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All Embracing Light
You hold your candle to the stars Behind the song ‘The Spring silkwormMakes the silk Until there is no more silk to give. A candle, when it is burning, has already ash and tears dripping down. All the time it gives light Until itself is finished’ Traditional Chinese poem  Guo Yue is a well established and popular flute player in the West and I saw him play a few years ago at the WOMAD world music festival in my home town of Reading. He is a truly inspirational musician and person.However, he grew up in China during the harsh repression of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. He suffered a lot, particularly as a result of the traumatic experience of seeing his mother cruelly beaten by the Red Guard. She was a teacher who loved Chinese poetry, Philosophy, and ‘banned’ literature such as Tolstoy. Eventually in 1982 Guo Yue left Beijing and travelled to London to begin a new life and embrace the musical opportunities of another world.. His mother Su Lin understood how important this moment was for him. However, to see her only son leave after having shared so many experiences was also heartbreaking.  “In May 1982 I left the Beijing alleys, after a courtyard feast of dumplings and long-life noodles, to travel to London. My father’s sister immediately travelled from Henan Province to see my mother. ‘Guo Yue is the roots of the Guo family’, she said angrily. ‘Now the roots of the grass have gone’. My mother didn’t answer. When my sister wrote, telling me this, I remembered a poem that my mother had often recited when I was little.” ‘The Spring silkworm ‘I wanted to see the world, Yue’ my mother had said to me at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, ‘and so must you’. I know that my mother understood. She wanted me to be free.” The candle for me in this poem is a strong image of the flame of love that burns inside us. It is an image of a selfless love that gives its light away without holding back and without doubt or fear. The candle light has a temporal life and the candle flame is self-consuming. Our love for others is a selfless flame that sustains friends, family and those around us. It also leaves a mark that is everlasting. This poem reveals the true depth and feeling of unconditional love. I was moved by this story and poem to write about ‘selfless love’ I used the image of a candle as an image for love that ‘burns’ and gives its light away. Eventually the candle is consumed by its own heat and dies, but while it burns it gives out ‘an all embracing light’. Behind the life of Guo YueGuo Yue was born in China in 1958 and grew up during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. It was a strange childhood full of happy memories but also the pain and suffering of the terrible time of repression under the Communist regime. Guo You learnt to play the bamboo flute when he was growing up in the Beijing alleys of his childhood. He was given a flute to keep him occupied and stop him getting into any trouble as a result of the activities of the Red Guard. He said: "In ancient Chinese philosophy, life is about four things: sadness, happiness, being apart and being together. Looking back on my childhood as the youngest son of a violinist, growing up in a large musical family in the alleys of Beijing, I would agree with this old saying." Guo Yue writes about the simple experiences of a childhood life made simple by the strictness of the Cultural Revolution. Secretly making kites out of writing paper (prohibited as they were symbols of freedom) and catching dragonflies by the river and letting them fly away are examples. His Father was a violinist who died when Guo Yue was only five. He was very close to his mother who was called Su Lin. She was an educated women who loved old Chinese poetry and novels of Tolstoy, nature, philosophy and foreign languages. She was a teacher. For these reasons she was beaten by the Red Guard and also by her own students and then sent to the countryside to work in the fields. This was a traumatic time for Guo Yue, and his mother never recovered her health and suffered a series of strokes on returning home. He has written a deeply moving piece about his mother on his album “Music, food and love” which is called ‘Su Lin’. It is incredibly intense and emotional piece and apart from the searing flue line it includes a drum that represents the strength of his mother’s heart. The album “Music, Food and Love” by Guo Yue is a masterpiece of expressiveness and harmony and the pure, plaintive sounds and intensity of the flute playing coupled with the beautiful arrangements make it a unique recording in World music. Linkshttp://www.realworldrecords.com/artists/guo-yue http://www.realworldrecords.com/videos/dragonfly |
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