Lonely drinking

There is a poem by the Tang dynasty poet 李白, Li Po or Li Bai, called “Lonely Drinking under the Moon.”

花間一壺酒
獨酌無相親.
舉杯邀明月
對影成三人

From a pot of wine among the flowers
I drank alone.There was no one with me –
Till raising my cup, I ask the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.

I first heard this poem on Swedish radio when I was 14 or so. When my teacher one day asked us to bring a poem to school I read it to my class. I was a strange boy. I sat at home in the evenings. I studied too much and played the cello. I never went out drinking like normal kids my age. But since the poem was about alcohol abuse, I thought I could use it to prove to my classmates that I too was a cool guy. It didn’t work. Poetry doesn’t prove that you’re a cool guy. Poetry proves that you are a faggot.

我歌月徘徊
我舞影零亂.
醒時同交歡
醉後各分散

I sang. The moon encouraged me
I danced. My shadow tumbled after.
As long as I knew, we were born companions.
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.

The following summer we went to London on vacation and I walked into Foyle’s bookshop and asked — very nervously since I never had spoken English to an English person before — if they had any books by Li Po. The shop clerk looked at me funny and said “By whom?” I blushed and rushed out of the store.

Li Po never did me any favors. But then again I wasn’t fair to him. It wasn’t right to ask him to provide proof of my cultural sophistication. I had no cultural sophistication. I was just desperate to become someone interesting, to show off.

Reading the poem today — in Chinese this time, as homework for my tutorial — it strikes me that I’ve finally succeeded to become someone interesting. In fact, what strikes me that I’ve probably overdone it.