庆陈淑桦生日 Sarah's Birthday
Filling My Imagination|填满我想象的空白
The 1988 "Tomorrow Will You Love Me" album cover
陈淑桦《美丽与哀愁》片段 Sarah Chen Beauty & Sorrow
为庆祝「陈淑桦记忆的门」期刊发行一周年,我们和你共同探讨1988年专辑《明天,还爱我吗》的封面设计,带你走入意想不到的迷宫。
To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Sarah Chen Memory Gate Journal, we invite you to explore the cover art of Sarah Chen’s 1988 album Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me, and to step into its intrigue.
Inside a stamp-like frame stands Sarah Chen in a white bathrobe, her hand on her neck, looking slightly uncomfortable as she gazes into the distance. A garment lies on an ironing board, as if she has been working on it. A large poster covers the wall, with letters partially obstructed by her head1.
Pointing at the letters, I asked my companion, “What does this say?”
“Chinese or English?” He traced the squiggles, “Ess? Jesus? No, just Jess—and these figures are her angels.”
“Sarah Chen is Buddhist.” I reminded him.
“But she could be anything in her art,” he answered, adding, “Have you asked AI about it?”
Figure 1. Photos from a 1988 magazine1 showing two different angles of the cover art for Sarah Chen’s album “Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me.”
1988年报刊中另外两张《明天,还爱我吗》的封面照片
在一个邮票一样的镜框里,陈淑桦身穿白色睡袍,一只手放在脖子上,若有所思地凝望远方。身前的烫衣板上有件衣服,好像她刚才还在用熨斗。身后的墙上有一幅大型海报,但海报上的字被她的头挡住了1。
我指着那几个字母问我的家人:“这个字是什么“?
”中文还是英文?”他问,然后用手指沿着字母画了一遍说,“Ess?Jesus耶稣?不对,是Jess洁丝——这些穿白衣的是她的天使。"
“陈淑桦信佛教,"我提醒他。
“但在她的艺术里她可以是任何人,”他说,随后给我提议,“你问AI 了吗?"
The MV of the 1988 Beauty and Sorrow, written by Bobby Chen, featuring Sarah Chen and Bobby Chen (no relation).
1988年版《美丽与哀愁》的音乐录像。歌曲由陈升谱写,录像里男女主角是陈升和陈淑桦。
A day after stumbling into Sarah Chen’s music, I came across her 1988 album Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me and spent a morning playing the first track, Beauty and Sorrow. The tune was melodic, her singing surprisingly powerful, but the lyrics made no sense. More precisely, every line was meaningful, but the whole thing was incomprehensible.
A vague picture emerges from lines such as “If you inadvertently discover my secret,” “I’ll never truly understand how men feel,” and “Don’t frequently bring up our differences”—it sounds like a complex situation with a boyfriend. But what was her secret? The music video, featuring Sarah Chen and the songwriter Bobby Chen (no relation), shows Bobby sitting at the breakfast table reading a newspaper. At one point, Sarah, hurt and angry, throws the newspaper at him. He storms out, she throws his belongings after him, then weeps behind a closed door. I got it: a fight between lovers, but the lyrics still felt disjointed.
And what does she mean by “The /ai yu/ that I once thought lost now fills my imagination?” She couldn’t have meant "desire/lust" – no, there’s no way that a woman would sing an explicit line in 1980s Mandopop. But did the songwriter know that as a homophone, /ai yu/ might be heard as "desire/lust?"
Did Sarah know?
两年前刚接触陈淑桦音乐时,我发现了她的1988年专辑《明天,还爱我吗》,花了一个上午反复听第一首歌《美丽与哀愁》。歌曲旋律优美,陈淑桦的演唱出奇地有威力,但她在唱什么我就是听不懂。很奇怪,每个字我都听得懂,连成的句子有些含糊,整首歌却不知所云。
只言片段里有点儿感觉:“如果你一不小心發現我心中的祕密”,“我想我永遠都不明瞭男人的心情和期待“,“別常常談論你我之間的差異”,听起来是和男友的矛盾。但她有什么秘密?在歌曲的MV里,陈升坐在早餐饭桌前看报纸。陈淑桦既难过又生气,把报纸朝他摔过去。他愤怒地离开,她把他的衣物扔到楼梯下,关上门哭了起来。我看明白了,是两人在吵架。但是歌词还是听不懂。
最让我疑惑的是,她到底在这句话里唱的是什么:“曾經以為迷失的 /ai yu/ 填滿我想像的空白“。她不会是在唱——不对,她的音乐形象那么清纯,何况是在八十年代,她不可能唱不雅的句子。但是陈升想过吗, /ai yu/ 是个有多种解释的同音词,可能被听成不雅的词?
