Respawn Entertainment: Days of Glory

Chapter 944 The Three Sisters of the Original Earth

After the three Xia sisters were discovered, they signed for more than 10 minutes before stopping.

When Xia Ruojie found Liu Ziyang in the rest area, she was a little sweaty: "Teacher Ziyang, why didn't you ask to come to the studio?"

After listening, Liu Ziyang laughed and said, "Why don't you take a look at the lyrics first..."

After saying that, she handed over the tablet. It contained the lyrics and music for 10 songs from an album, without any special order. Who knew that the first song Xia Ruojie opened was called "What Can I Use to Keep You Here"...

"You forgot the cold wind that cut through the wound... You believed that a life without pain or itch was enough... Why do you want to sing when you see snow falling... Why do tears fall when you let go..."

"Do you want to see a sea of ​​flowers in full bloom? Do you want to see the swallows return? If they can't come back, then for whom should I exist..."

"Falling with a glittering light, yet reluctant to leave, so life, it is as brilliant as a song..." Without looking at the sheet music, Xia Ruojie finished reading the lyrics and remained silent.

Just by looking at the lyrics, you can tell the emotions and energy they contain. She doesn't know why Bian Lang was able to write such a work, but she feels that only those who have experienced great pain can truly feel the dark emotions within it.

Seeing her dazed look, Liu Ziyang, knowing this would happen, spoke up: "Xiao Jie, how are you feeling?"

"I have no clue what to do. I don't know what to do after seeing these lyrics."

"After the Rolling Stone Music Festival in May, Bian Lang gave me the lyrics and music for these songs. I really liked the song called 'What Can I Use to Keep You Here,' so I offered to do the arrangement. After two months of thinking about it, what I came up with was rejected by Bian Lang with just one sentence..."

The three girls asked eagerly, "What did you say?"

“If you haven’t experienced a separation more heart-wrenching than death, then it’s hard for you to perfect this arrangement. Then he gave me his arrangement, and I just roughly simulated it… and then, I gave up trying…”

This song has actually been covered by many people on Earth, but the most popular one recently is probably by the hyped-up "King of Singers." In terms of sheer scale, it's certainly impressive, but compared to FloruitShow, it's a whole galaxy below.

Why do you say that?
Because this song is like Jonathan Lee's "Hill", Roman Tam and Jenny's "Iron-Blooded Loyal Heart", Dou Xian's "No Place to Hide"... Once you accept the original singer's setting, what can a cover singer use to surpass it?

This song, "What Can I Use to Keep You Here?", is even more special for FloruitShow. It is like a lament for the three sisters and a paradox of life.

One late night in 18, in the underground rehearsal room of the Central Conservatory of Music, three girls huddled together under the dim light, using harp strings to dispel the fog of fate.

Du Bing'er suddenly broke her bow, and in the instant the wood chips flew, they realized that this might be the last time they would play together as a complete ensemble under the name "Fu Lu Shou" (福禄寿). Thus, the prelude to "What Can I Use to Keep You Here" was born amidst the trembling of the strings, which was both the overture to farewell and the spark of rebirth.

The time capsule, born from separation anxiety, may have started to take effect at this moment, forcing the three sisters to go their separate ways after graduation.

Du Bing'er was fired from music school for refusing to assign homework; DXE kept hearing hallucinatory harmonies while wiping the harp late at night in the symphony orchestra; and Du Fei'er used her mobile phone to record fragmented melodies during breaks from working at the theater troupe.

During a video call, they noticed that the backgrounds in the three people's shots were a music room, an office, and a subway station, respectively. Suddenly, they hummed in unison, "One by one, we walk past each other, one by one, we miss each other..." This lyric became a time rift embedded in the chorus, welding the intimacy of sharing a pair of headphones during their college years with the alienation of adulthood into a sense of destiny.

Music fans who have heard this song will marvel at how precise the opening piano notes are, like a scalpel, with each note corresponding to the three sisters' "wounded memories": the sound of Du Bing'er being slapped by a student's parent, the off-key performance during the DXE band's audition, and the broken plate Du Fei'er dropped at the restaurant where she worked.

The sound of the harp is like a dialectic of life on the piano keys, and when the melody turns to legato, the harp suddenly intervenes with an unconventional plucking method, creating a sound like shattering glass.

