昆西四季

再看《昆西四季》，被片中更多的片段打动。对最近一段时间的自己启发很大，记录于此。

·战争的沉默

I mean, there’s one specific kind of silence which I personally struggled with, which is the idea of not talking to one’s children about such... possibly the inability to hand this on. You know, we talk a lot about handing experience on, “standing on each other’s shoulders”, and so the idea of your experience kind of being cauterized, and not handing it on to your children, such as my father’s generation. That silence is what I’m talking about.… And I suppose that they would say, “well, we fought so that we wouldn’t have to talk to our children about it, we fought so that our children wouldn’t know. But, “history cannot have its tongue cut out.”It doesn’t really work, that silence, because the curiosity and the need to know is still there. And they need to learn. It is not the going into battle that I find most difficult to imagine, it is coming back from battle.

The resistance of the word “inconsequential”. “To protest is to refuse being reduced to a zero and to an enforced silence. Our protests by building a barricade, taking up arms, going on a hunger strike, linking arms, shouting ,and writing, in order to save the present moment, whatever the future holds.”

·叙事，信息，与现代性

And each lion was lion, each ox was ox.

For me, a storyteller is like a passer. I mean that’s very like somebody gets contraband across the frontier. I mean, stories come to you all the time, if you listen if you listen, if you listen.

One of the features of our time is that people worship ideas. And objects, but ideas particularly. Quite arbitrary, without really understanding their meaning. I mean, take modern art. The idea of modernity, this is the criteria by which people judge things without really enquiring what makes things modern, if the thing is really modern.

I think the idea of information is power, that just more information informs a public has been disproved, right? I mean that is to say that the war crimes of the Bush administration or whatever, are just there in plain sight. But it was kind of like when you have such of this excess of information that isn’t organized, it just all becomes a kind of noise... And people are bored like there is too much of it.

In the monopolistic religions, there is this notion of Heaven and Hell. Different interpretations but these two categories. And it’s worth asking the question are the following: It’s in Hell where solidarity is important, not in Heaven, isn’t it?

The two things about John’s work that will always make me think of him as a political artist that really matters now, is that While there is a commitment-an unwavering commitment to a recognition of the hell that surrounds us and the need for solidarity, there is also an openness and attention to the sensual world that never goes away. It isn’t just baleful, it isn’t just suffering or despairing that even though it can lead to more suffering in a certain way, there is a commitment, a total commitment to being alive to the possibility of contingency and experience in the moment. The other thing is , even though there’s a commitment to talking about, preserving or memorializing or at least having a memory of modes of life and experience that have passed away, there is no nostalgia. And that, to me, is a big difference between the possibility of a kind of left storytelling and the Tea Party dressing up with historically inaccurate Revolutionary costumes. So that there’s a commitment to the possibilities of the world before us, in a sensory, sensual, libidinal, neurotic way, ’cause those energies have to be harnessed for the political. And there’s a commitment to memory and having a relationship to the dead that never degenerates into the seduction of nostalgia.

·乡村

Just as with the Internet and web, people live in an endlessly extensive present moment, with collections of the present absolutely unimaginable a little while ago. I mean, enormous extension, positive and negative in this way. But it is of the instant, but it’s as if were geographic and spatial. In the contry, and in a village like Quincy, that extension is vertical, and it’s to do with time. And that’s where the dead take prop. And the idea of children is not only all the natural reasons, but also a question of that continuity, that vertical continuity.

Interesting that for a peasant, the way he reads the landscape is completely different than ours, in the sense that what we would find, like a beautiful landscape, he could find beautiful equally, but for other reasons. That’s to say, the beauty would come from the value of the work that has been put into that landscape, which has shaped that landscape. Detail reveals something of the work done of it.

In the country where you are so open, and some kind of horizon is always there, you’re never shut in. Because you are open, every season has its particularities, some of which you like. In other words, a season isn’t something that befalls you, it is something that you inhabit.

