i nipped out to get groceries before lunch, and as i was walking home in the light rain and feeling woeful i started singing from liangzhu. not the opera or the violin concerto, you understand, for you would feel a right fool trying to sing a violin concerto, unless perhaps you are one of the swingle singers, or bobby mcferrin, but the theme song of the movie they made back when we were in rgs, the one with wu qilong and charlie young in. i urge people not to take these remarks as an endorsement of the movie; when you are fourteen, you're allowed to go to embarrassing movies because someone is cute. if you must see a movie of it you are allowed the ones made before 1960. i have got very far from where i began. yes. as the lyrics of the song were set to the main melody of the concerto, and the concerto was in turn derived from the opera, in a way i was thinking about all of these too. but you've got to sing something aloud, and these are the only lyrics we've got. couldn't remember all of the words, and it bothered me enough to try google, so here we are.

无言到面前 与君分杯水
清中有浓意 流出心底醉
无论冤或缘 莫说蝴蝶梦
还你此生此世今世前世
双双飞过万世千山去

somehow, looking at them like that on the screen, they do look rather unpoetic. also i'm slightly doubtful about these lyrics which i got off some lyrics archives, because ci sheng ci shi doesn't balance jin shen qian shi, and what wan shi qian shan sounds like is a conflation of qian shan wan shui and wan shi qian sheng (i mean, it's reincarnation and the change of ages they're talking about, innit? unless you like the idea of a pair of butterflies fluttering into the distance, in which case the hills can stand, but even figuratively i don't like that construction. it's unwieldy, mixing temporal and physical barriers.) i wonder if i can learn enough shanghaiese to understand the opera.