陈淑桦想过吗?
Sarah Chen 1992 Boisterous Street | 陈淑桦 1992年 《哗笑的街》
I spent the next two years reconstructing Sarah Chen’s musical journey, with a special interest in Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me, which became my personal favorite for putting Sarah’s versatility, vocal range, and power on full display. In the 2003 documentary A Letter to Sarah,2 Bobby Chen said they wrote songs to reflect Sarah’s experiences in love, though she disclosed little.
Magazine reports from 1988 indicate that the album centered on an urban woman’s love life, creating narrative continuity across the songs3. After Beauty and Sorrow, Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me tells the story of a boyfriend leaving early in the morning. Boisterous Street finds the singer waiting at dusk for a lover who never appears. Bonjour, Sadness shows her coming to terms with a failed relationship, and Hometown Women recounts a chance meeting with a female friend4.
Still, lyrical ambiguity permeates the album. The coherence across songs is as fleeting as the individual lines within each song. What holds them together? What am I missing?
接下来的两年,我开始查询陈淑桦的歌唱生涯,《明天,还爱我吗》的历史是个重心。这张专辑体现了陈淑桦演唱的多样性、宽广的音域、和歌声的威力,一度是我的最爱。在2003年纪录片「给淑桦的一封信」里,2 陈升说他们试图将陈淑桦的爱情经历写到歌中,但她不肯透露细节。
1988年的报刊说这张专辑的主题是都会女子的爱情故事,十首歌有连续性3. 《美丽与哀愁》后,《明天,还爱我吗》是恋人清晨离开,《哗笑的街》是她在黄昏期盼恋人来到身边,《日安,忧虑》是她接受了失败的恋情,而《本城女子》是在街上偶遇旧友4。
虽然有这些故事性,专辑里好几首歌的歌词很晦涩。不同的歌之间的关系也不是那么容易抓住。到底主题在哪里?我怎么就找不到关键?
Reaching no understanding after two years, I decided to query a large language model (LLM)5, starting with a phrase:
Chinese is a tonal language, but the tonal component is lost in a song. Suppose you hear the sounds /ai yu/ in a Mandarin song, what are the most probable corresponding Chinese characters?
“爱与,” the LLM said, as in “爱与恨.” [Translation: “Love and,” as in “Love and hate.”]
But the line ends with /ai yu/ as a phrase, not followed by anything else. What is the most probable phrase? Give probability.
Unbothered by propriety, the LLM blurted out “爱欲” [lust/desire] as the most probable answer (35%), followed by “哀郁” (25%) [sorrow] as the second possibility.
Let me give you the context in which this phrase appears:我想我永遠都不明瞭男人的心情和期待,曾經以為迷失的 /ai yu/ 填滿我想像的空白. What does /ai yu/ most likely correspond to?
Increasingly confident, the LLM gave its definitive answer:
“Most likely: 愛慾 / 爱欲 (ài yù) — ~90–95%.” [“lust/desire”]
As if that weren’t enough to persuade me, it doubled down:
“哀鬱 / 哀郁 (āi yù) — “melancholy” → ~5–8%, possible grammatically, but “迷失的哀鬱” is less natural.”
Impressed by its bluntness, I took my companion’s advice and asked about the poster behind Sarah.
“Tess. It is a 1979 film adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel.6”
I think I’ve found the missing clue.
这么困扰了两年后,我决定问现代人工智能*, 一个建立在自然语言使用之上的大型语言模型 (LLM4)5, 第一个问题是关于中文发音:
中文是一种声调语言,但在歌曲中声调通常都丢了。假如你在一首中文歌中听到 /ai yu/, 最可能的中文字是什么?
