《你们不知道什么是爱情 You don’t know what love is》陈翠梅个展 2024.06.28 - .07.21

爱情可能是一场霍乱 （文/陈翠梅）

我当然不懂爱情。

我是那个逃跑的女人。

讲一个小故事，20年前我在新加坡的一个短片工作坊当导师。工作坊结束后大家去酒吧庆祝。其中一个导师K跑上台唱了自己的一首歌，唱完后大喊，陈翠梅我爱你。大家炸了。没有人在乎我的惊恐。大家看电影看太多，都想帮勇敢求爱的男主角，完全不顾及被求爱的人的意愿。第二天我就逃回吉隆坡了。没想到K也追来，还让我的朋友觉得这件事特别浪漫，骗了我去一个餐馆，借了吉他让他单独唱歌给我听。

我过了一个星期东躲西藏的日子。然后他才走了。

在收到很多情诗的那段时间，有一次我很无情地调侃：“我几乎能嗅到苦杏仁了。“发出信息后我立刻意识到这句话的残酷和不当。

K立刻知道这句话的出自Garcia Marquez的爱在霍乱蔓延时，他回答，”这是无可避免的，苦杏仁的气味，终让我想起无法得到的爱情。“

几个月后，我在德国慕尼黑，有个选片人神秘兮兮地给了我一个音乐CD，“他听说你会来，叫我亲自交给你。”里面有九首歌。“他一个星期里写了9首歌给你。”那个选片人大概觉得这是爱情。

我把CD听了一遍，然后也就这样。

很多年以后，大家还会拿这件事来说笑。我和K也成了朋友。

一次我和K在一个诗歌短片的工作坊一起当导师，他说起他在大学的时候，第一次接触诗歌，他的老师跟他说，你真的要写诗，那就得像患了霍乱一样，上吐下泻，不可自制。他说他那时候一天能三十多首诗。

我心想，一个星期写9首歌，也不过是一场痢疾。我爱你，又干你何事。

一个能写出一万首情诗的机器，也不过是几行简单的编程。我不能说我的这个不停呕出情诗的印刷机是来自于K，我只能说，一个好像得了霍乱，上吐下泻地写情诗的一个机器，可能也能让我们感受情绪，也能让我们思考爱情是什么。

我们姑且称呼这个机器K。

这是我的Emotion Machine系列。

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Love as Cholera

― Tan Chui Mui

Of course I don’t know what love is.
I was the woman that ran away. And still running.

Tell you a story. Twenty years ago I was a mentor in a short-filmmaking workshop in Singapore. After we wrapped the one week workshop we had a small party in a bar. One of the mentors, K went up on stage to sing a song he wrote, and he dedicated the song to me, and declared out loud on the stage, “Tan Chui Mui I love you.” Everyone was cheering for him, no one noticed my panic. People have been watching too many rom-coms, and they want to help the man in love, the hunter. Who cares about the helpless prey. I escaped back to KL the next morning. And K followed to KL, and he borrowed a guitar from some friends, and he convinced my friends to help him set up a chance for him to sing a song to me.

I was hiding for a week, until K went back to his country.

During the bombardment of love poems, once I jokingly replied, “I can almost smell the scent of bitter almond.” I must admit I felt guilty of saying something cruel like that. K immediately understood i was referring to GGM’s Love in A Time of Cholera, and replied,

“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”

A few months after that, I was at a film festival in Munich. A film critic gave me a music CD, “He knew that you are coming, he asked me to hand it to you personally.” There are 9 songs inside. “He wrote 9 songs for you in a week.” I can’t read the expression of the film critic. Maybe he thinks that is love.

I listened to the songs. And I put the CD aside. And then I must have lost it when I move office.

After many years, K had found his real love. And we became friends. And this story stays among the group of friends as a joke. We all have some crazy stories and this one is entertaining to be retold.

A few years back I was mentoring together with K in a film-poetry workshop. He told the students how he first learned about poetry writing in his university years. His mentor told him that the poetry writing should pour out of you as if you have Cholera, it should vomit out, or come out as unstoppable diarrhoea. It has to get out of your system, and it will find a way to get out. K said he writes about 30 poems a day.

At that moment I laughed, writing 9 songs in a week, that is just like suffering cholera. “I love you. It’s none of your business.”

Here I present to you a machine that can write 10,000 love haiku. Which is a simple program written with a few lines.
A machine that can vomit out endless emotional haiku, as if a man suffering love, angry, in despair… I give it a name K.

K is part of my Emotion Machines series. Even if K will not make you understand love.

But let us ponder about love for a moment.

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