamoni offers a perfect example of this. For years, he sought the meaning of life, but in vain. One day, he renounced his quest, and the meaning of life appeared to him in all its clarity.

I think about my experience with Western music. My limited language skills mean that I cannot discuss it as well as others. I often feel hindered by my nationality; I sense, in the gaze of others, unspoken doubts about my abilities as a foreigner to truly understand Bach and Beethoven. To be sure that I am on the right track, as soon as I begin to work on a piece, I make it a point to listen to every recording of it available. It would be unthinkable for me to play a Beethoven sonata without first checking how Kempff interpreted it, or take on a composition by Chopin without Rubinstein’s imprimatur. Working with Gabriel Chodos only heightened this fear in me; for him, approaching a work structurally, through a process of analysis—or even dissection—was paramount. His approach to music was, like his idol, the writer Thomas Mann, fundamentally intellectual.

If, however, in Chinese philosophy, the truth can be attained as much through committed practice as through explanation, why should it be any different when dealing with the truth of music?

Unconsciously, these reflections brought about a change in how I approach a musical work. Once I have analyzed the entire piece, I play it evenly and attentively; I never force it or try to grasp its meaning too quickly. I do this until I experience love for each passage and note, until I reach a state of natural and intuitive understanding.

Using this method, you understand that the first layer of a work to be uncovered is the tempo. By living with a piece, by not attempting to impose yourself in any way, you begin to breathe with it. One day, completely naturally, a tempo emerges, one that feels organically right. If you deviate from this revealed truth, you feel uncomfortable.

This largely has to do with the connections that exist between breathing and life, but also with those between tempo and thought.

If you have a great deal to say, in life or in music, you must take the time to express it. The beauties of a score must be brought out, they must be made to spring forth. The composer wrote them for that very reason: to be heard. And yet, there are limits. There is a risk that the audience will cease to pay attention, that they will become lost in the details without comprehending the whole—and all because the tempo is too slow for their thinking process. The reason is clear: the right tempo is not merely the one with which you breathe naturally, it is also the pace that allows thought to encompass both the forest and the trees.

But this is only the initial stage, the elemental stage of grasping a work. The hardest part—the search for meaning—is yet to come. When you have the meaning, you have the solution to every problem involving technique. The search for the meaning of a work is a quest for the essential. If a run of sixteenth notes needs to be played very quickly, obviously there are some notes that matter more than others. When you have identified them, you know how to play the run. Perhaps the word
thrust
—with its twin meanings of “line of reasoning” and “forward motion”—best conveys the concept I am attempting to describe.

It is increasingly clear to me that the thrust (line of reasoning or meaning) of a work is linked to its thrust (forward motion or direction). That the music—propelled forward and shaped by the life-giving bass notes—advances horizontally, and that this horizontality ultimately takes precedence over its verticality. This is not to say that we should reject the critical element of verticality and harmony when approaching a piece. But it is the bass that forms the pulse of the work. No, what I find even more striking is the need to look beyond the bar-lines in one’s quest for the musical line, the work’s progression. Gabriel Chodos made me work for months on musical phrasing. Over time, these phrases, these lines, are overlaid with concepts of progression, flow, movement, and transformation—ideas that find an echo in Chinese philosophy.

I also learned, during this same period, not to struggle with my piano. It is an eternal friend, regardless of external events and the day’s fugitive moods. This in turn allows me to better explore its infinite resources, to get closer to the attack and the sonority that I am seeking. A story by Zhuangzi, “The Dexterous Butcher,” really opened my eyes in this regard. In the story, Prince Wen Hui is admiring the skill with which a butcher is carving up an ox. The prince inquires about his technique, and the butcher answers:

“What I have wished for is Tao, far superior to technique. When I first dissected oxen, what I saw was nothing less than the whole ox. After three years, I no longer saw the whole ox. And now, I let my intuition, not my eyesight, lead the way […]. A good butcher changes his knife every year; he uses it to cut muscles. An ordinary butcher changes his knife every month; he uses it to cut bones. I have used the same knife for nineteen years.”

Now I can enter into music with greater ease. Many wise men retreat to the silence of the mountains, away from everything, in order to meditate. Before playing a work, I have discovered I need to take the same approach: to be peaceful, to empty my mind.

The Chinese are well acquainted with this way of seeing things; they often use the image of water to illustrate it. To see down to the bottom of a lake, the water must be calm and still. The calmer the water, the farther down one can see. The exact same thing is true for the mind—the more tranquil and detached one is, the greater the depths one can plumb.

Increasingly, I understand that it is precisely by following this path of self-effacement and emptiness that one attains the truth of a musical work. Without attempting to impose one’s will, without forcing something on the listener. Without struggling with the self. By disappearing behind the composer.

In meditating on the words of Laozi, I began to understand how he was able to express the essential nature of emptiness better than anyone, particularly in this passage, to which I endlessly return:

Little by little, without even being aware of it, I began to apply this method to every musical work that I approached and to works that I took up anew. Each day, I would experience two great moments of happiness. The first was during my daily meditation session. The second was during what I will call my “piano meditation.” According to Chinese philosophy, work—even work without purpose—is one of the greatest virtues, and this was exactly what I was seeking when I was seated at the piano. I worked, and worked tirelessly, with no other goal than the truth of the music. Since I was unable to build a career at that time, I had no professional obligations—no programs to prepare for upcoming concerts, no problematic dates in my agenda. I worked in the way I wanted, and for as long as I wanted, and this piano meditation brought me the same sense of fullness as my morning mediation sessions.

Looking back, I now see that those years of so much hardship were, in fact, a period of great privilege. How many pianists, once they are over thirty and often involved in a career, still have the time to work at their piano, strictly for their own pleasure, with no particular goal in mind? How many have the opportunity to seek the essence of a work that they would never consider playing in public? As I see it, in life it is important to know how to work, without any thought of recompense. During my meditations at the piano, I never imagined that I would perform real concerts before a real audience, or that I would make real recordings. Sometimes in life, work for work’s sake can reap the greatest benefit.