“爱与,” LLM回答, “比如:爱与恨。”
但是那句话在 /ai yu/ 就结束了, 后面没有别的名词。最可能的词是什么(给我概率)?
不受礼节限制,LLM张口回答说:“爱欲”是最大的可能 (35%), 而“哀郁”是第二种可能 (25%).
我接着问:我给你一句歌词作背景:我想我永遠都不明瞭男人的心情和期待,曾經以為迷失的 /ai yu/ 填滿我想像的空白. 在这句话里, /ai yu/ 最可能的中文词是什么?
LLM非常有信心地回答:
“最大的可能: 愛慾 / 爱欲 (ài yù) — ~90–95%.”
仿佛那还不够使我信服,它接着说:
“哀鬱 / 哀郁 (āi yù) — “melancholy” → ~5–8%, 语法上是正确的, 但“迷失的哀鬱”不自然。”
既然LLM这么直接,我想起先前得到的建议,便问它唱片封面陈淑桦背后的海报是什么。
“Tess。那是1979年的电影,改编自 Thomas Hardy’s 的小说。6”
我恍然大悟。
* 和LLM的对话用的是英文,此处给的是中文翻译;若做重复测试,请见英文版。
Tess, the oldest girl in a poor family in 1880s England, is sent to a wealthy family’s estate to claim kinship after her father learns they are descendants of a noble family. Alec, the son of the wealthy family, knows that they are not truly related because his family has purchased their name. Attracted by Tess’s beauty, he gives her a job on the poultry farm. After Tess refuses his advances, he rapes her. Loathing her situation, Tess returns home after a few months and gives birth to a sickly child named Sorrow.
After her son dies in infancy, Tess goes to work on a dairy farm, where she falls in love with Angel, who is training to be a farmer. Tess loves Angel but cannot bring herself to explain her past. She refuses his proposal, tries to tell him why, even writing him a letter, but the trauma and the fear of losing him prevent her from revealing her past. On the night of their wedding, Angel confesses to a brief affair before meeting Tess. This gives Tess the courage to tell Angel about her time at Alec’s estate. But Angel cannot accept her past. Acknowledging that she was sinned against, Angel says she is no longer the woman he loved. They separate, and he tells her that if he is able to bear it one day, he will return. He leaves for Brazil to seek new opportunities.
Destitute, Tess goes back to the dairy farm to find her friend, but the farm is no longer running. She takes on hard labor for an exploitative man. Learning about Tess’s circumstances from her mother, Alec offers help, but she refuses him angrily. She writes letters to Angel, begging him to come for her, but receives no reply. After her father’s death, her mother and younger siblings become homeless. In one of her last letters to Angel, Tess tells him that she has done nothing wrong, but he has been cruel and treated her with injustice. To save her family, Tess returns to live with Alec.
Suffering from health problems, Angel returns from Brazil, having realized that he still loves Tess. One early morning he finds her at Alec’s place and asks for her forgiveness. “It’s too late,” says Tess. After Angel leaves, Tess breaks down at the breakfast table. Unaware of what has transpired, Alec dines and reads the newspaper while scolding Tess for being moody. He requests that she puts on a good appearance for a lunch appointment. She kills him.
Tess catches up with Angel as he is leaving. He vows to save her. They spend two days on the run, ending at Stonehenge, where Tess is arrested. She is tried and hanged.
