MONDAY 7 OCTOBER 2019
It can ultimately be said that Taiwan is and has been my ship for the last more than two decades, like in the movie The Legend of 1900 where the eponymous character lived out his life on an ocean liner.
The main idea is clear from this monologue by “1900”: “Take a piano. The keys begin, the keys end. You know there are 88 of them and no-one can tell you differently. They are not infinite; you are infinite. And on those 88 keys the music that you can make is infinite. I like that. That I can live by. But you get me up on that gangway and roll out a keyboard with millions of keys, and that’s the truth, there’s no end to them. That keyboard is infinite. But if that keyboard is infinite there’s no music you can play. You’re sitting on the wrong bench. That’s God’s piano. Christ, did you see the streets? There were thousands of them! How do you choose just one? One woman, one house, one piece of land to call your own, one landscape to look at, one way to die. All that world weighing down on you without you knowing where it ends. Aren’t you scared of just breaking apart just thinking about it, the enormity of living in it? I was born on this ship. The world passed me by, but two thousand people at a time. And there were wishes here, but never more than could fit on a ship, between prow and stern. You played out your happiness on a piano that was not infinite. I learned to live that way.”
As early as December 2000 I had written a piece referencing the last sentence of the above quote. I was already struggling with the idea that if the world is your oyster, where do you end? If the possibilities are endless, why stop at one place, one house, one partner and one set of children, at one occupation? How can you justify, when there are so many other possibilities, saying, “It’s okay, I’ve found my place, and the person at whose side I want to be until the end”?
Taiwan is the ship I ultimately stayed on, like the character in the movie. There were times I very nearly got off, but at the last minute decided to stay. And like the character in the film, I also learned to play my happiness on a piano that did not stretch out endlessly with possibilities.
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