Uncle Lee

Uncle Lee is actually better than brother Lee.  Watching him sing with a light heart those old songs he wrote about his emotional youth, I know he has lived past his past. Only after one “has climbed over several hills,” could he have the kind of humility to say “a song writer may not be smarter than somebody who sells steamed buns on the street. ” And he may “finally be bold enough to meet the difficulty of living with a grinning face and smiling eyes, realizing that the world is only a stage on which we are not leading characters, nor can we determine our ups and downs, but we can decide when to enter and exit.” Climbing over hills, one may also “become more patient and learn how to be out and then fully engage in and how to be a king in his own world, dancing with winds, as a sorcerer practicing his art of magic.”

I used to like old stuff. Today I begin to see that the popular and the classic may not be that different. In his novel Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro tells us that life is a sad business, and most of us devote ourselves to a few courses we may not even fully understand as those boys and girls who are created to be organ donors. Some of them may donate once, some twice, and at most three or four times, and then they are done with. Is this much different from Lee singing, “we are already old when we haven’t grown up and still don’t understand it?” To Kazuo Ishiguro, even love is a fictional account that cannot help or save us. The Nobel writer’s insight is indeed deep but chill to the bone. Lee seems to be a little more at ease; he continues to sing, “Time, please do not rush me. All those coming I will not push away, all those gone I won’t chase. I will return what I own and give when I should.” At least he has a solution: even if we don’t have anything, or nothing is reliable, we can still be a sorcerer in our own kingdom concentrated on practicing our own magic.