在群里种草的传记片，不同的拍摄班底用散文诗般的短片桥接John Berger的生命片段。

冬天的木屋内，他与同日出生的Tilda在昏暗的吊灯下削着苹果聊起各自的父亲，战争和历史的沉默。想起之前看《四个春天》，过场间穿插着的也是枯枝和鸟，屋檐和猫，远山未融的雪和雾。乡下的农场里，年轻人向他问起政治和暴动，他说，十岁的牛已经年老，二十年寿命的马也已经高龄，可对于农民而言，死去的总被新生的不断替代，十年寿命的羊总是生生不息，所以羊群的寿命总比牧羊犬长久。九十分钟的电影定格在驾驶摩托逐渐远去的背影里。

大概生命总是轮回，“如果你将来到这个世界，那你最好出生七次。一次在着火的房子，一次在结冰的洪水，一次在疯狂的精神病院，一次在成熟的麦田，一次在荒无人烟的修道院，一次置身于猪圈的猪群间。六个婴儿都在啼哭，可你必须成为第七人。当你为生存而战时，让你的敌人看到这七个人。一个周日远离工作，一个周一开始工作，一个无偿教书，一个通过溺水学会游泳，一个做森林的种子，一个受自然先祖的庇护，但仅有这些手段还不够，你必须是那第七个人…。”

btw，认识他的时候才知道，某个冬天里他已经动身去了方舟，希望仍路上的我们在生活里也能保持炙热和真实，一起庆祝每个值得坦荡的日子。

片子是关于John Berger的(《观看之道》的作者)。看完之后，忽然想起了西方式的知识分子的感觉，大家会坐在一起认真讨论“现代性”，人们在当代失去了什么。他用一字一顿的方式用语言描述着他想要描述之物，开始我会觉得这是“理性”的（而摒弃了感性的觉知），但看到后面，觉得他是在用一种传统的“英国式”的笨拙的理性方式在达致他认知的深处。那种欧洲式的相互尊重，讨论的感觉真好啊。

最后一幕是他教一个来自英国城市的女孩骑摩托车，女孩依然带着某种腔调，尽管她对学机车这一经历显得很期待，但她和John Berger试图通过这一方式传达乡村physical生活之体验的意图不在一个层面上。John Berger是从城市来，想要在乡村寻找自己的lost hometown的一代，他在乡村找到了他hometown的一部分（尽管那也许有些基于知识分子对于乡村生活的想象），但这一感悟/经验依然无法传至下一代，如同他父亲对于战争的经历无法传递给他。

想起来，欧洲从几百年前便已脱离了乡村生活开始工业化，人们大多是lost hometown的状态的吧，只是有的人会找寻有的人只是活着。那样的乡村的感觉，我在想，和中国的乡村的感觉有什么不同吗？也许本质上没有，但基于不同的语境/想象。

