Inside Enya's Irish Kingdom

恩雅爱尔兰王国内部

恩雅爱尔兰王国内部 · 官方页 · 存档源

Over the course of three decades and with 80 million records sold, Enya has morphed into more than musician: She's her own adjective.

三十年来，恩雅唱片销量达到 8000 万张，她已不仅仅是音乐家：她是她自己的形容词。

What makes her music — and the mysterious woman behind it — appealing to so many?

是什么让她的音乐——以及其背后的神秘女人——吸引如此多的人？

Anne Helen Petersen visits the reclusive singer in Ireland.

安妮·海伦·彼得森 (Anne Helen Petersen) 拜访爱尔兰隐居歌手。

Everyone knows how to get to Enya’s castle.

每个人都知道如何到达恩雅的城堡。

At least everyone in Killiney, the sloping oceanside village 45 minutes out of Dublin.

至少基利尼 (Killiney) 的每个人都是如此，这个位于距都柏林 45 分钟路程的海滨村庄。

Walk past a massive public park, where paths thread by a resting quarry and an obelisk, erected in 1740 to distract the Irish peasants from the hard year that had come before.

步行经过一个大型公园，公园内的小路旁有一个休息的采石场和一座方尖碑，该方尖碑建于 1740 年，是为了分散爱尔兰农民对过去艰难岁月的注意力。

From there, it’s a quick stroll down the road, past the groundskeeper’s cottage that’s now a coffee shop, and through a stone gate that narrows an already spindly road.

从那里，沿着路快速漫步，经过场地管理员的小屋（现在是一家咖啡店），穿过一扇石门，这扇石门使本来就很细长的道路变窄。

Here, you’ll pass clumps of walkers taking the air, most with golden retrievers, all with sturdy anoraks in sensible colors.

在这里，您会经过一群群散步的人，其中大多数是金毛寻回犬，它们都穿着颜色鲜艳的厚外套。

Those walkers don’t pause when they pass the place in the 8-foot stone wall where a legit turret peeks over massive wooden gates — where, if you look closely, you can see the seam in the stone wall where Enya added four additional feet of height when she moved in back in the late ‘90s.

当这些步行者经过 8 英尺高的石墙上的地方时，他们并没有停下来，那里有一个合法的炮塔，从巨大的木门上窥视——如果你仔细观察，你可以看到石墙上的接缝，恩雅在 90 年代末搬进来时，又在那里增加了四英尺的高度。

Surveillance cameras eye and remind: Enya does not accept visitors unbidden.

监控摄像头注视并提醒：恩雅不接受不请自来的访客。

The castle is small, as castles go: just six bedrooms.

城堡很小，就像城堡一样：只有六间卧室。

But when Enya moved in, she redid them all.

但当恩雅搬进来后，她把它们全部重新设计了。

And the bathrooms, which she’s filled with Lalique glass — a word she pronounces like it were a bonbon melting on her tongue.

还有浴室，她的浴室里装满了莱俪玻璃——她发音这个词就像在舌头上融化的糖果一样。

Her bedroom has no curtains, just shutters, and when she opens them each morning, the Irish sea sprawls out before her.

她的卧室没有窗帘，只有百叶窗，每天早上当她打开百叶窗时，爱尔兰海就在她面前展开。

There are the Wicklow Mountains in one direction, and there's Dalkey Island, where the mystical stones of the druids still mystify, in the other.

一个方向是威克洛山脉，另一个方向是达尔基岛，那里的德鲁伊神秘石头仍然神秘莫测。

“I open those shutters, and the sea, it’s different ev-er-y day,” she says.

“我打开百叶窗，大海每天都不一样，”她说。

“It’s very inspiring to me.

“这对我来说非常有启发。

I just look at the view, and if it’s overcast and raining, no matter: I never tire of it.” Her bedroom, Enya tells me, is her favorite room.