This is precisely the auditory deconstruction of the lyrics "Because we enjoy its brilliance, because we endure its decay...", as if tearing the triplets' shared life experience in two: one half is the starlight on the podium of the Central Conservatory of Music, and the other half is the sobbing in the toilet cubicle of the adult world.

During the creative process, the three covered the studio walls with sticky notes, each listing numerous ways to "preserve" something. For example, DXE wrote "Brewing sweetness from pain" on a mirror with lipstick, Du Bing'er wove broken guitar strings into Chinese knots, and Du Fei'er collected the hair that the three of them shed every day to make felt dolls.

These actions ultimately coalesced into the imagery of "holding a spark in the darkest hour" in the music video—those flickering lights are actually burning sticky notes, whose ashes fall to form the outline of the poem "Ode to a Nightingale." This self-sacrificing creative process transforms the song into a pre-ordained funeral and a ritual of rebirth.

Considering what happened to them afterward, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this song was an artistic sacrifice foreshadowing their separation.

In 22, DXE was imprisoned for drug use, making the lyrics "falling with a glimmer of light and reluctant to part" a prophecy. Fans discovered that during the recording in 2018, the occasional metallic clanging sound in the background was actually the noise from DXE unconsciously hitting the iron frame with his bow, which the producer kept as "the background noise of fate".

Even more dramatically, on the very day the news of his imprisonment broke, a music festival happened to be playing this song, and the chorus of 30,000 people at the scene collided with the sound of police sirens in the air, completing an absurd symphony of artistic prophecy and real-world violence.

They were signed to Beihe San, a label under Modern Media, and were colleagues with Bianlang from the original Earth label. When the incident happened, nobody really knew what to say. There's not much to say about DXE; he has to go! But what about their work?
In particular, this song was also used in a video related to JDJ, which really makes me wonder how to comment on it.

However, a good work is one that makes people stubbornly separate the song from the artist.

When netizens in the ICU echoed the rhythm of the ventilator with "You must see the flowers bloom," and when earthquake survivors hummed "Waiting for the swallows to return" under the rubble, this song had already surpassed the creator's original intention.

Some psychotherapists have used it in end-of-life care and found that the frequency of the chorus, 436Hz, is close to the fetal heartbeat; others have deciphered the Morse code-like piano rhythm in the intro, and when combined, it turned out to be the pixel code of a childhood photo of the three sisters.

These unexpected implications make the song a flowing vessel for emotions.

As they said in the interview, "We couldn't keep each other, but we kept what everyone wanted to keep."

This song is now like a piece of amber that has been cut open, with the fingerprints of three souls condensed on the harp strings and the existential anxieties of a generation hidden in the black keys of the piano.

When you hear "Life, it shines like a song" late at night, you might imagine this scene: inside and outside the prison visiting window, DXE and her sister face each other across the glass, and amidst the static on the prison guard's monitor, the night in 2018 when the string snapped is faintly visible...

It turns out that some farewells are simply another form of reunion.

Bian Lang had given Liu Ziyang a rough account of this story as an explanation of the song. Liu Ziyang's first reaction was, "If I didn't know you that well, I'd doubt you'd gotten ahead of yourself! Did you write the song first, or did you have the story in your head first and then write the song?" Bian Lang's reply was, "Of course, the story came first, and then the song came, but the timeline of that story is incredibly long!"

Perhaps it's not just the timeline that's long, but also the spatial timeline.

Unsurprisingly, Du Bing'er's music festival video of singing this song with her eyes closed will become a viral hit on many platforms, bringing courage and strength to countless people to start a new life. But who could have imagined that if she were singing this song with DXE in her mind, who would heal her trauma and pain?

Perhaps only the one who raises their fist and sings, "You must see the flowers bloom, you must wait for the swallows to return, thinking that they will all come back, you swear to exist for these things..." can truly inspire oneself!

After recalling the story, Liu Ziyang waved his hand and said, "Never mind that for now, let's look at 'The Horse'..."

"You say this scenery is picturesque, but I see your mind is wandering. Don't listen to me anymore, drop the pretense... My white horse, slow down, this time I won't be taking you home. Spring and warm sunshine, come quickly, ensure your journey is smooth and peaceful. My white horse, slow down, this time I won't be taking you home..."