苔丝(Tess)是1880年代英国穷人家的长女。父母得知他们的先人曾是贵族后,便派她去一个富人家认远亲。富家子弟亚历克(Alec)知道他们没有亲戚关系,因为他的家族是买来的姓氏。他看苔丝那么漂亮,就留她在家禽农场工作。在苔丝拒绝了他几次后,他强暴了她。苔丝恨他,厌恶自己在那里的身份,几周后回家,后来生下一个体弱多病的孩子,名为“哀愁“(Sorrow)。
苔丝的儿子夭折后,她去一家牛奶农场工作,在那里爱上了正在学习务农的安吉尔(Angel)。苔丝和安吉尔真心相爱,但因为她的过去,苔丝拒绝了安吉尔的求婚。她试图解释,甚至写了封信,但过去的创伤加上现在又担心失去他,使她难以告知真相。他们成婚的那晚,安吉尔请求苔丝原谅他在认识她前曾有过一段短暂的恋情。苔丝鼓起勇气跟他讲了和亚历克的事。但安吉尔不能接受她的过去。他不怪罪苔丝,但说她已经不是他以前爱的那个人。他说他们要分居,如果哪一天他能接受她,他会回来找她。安吉尔离开英国,去巴西寻求生计。
苔丝离开了安吉尔的家,陷入贫困。她走回牛奶农场找到旧友,但农场已经关闭。她就在一个很坏的人的农场里做苦工。亚历克从苔丝的母亲那里听到她的处境,找到她,要她回去跟他住。苔丝愤怒地拒绝了他的帮助。苔丝给安吉尔写了很多信,请求他回来把她接走。但他没有回应。苔丝的父亲去世后,母亲和弟妹们被驱逐出门,流落在寒冷的街头。在给安吉尔的最后一封信里,苔丝说她觉得自己从没做错过什么,而安吉尔对她很残酷,给她的只有不公正的待遇。为了救她的家人,苔丝只得回到亚历克身边。
安吉尔路途中病倒,回到英国。他意识到他有多爱苔丝,读了苔丝的信后,他到处找寻她,一天清早在亚历克的居所找到她。他请求苔丝跟他走。苔丝说太晚了。安吉尔离开后,苔丝在饭桌上悲痛欲绝。亚历克起来吃早饭,一边看报纸,一边数落苔丝,要她一会儿打扮好了去见人吃午饭。苔丝将他杀死。
苔丝去火车站追上安吉尔,他发誓要救她。他们逃亡了两天,苔丝最后在巨石阵被捕。她被审判后死于绞刑。
Tess (1979), starring Nastassja Kinski and Peter Firth. The film was adapted from Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning three.
1979年电影《苔丝》,由Nastassja Kinski and Peter Firth主演,改编与 Thomas Hardy 的1891年小说 Tess of the d'Urbervilles。电影获得六项奥斯卡奖提名,得奖三项。
The poster of Tess gives meaning to Beauty and Sorrow. It's notable that in the story Tess is "beauty" and her son's name is "sorrow." The scene of Sarah throwing the newspaper at a nonchalant Bobby now feels like a less violent version of Tess’s final moment with Alec.
In fact, the songs on the 1988 album suddenly cohere when read against Tess’s story. “If you inadvertently discover my secret” could be a reference to the secret Tess kept from Angel. “The desire/lust that I once thought lost now fills my imagination” could refer to Tess falling in love with Angel after being abused by Alec. “All the beauty you once imagined would be lost in lamentation” (所有你想像的美麗都會在嘆息中漸漸老去) was a reference to Alec’s manipulation of Tess when bringing up her beauty. The uncommitted lover in Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me could be Angel. Boisterous Street might be Tess waiting for Angel, who never came to her rescue. Even Hometown Women becomes Tess’s return to the dairy farm to find her old friend.
And the poster and the homophone converge. If Tess was the album’s hidden framework, then desire could not be avoided. It entered the song obliquely as a homophone to keep it culturally acceptable for Sarah to sing it.
These reinterpretations are my own – there are no magazine reports, interviews, or retrospectives to back them up. Their strongest evidence lies in the album cover. The best argument, besides the poster, is how well Tess explains the songs.
We do not know the producers’ true intention in linking the album to Tess. But the cover art gives a hint: the urban woman in Sarah Chen’s album may be read through Tess. She is modernized, lives in Taipei, never kills anyone, and drinks coffee rather than liquor with her friend. But fundamentally, a 1980s Taiwanese urban woman is the same as an 1880s Victorian woman: morally restrained, economically disadvantaged, facing harassment, and treated with injustice.
But did Sarah Chen sense the connection?