我只是看风景，阴天下雨也没关系，我乐此不疲。”恩雅告诉我，她的卧室是她最喜欢的房间。

Traditionally, castles were passed through family lines.

传统上，城堡是通过家族传承的。

Enya — whose wealth is estimated at $136 million, about double that of Chris Martin — bought her own.

恩雅（Enya）的财富估计为 1.36 亿美元，大约是克里斯·马丁（Chris Martin）的两倍，她买下了自己的财产。

But unlike her neighbor Bono, whose income stems from massive world tours, Enya does not tour, and never has toured.

但与她的邻居波诺不同，恩雅的收入来自大规模的世界巡演，恩雅不巡演，也从未巡演过。

She submits to minimal press.

她只接受最少的媒体报道。

She takes up to seven years between albums.

她每张专辑之间需要长达七年的时间。

Yet she has sold a total of 80 million records, and is one of a dwindling group whose records people are willing to buy.

然而，她的唱片总共售出了 8000 万张，并且是人们愿意购买唱片的人数不断减少的群体之一。

Her success so deeply contradicts accepted industry wisdom that it’s inspired a term — “Enya-nomics” — to describe it.

她的成功与公认的行业智慧严重矛盾，以至于催生了一个术语——“恩雅经济学”来描述它。

Several years ago, she was invited to Harvard Business School to discuss the subject, but, like most invitations, Enya declined.

几年前，她受邀到哈佛商学院讨论这个主题，但像大多数邀请一样，恩雅拒绝了。

Her underexposure, after all, is at the heart of both Enya-nomics and her appeal.

毕竟，她的曝光不足是恩雅经济学和她的吸引力的核心。

Unlike other local celebrities — Bono, The Edge, Van Morrison, Pierce Brosnan , director Neil Jordan — who’ll make odd appearances at the local establishment, Enya is seldom seen outside the walls of her castle.

与其他当地名人——波诺、The Edge、范·莫里森、皮尔斯·布鲁斯南、导演尼尔·乔丹——不同，恩雅很少出现在她的城堡墙外。

One shopkeeper claims to have seen a woman matching her description in a tracksuit, but the idea of Enya in a tracksuit boggles the mind.

一位店主声称见过一位与她的描述相符的穿着运动服的女人，但恩雅穿着运动服的想法令人难以置信。

No one knows much about her private life, save that she’s close to her family, hasn’t been married, and enjoys old Hollywood.

没有人对她的私生活了解太多，只知道她与家人关系密切，尚未结婚，并且喜欢老好莱坞。

There are no photos of Enya in pants, or without the makeup that emphasizes her alabaster skin and dark, pooling eyes.

没有恩雅穿着裤子的照片，也没有化妆的照片，这些照片强调了她雪花石膏般的皮肤和深色的、水汪汪的眼睛。

Her look, like her sound, is markedly different from the norms of musical celebrity: her pitch black hair trimmed short, her clothes Arthurian.

她的外表，就像她的声音一样，与音乐名人的标准明显不同：她的乌黑头发修剪得很短，她的衣服是亚瑟王风格的。

On her album covers, Enya’s always posed against a backdrop of nature or old regency; the cover of her 1988 breakthrough album Watermark renders her the subject of an impressionist painting.

在她的专辑封面上，恩雅总是以自然或旧摄政为背景摆出姿势。她 1988 年突破性专辑《水印》的封面将她描绘成印象派绘画的主题。

Her look, like her sound, seems to exist outside of time.

她的外表，就像她的声音一样，似乎存在于时间之外。

In her songs, there are no references to objects, technological or otherwise: just emotions , swells, landscapes, time.

在她的歌曲中，没有提及物体、技术或其他：只有情感、浪潮、风景、时间。

In her real life, she checks her email once every few weeks, and even then, very quickly.

在她的现实生活中，她每隔几周就会检查一次电子邮件，而且即使如此，也会很快。

“It feels so cold,” she says, making a face like she’d bitten into a lemon.

