i'd heard that 林志炫 was a guest judge on an episode of a certain taiwanese singing competition, so i went looking for it on youtube and was rather moved when i came across this rendition of 你是我的眼 by a nineteen-year-old contestant, a rather earnest-looking university student called 林宥嘉. the song was originally written and recorded by the blind taiwanese singer 蕭煌奇. even though they do not exactly have the literary elegance of the songs i prefer, these lyrics cut right through to the heart. i think it's because the song goes beyond the account of blindness and its constraints on the lover whose casual acts of love are compromised, to touch on the question of colour perception and personal memory. and i like that the song recognises that conventional models of love are predicated on sight, but the sightless has a different relationship to the unseen beloved, and that quite alters the relationship between seeing and desire. i like also that the song treats the singer's pain at being unable to look upon the face of beloved in these terms: 我望向你的脸 / 却只能看见一片虚无 / 是不是上帝在我眼前遮住了帘 / 忘了掀开, and then a sort of dialectical turn, where the blind man's construction of a world through surrogate eyes rather makes me think of christabel and randolph ash, remaking their world by naming it together. . -
<你是我的眼> 词曲: 蕭煌奇 如果我能看得见 就能轻易的分辨白天黑夜 就能准确的在人群中牵住你的手 如果我能看得见 就能驾车带你到处遨游 就能惊喜的从背后给你一个拥抱 如果我能看得见 生命也许完全不同 可能我想要的我喜欢的我爱的都不一样 眼前的黑不是黑 你说的白是什么白 人们说的天空蓝 是我记忆中那团白云背后的蓝天 我望向你的脸 却只能看见一片虚无 是不是上帝在我眼前遮住了帘 忘了掀开 你是我的眼 带我领略四季的变换 你是我的眼 带我穿越拥挤的人潮 你是我的眼 带我阅读浩瀚的书海 因为你是我的眼 让我看见这世界 就在我眼前