Tess 的海报给《美丽与哀愁》提供了解释。在故事里苔丝被称为“美丽”,而她的私生子名为哀愁;这是歌名的来源。MV里陈淑桦愤怒地用报纸砸无动于衷的陈升,那是以更温和的方式重演了苔丝和亚历克早餐的最后一幕。
一旦你知道苔丝的故事,1988年专辑里的歌全都活了过来。“如果你一不小心发现我心中的秘密”,那是苔丝隐瞒自己的过去。“曾經以為迷失的/ai yu/填滿我想像的空白”是苔丝曾经厌恶亚历克,但后来爱上安吉尔。“所有你想像的美麗都會在嘆息中漸漸老去”是最初亚历克告诉苔丝趁她年轻别浪费了她的美丽。《明天,还爱我吗》中清晨离去的恋人也许是安吉尔,《哗笑的街》是苔丝苦苦等待安吉尔回来接她【注释1】。连《本城女子》也像是苔丝投奔农场旧友。
Tess的海报也解释了《美丽与哀愁》中的同音词。如果Tess是专辑背后隐藏的概念,那么她爱上安吉尔是找到了迷失的爱欲。它以同音词在歌中出现,使陈淑桦的演唱可以被传统礼节所接受。
这些说法是我个人的。当年的报刊、采访、后来的回忆以及网上论坛,都没有提到这种解释。支持Tess的说法最关键的是专辑的封面设计,悬挂着Tess的海报。除了海报,最有力的论证是Tess使得散乱的歌词突然变得有了意义,专辑里不同歌曲的故事有了真正的连贯性。
我们不知道制作人为什么将Tess引入专辑。但封面设计暗示:陈淑桦专辑里的都市女子是一个世纪前苔丝的写照。她被现代化了,住在台北,没杀过人,和朋友喝咖啡而不是烈酒。但从根本上,1980年代的台湾都市女子和1880年代维多利亚农村女人是一样的:在道德上受约束,在经济上处于劣势,面临骚扰,从来没犯错却遭受不公正的待遇。
但陈淑桦有多大程度是在演绎Tess?她怎么看这个联系?
Even if Sarah only half-knew, she still deserves the long-overdue half credit. By committing emotionally to the song, she was far gutsier than I, or anyone, had ever acknowledged.
The day Beauty and Sorrow first caught my attention, I looked up the printed lyrics and saw how wrong I was. The lyrics say that sorrow fills her imagination, not desire/lust.
But I couldn’t have been the only one who heard it wrong. The LLM queries show that, to an artificial intelligence system built on people’s natural language use,5 “desire/lust” is the dominant interpretation of the sound. Even when the printed lyrics say otherwise, we know that homophones activate both7.
Six months after Sarah’s album, Bobby Chen released "A Reckless Lover" 放肆的情人, in which he sang about /ai yu/, printed as ‘desire’, suggesting the word was already in his creative vocabulary when Sarah sang it. Yet while a male singer could sing "desire" in 1989, a female singer, under cultural constraint (see The Mandopop Catch-22), was prohibited from doing so. The sanitization of the printed lyrics was the only way that “desire” could be introduced into the song. For nearly forty years, the homophone passed unquestioned. Not because listeners didn’t hear it, but because acknowledging it was not permitted.
The lyrical problem goes deeper than what's socially permissible for male and female singers. Sarah's line, taken out of context, would have been unsingable for anyone. Bobby could get away with singing "letting go of lust," but even he could not possibly sing "lust fills my imagination" without sounding pervert. For Sarah, the line survives scrutiny only in the context of Tess and Angel, who are in love with each other. But listeners did not know the context. If a "mishearing" occurred, the risk would be on Sarah. While Bobby could point to the printed lyrics and blame the listener's ears, Sarah had no such escape: the sound clung to her voice.
