Half a Wall of Other People's Stories

I was watching a sports documentary Quarterback on Netflix the other day. One of the subjects, NFL quarterback Kirk Cousins, was showing off a display room in his house. A "memory room," he called it. He had it drawn into the blueprints when the house was built, hidden behind a concealed door so as not to draw attention. Step inside, and it was filled with his own trophies, jerseys, and photographs, going all the way back to high school. Top-tier athletes, it seems, generate more than enough of their own memories. I, on the other hand, am left to collect the stories of others. Even now, I only have half a wall and the corner of my desk to spare for them.

So why did I suddenly start collecting these limited-edition vinyl records and big-headed figures? Perhaps it’s because, while life still offers its share of excitement and surprises, the sensation of being truly moved is becoming remarkably scarce. And so, within the stories of others, you try to find things that might serve as a sort of sustenance for the soul. They say a creator can't write a song that pierces the heart unless they have felt things five times as deeply. I suppose that's why I choose to believe that the confessions I hear in those voices are real.

Truth be told, the urge to start collecting was triggered by a trip a few months ago. I happened to be passing through Aberdeen, WA, so I paid a visit to the Kurt Cobain Memorial Park, the frontman of Nirvana and the favorite band of my youth. He grew up in that town. It's said that he used to sit by that muddy riverbank quite often, even writing a song about the experience (Something In The Way). Standing there unlocked a drawer in my own memory. I remembered the days of buying cut-out CDs to listen to rock music. I started listening to those songs all over again, paying close attention.

This is what I didn't learn until recently: After Kurt’s tragic death, Dave Grohl, the band’s drummer, found himself at a loss. He went to wander the remote countryside of Ireland to clear his mind. While there, quite by chance, he saw a teenager hiking up a mountain wearing a T-shirt with Kurt’s face printed on it. Something shifted inside him. He felt a sudden responsibility to hurry back and plunge into work again. "I can't outrun this", he said in an interview, "so I need to go home and f* get back to work". And a year later, the Foo Fighters were born. Following in Nirvana's footsteps, this band too would enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That hitchhiker kid, having heard the story, later recorded a video response. Someone carefully edited the two clips together, and the pieces fit perfectly. It struck me as a genuinely good story, so I went out and bought a T-shirt with Kurt’s oversized head on it, too.

Even though Nirvana was massive later in the 90s, they were once categorized as relatively niche "alternative music." Put them in today's landscape, and they'd undoubtedly be labeled "indie"—the underlying premise being that they aren't meant to be liked by everyone. When I hear covers of their classic tracks now, I catch myself measuring them: who actually understands the core of it, and whose performance just floats on the surface? St. Vincent performed "Lithium" with the surviving members of Nirvana at the 2014 Hall of Fame induction ceremony. That was how I discovered her. In interviews, she mentioned how deeply the riff from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had influenced her. A true fan, without a doubt. After winning the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album in 2014, St. Vincent moved increasingly toward the mainstream. She's credited as a co-writer on Taylor Swift's massive hit "Cruel Summer"; she toured with Olivia Rodrigo; she even put out her first Spanish-language album recently. I suspect she will have a much longer commercial lifespan than Nirvana ever did.

If hunting down cut-out CDs ("dakou" — the smuggled discs in China) in my youth to hear rock songs unavailable through proper channels was, to some extent, a way of deliberately constructing a sense of superiority, listening to them today is different. I can still be moved, but I can also decipher which elements possess that captivating "magic" (there are, after all, music teachers who record videos breaking these things down). I am not a creator myself, but it seems to me that creators ultimately want the melodies they write to be appreciated by as many people as possible. Very few would compose a song with the sole intention of catering only to "those who know"—especially today, when social media dictates so much.

When I hear a catchy melody now, my first reaction is, "They have talent". Laufey is such a typical case here. When I listen to Laufey's first two albums to compare to the latest one, I realize they have actually been working hard to simplify the narrative in their songs. They maintain their unique structural signature, sure, but they deliberately insert a clever, crowd-pleasing bridge. Add to that the standard operational procedures of modern marketing—opening their own online stores, slipping autographed cards into record releases, selling heaps of merchandise. It seems many singers treat Taylor Swift's marketing strategy as a textbook, trying to replicate her colossal commercial success. After Laufey won the 2024 Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, the natural goal for her next record was, of course, to inch closer to "pop."

Whether there actually is a foolproof, "standard" formula on the road to commercial success probably falls into the realm of alchemy. I have a few limited-edition Laufey records in my collection that I don't plan on ever unsealing, simply because I feel they have "appreciation potential." Well, of course, even if the value of a handful of records multiplies twenty-fold one day, it’s mostly just for my own amusement.

But perhaps that is a fairly accurate portrait of life itself: maintaining a little bit of calculation on one side, preserving a little bit of genuine emotion on the other. And all of it, in the end, is just an attempt to keep things from getting too boring.

(Originally written in Chinese; translated by AI with manual editions)