Although the Monpa people are not considered a nomadic people, animal husbandry is still the primary mode of production in Medog. Although the three sisters left early, their childhood memories of horses, their tools and friends, are incredibly profound.

Especially influenced by their parents, the three sisters' father, even when he was in Xishuangbanna, would often say, "If only there were a horse farm..."

However, if we interpret the song solely in the conventional sense of "horse," then the meaning of the song will be greatly diminished.

In her first online live stream on NetEase Cloud Music, DouDou introduced "Horse" as follows:
"The second song is called 'Horse,' and this song is about... well, I don't know if you have someone like that in your heart, and he may have been planning to leave you for a long time, or in some sense, he is packing his bags and going to a faraway place. When we know that we can't stop him from leaving, we can only give him this song, 'Horse.'"

I don't want to simply describe the above instances as suicide or death. I've always believed that leaving this world doesn't happen in a single instant. For some, it's like the ending only becoming clear after countless layers of thin paper have been stacked. If sunlight could still shine through the back of the paper, death might not have been possible. Even premeditated acts are sometimes not a matter of subjective will.

Therefore, if we take "Horse" as the answer to "What Can I Use to Keep You?", judging from the lyrics, it seems that I couldn't keep you.

The most moving part of "What Can I Use to Keep You" is undoubtedly when the drumbeats rise in the chorus, and we are no longer detached, but truly questioning ourselves in the march of our own lives: "Do I want to see the sea of ​​flowers in full bloom? Do I want to see the swallows return? If they can't come back, then for whom should I exist..."

They were even brainwashed into believing the lyrics: "You must see the flowers bloom... You swear to exist for these..."

If we connect "What Can I Use to Keep Him?" and "Horse" into a story, what exactly is it that keeps someone here?

Let's look at the lyrics again:
You said the scenery is picturesque
I see you're distracted.

Don't listen to me anymore.

Let's take off our disguises...

It can be interpreted as someone having suicidal thoughts but being unable to be honest about it, because people in normal social situations tend to "be strong."

Can you hear me crying?
Anyway, they won't hear it.

You are like a white horse

"Let's escape leisurely."

The image of the white horse appears for the first time here. White, in this murky world, might symbolize an ideal state; those unable to face reality are like a white horse trying to escape. If this white horse refers to DXE…

Let me take a closer look at your appearance.

Counting down to the final curtain call
Please forgive me for turning off the noise so early.
My dear, do you know how scarred I am...?

The first two lines are self-evident, but the last two lines seem too blunt. "Do you know, my beautiful one, that I am covered in wounds?" This lyric must be the white moonlight in the hearts of many young people oppressed by life.

Who isn't carrying a heavy burden? The dead are gone, but the living remain. Even with another wound in their hearts, they still have nowhere to complain about life.

My white horse, please slow down!

This time, I won't be taking you home.
Spring, warm sunshine, come quickly!
Ensure he had a smooth and uneventful journey.
My white horse, slow down!
This time, I won't be taking you home...

Given the Chinese people's deep attachment to the word "home," the tear-jerking power of this passage is evident. Just like how Bian Lang always gets teary-eyed when listening to Zhang Chu's "Sister."

The family is the root of tragedy for every Chinese person, which ironically makes listeners yearn for the image of a stable and peaceful "home." For many, this place might be anime, a game, a celebrity, a sport, or a song—in short, a spiritual haven.

But sometimes, it is this very real world.

When Bian Lang handed the album to Liu Ziyang, he said, "Don't rush, record slowly. If you can't record it well in a year, then record one song as a digital album, and put the whole album together after you've finished all of them."

At that time, Liu Ziyang said that Bian Lang's statement was too exaggerated and that such a method should not be used.

But looking at the bewildered and conflicted expressions on the three sisters' faces, Liu Ziyang knew that he would probably have to do as Bian Lang said.

"Perhaps the lives of you three sisters are a bit too comfortable. Of course, we can't expect you to endure hardship without any effort in order to sing. I'll arrange a meeting with Qiu Luo and ask him to see if he can help you with his methods of training actors..."

(End of this chapter)