●所有照片都是造访的一种方式，或是缺席的一种表达。

●我觉得我们好像前世就认识或共事过，约好在此世相遇，在同一车站下车，但没有商量好时间。

●每头狮子既属于狮群又独立存在，每头牛归于牛类又个性分明。动物被支配同时也被崇拜，这可能是首个存在主义二元论。

●不确定感和希望有关联。

●纵向的连续性：我们生活在一个可以无限延展的时代，但在昆西小镇，这种延展是纵向的，尽头是死亡。

●只要你懂得倾听，故事会不断向你涌来。

● 很简单地，当你踩下油门，你的机车飞驰出去。顺着你的视线望去，每当遇到障碍物，找到这根线，你会知道你要去向哪里。

1 Ways of Listening 约翰·伯格去世后，《昆西四季》成为了他最后的记录。这部纪录片和作家本身都涉及了太宽泛的议题，难以真正去评论它。更何况他似乎是老套过时了，青年们不再认为做他的粉丝是一件”高级”的事，反倒是女演员蒂尔达成为了影片的卖点。 目前看到的评论都是比较通俗稳妥的做法：根据影片中出现的线索寻找到相应的伯格的书籍和思想，譬如第一部分Ways of Listening显然对应Ways of Seeing，第二部分Spring当中的动物则是Why Look at Animals？事实上影片中随处可见的美妙句子，在官方网站上都已作整理，满满当当的约翰伯格语录集。 这样的纪录片难免学究气，观众也不免掉书袋，但其实影片呈现了一个更为世俗、脱离了艺术评论家身份的老年约翰·伯格。 晚年的伯格，可以从Bento’s Sketchbook (《班托的素描簿》)读出。这是伯格生前写的最后一本书，Bento是斯宾诺莎的名，斯宾诺莎除了做哲学之外也喜好绘画，然而流传下来的著作中独缺素描簿。伯格一直惦念这本素描簿，晚年时他以隔时空想象对话，作出这一本与斯宾诺莎”合作”的素描簿。 我在意于Tilda提及此书时说：the imagined reverie of Benedic Spinoza, lens grinder, philosopher, and fellow radical humanist. And this particular book feels so personal, so completely, roundly about John and the way his mind works that it contributes him to anyone who reads it. ——磨镜片的人之后才是哲学家，相信斯宾诺莎和伯格在身份认同中都会优先选择前者。 《昆西四季》的题目揭示了最重要的地点：法国阿尔卑斯山脚的小村庄昆西，伯格自1973年起一直”隐居”于此。影片当中对于昆西风光的描绘给观众提供的代入感多是优美惬意，而我们可以回过头在《班托的素描簿》里寻找伯格在昆西时的心境。 伯格讲了一个很俗套的故事。他去图书馆借陀思妥耶夫斯基的《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》，然而馆藏的两本都被借走了。他在图书馆里想着：这个人口六万的郊区图书馆，有四千人是图书馆会员，每人每次可以借走四本书。那么，今天有谁在家里读着《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》？他们互相认识吗？他们是第一次读还是重读呢？如果我和他们在市场上、面包店里相遇，我们会否会心一笑、认出彼此？ ——伯格以此说明”共情”在故事当中的重要性，故事当中的某一部分变成了自己情感中的东西。 回过头来讲《昆西四季》里最先让人动容的地方，是伯格谈起自己的父亲。蒂尔达和伯格同样生于伦敦，同样生于11月5日，但间隔了34年。他们也都有一个经历过战争的父亲，这父亲也都不愿意同子女谈及战争的伤痛，但是：history cannot have its tongue cut out. 伯格讲自己的父亲如何切苹果：”先削皮，然后等分成四瓣……哦不对，是先等分成四瓣，然后挖去核，再削皮。” ——尽管伯格已经年迈了，但他讲起父亲时依旧仿佛是受庇护的，眼里泪光闪闪。——而我相信每一个观影者此时都在想自己的父母、祖父母如何切苹果，是先削皮还是先对半分开，想他们把苹果递过来的姿势。 （3.5 我试了一下那种切苹果的方法，果然好不习惯~）

in the monopolistic religions, i mean，there is this notion of Heaven and Hell. Different interpretations but these two categories. And it's worth asking the question are the following. It's in Hell where solidarity is important,not in Heaven,isn't it?

“在道德观念强烈的宗教里，有天堂和地域的概念。会有不同的表述，但是就这两个类别。有个值得一问的问题就是，在地域里，团结才重要，而不是在天堂，对吗？”

喜欢Tilda 读的声音

The Seventh (A hetedik)

Attila József

If you set out in this world,

better be born seven times.

Once, in a house on fire,

once, in a freezing flood,

once, in a wild madhouse,

once, in a field of ripe wheat,

once, in an empty cloister,

and once among pigs in sty.

Six babes crying, not enough:

you yourself must be the seventh.

When you must fight to survive,

let your enemy see seven.

One, away from work on Sunday,

one, starting his work on Monday,

one, who teaches without payment,

one, who learned to swim by drowning,

one, who is the seed of a forest,

and one, whom wild forefathers protect,

but all their tricks are not enough:

you yourself must be the seventh