But what did Sarah think she was singing? The rapid production of the album4 – just two to three months – would have left Sarah little time to fully process every line. Yet a singer of her caliber breathes every syllable she utters. Sarah was well-read9, she may have read Hardy's book. She was highly sensitive to phonetic differences - she sings like a dictionary in Mandarin and English, despite growing up speaking a different dialect. It seems unlikely that she would have missed the phonetic nuance entirely, across multiple takes on the song. There is, after all, a poster of Tess hanging prominently behind her on the cover of her own album – she would have asked what it was doing there. And in the music video of Beauty and Sorrow, Sarah reenacts scenes that feel unmistakably Tess-like: sad in the early morning, writing letters to a lover, throwing a newspaper at a nonchalant Bobby. She knew, or half knew, the origin of her album.
Even if Sarah only half-knew, she still deserves the long-overdue half credit. By committing emotionally to the song, she was far gutsier than I, or anyone, had ever acknowledged.
当初听了《美丽与哀愁》后,我查询到歌词,发现我完全搞错了。是哀郁,而不是爱欲,填满了她想象的空白。
但我不可能是唯一听错了词的人。LLM的对话表明,一个建立在自然语言使用之上的人工智能5认为“爱欲”才是这个发音最可能的解读。哪怕印刷的歌词不同,我们知道同音词在听众脑海中会自动激活双重解释7。
在陈淑桦这张专辑推出半年后,陈升推出了《放肆的情人》,其中他演唱了/ai yu/,印刷出来的歌词是“爱欲”,表明这个词当年在陈升的创作词汇里。然而,虽然男歌手可以在八十年代后期唱“爱欲",女歌手身陷“华语乐坛第22条军规”,怎么开得了口。将歌词净化成“哀郁”是唯一暗示“爱欲”的方法。近四十年了,大家都住着皇帝的新装里,没人敢像AI一样说漏了嘴。不是没有人听到过“爱欲”,只是社会规范不允许你承认听到了。
但那句歌词的问题不只是歌手性别。如果没有故事背景,那句歌词几乎谁都唱不出口。陈升是可以唱“告别爱欲纠缠,” 但他要是唱“爱欲填满我想象的空白“岂不是很恶心。陈淑桦也唱不出来,除非是将它摆在苔丝和安吉尔相爱的故事里。但听众并不知道这个故事背景,如果出现“误听”,陈淑桦得承担全部风险。陈升可以指着歌词说,是你的耳朵有毛病;但陈淑桦却去不掉粘在自己歌声里的同音词。
但是陈淑桦知不知道她唱的同音词问题有多大?这张专辑制作飞快,从构思到发行只有两三个月4,没留给陈淑桦很多时间去琢磨歌词的含义。然而以她的水平——喜欢阅读和深思,很有可能读过Hardy的小说。重要的是,她对音节的细微差异非常敏感, 虽然生长在南方,她的国语和英语唱得很标准。她不太可能在多次录音中都没有听到 /ai yu/ 里的“爱欲”。何况,她就站在Tess的海报前,自然会过问海报是干嘛的。更别说在《美丽与哀愁》的MV里,她重演了 Tess 中的一些细节:早晨起来很忧伤,给恋人写信,气愤地用报纸砸无动于衷的陈升。也许她知道,或者大概知道,这张专辑背后的构思。
哪怕陈淑桦当时只意识到一半,她仍然将感情全部投入了这张专辑。她当年冒的风险,我们现在才明白。所有人,包括我,都低估了她的胆量。
她当年冒的风险,我们现在才明白。所有人,包括我,都低估了她的胆量。
《哗笑的街》是一首非常优美的歌,写一位女子在黄昏街头等待爱人,而他始终没有出现。歌中有些句子原本不太容易理解,比如“伤情的承诺”、“在乎你了解我”、“发现我”。既然恋人之间已有承诺,为什么还需要被“了解”和“发现”?承诺通常是美好的,为什么又会“伤情”?但若将它理解为苔丝等待安吉尔归来,歌词便突然连贯起来,也解释了为什么陈淑桦把一首看似简单的“等你”之歌唱得如此伤感和绝望。
One of my all-time favorites, “Boisterous Street” depicts a woman waiting at dusk for a lover who never comes. Viewed as Tess waiting for Angel’s return, the lyrics suddenly cohere, explaining why a seemingly simple “waiting for you” song feels so devastating.
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8. 陈淑桦记忆的门. 爱是唯一的理由. 陈淑桦音乐旅程
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