Memories of Leslie Cheung

During the first wknd of April, I decided it would be a good idea to move my Leslie Cheung CD to my car…where I can listen to it whenever my heart so desired. I especially like the song, “The Wind Continues to Blow”…mostly because I remember hearing it when I was little and I liked the sound of his voice.

I started googling Leslie Cheung because I wanted to learn more about him. And during my searches, it occurred to me that he had committed suicide April 1, 2003. It became eerie to me that I chose to listen to this particular song over and over again that wknd because it is the same song that they played at his funeral in memory of him.

I always liked this song because there were a couple of lines that I could translate to myself. (Chinese songs are funny b/c they do not sound like conversational Chinese…so I often can sing the songs over and over again and not have a clue to what the meaning of the song may be.) I always liked the song because of what I believed two of the lines to say…"I want to make you happy and you make me feel intoxicated with your love"…it’s so pretty (sounds cheesy in English...but is really much more endearing in Chinese). It seems that is what “togetherness” should mean…that you always try to make that special person love you more…not because you should…but b/c you inherently feel like doing so.

And whenever I hear this song, I imagine that there are two people, who are deeply in love and hanging out along the beach, shortly after the sunset. They’d be wrapped in a warm cotton blanket and the wind would be gently caressing their hair. I always thought the song was about how this couple had to part for a while…but one day they would reunite. And I like what I thought this song was about. So, I do not know why I decided to google the translation of this song from Chinese to English. That’s when I found out that the song is really about two people that are hanging out together for the last time and that they prolly will never see each other again. There’s a line in there that I did not know which translates to how he says she does not have to ask him if he’ll always remember her because he could never forget her. AND then I figured out that my favorite line is actually written in the past tense…that he had made her happy and she had made him intoxicated with her love…and the line that I thought said “we should chase our dreams together”…actually translates better to “why are we not the ones to chase this dream together..” implying that they won’t be. Sigh.

So many things that are left better the way I thought it was.