“感觉好冷，”她说，表情就像咬了一口柠檬。

“The energy is no good.

“能量不好。

I’d rather go for a walk.”

我宁愿去散步。”

It is as if a woman of the 18th century, renowned for her beauty and voice, was transplanted to the present, where she would sell as many albums as Beyoncé and baffle all industry experts.

就好像一位以美貌和声音闻名的 18 世纪女性被移植到了现在，她的专辑销量与碧昂斯一样多，让所有行业专家都感到困惑。

She transcends centuries, but she also exceeds hierarchies of cool.

她超越了几个世纪，但她也超越了酷的等级制度。

Her style has been derogatorily described as Muzak or New Age — the aural approximation of a warm bath — but might be more fairly described as ancient choral music on synth steroids.

她的风格被贬义地描述为穆扎克音乐或新时代音乐——听觉上近似于温水浴——但可能更公平地描述为合成类固醇上的古代合唱音乐。

Enya, for her part, describes her genre of music as “Enya.” It’s played at weddings.

恩雅则将她的音乐流派描述为“恩雅”。这是在婚礼上演奏的。

It’s in car commercials.

它出现在汽车广告中。

It made the Fugees’ “ Ready or Not ” feel like an incantation.

这让逃亡者乐队的“Ready or Not”感觉就像是一个咒语。

It’s perfect at Christmas.

圣诞节的时候再合适不过了。

After 9/11, it was all over CNN.

9/11 事件之后，CNN 报道了这一切。

People probably don’t have much sex to Enya, but women have assuredly orgasmed to it.

人们可能不会与恩雅发生太多性行为，但女性肯定会因此而达到高潮。

It’s at once stunningly flexible and spectacularly safe.

它既极其灵活又极其安全。

Enya is basic, which is to say, she’s elemental: sacred without religion.

恩雅是基本的，也就是说，她是元素的：没有宗教信仰的神圣。

And as she prepares to release her eighth studio album — and first in seven years — the conversation isn’t about reinventing herself for the digital age, or “Enya’s Second Act.” Her career is like a continuously held note: a single tone, but a rich one, shielded, at least to this point, from the vagaries of the age and industry.

当她准备发行第八张录音室专辑时——这也是七年来的第一张——谈话的主题并不是在数字时代重塑自己，也不是“恩雅的第二幕”。她的职业生涯就像一个持续保持的音符：单一的基调，但丰富的基调，至少在这一点上，不受时代和行业变幻莫测的影响。

Which isn’t to say it’s been easy.

这并不是说这很容易。

It’s taken years of work — of carefully cultivated mystery, of continuous self-effacement — for Enya to feel this inevitable and eternal.

经过多年的努力——精心培养的神秘感，不断的自我抹杀——恩雅才感觉到这是不可避免的和永恒的。

For her to become not just an artist, but an adjective.

让她不仅成为一名艺术家，而且成为一个形容词。

Photographed exclusively for BuzzFeed News in London on Nov.

11 月 11 日在伦敦为 BuzzFeed News 独家拍摄。

16.

That’s the feel of the listening party for the new album, Dark Sky Island , held on a blustery day in October: very Enya .

这就是在十月的大风天举行的新专辑《黑暗天空岛》听歌会的感觉：非常恩雅。

Warner Bros.

华纳兄弟

Records, her label since the days of “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away),” is throwing an event that makes you feel like CDs are selling for $17.99 apiece all over again.

Records 是她从“Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)”时代起就创立的唱片公司，现在正在举办一场活动，让你感觉 CD 再次以每张 17.99 美元的价格出售。

Even the invitation, which promises “canapés,” feels like a throwback.

就连承诺提供“小吃”的邀请函也感觉像是一种复古。

It’s at an Upper East Side marbled mansion, with a spiraling marble staircase that, as you ascend, reveals Enya’s name projected on the ceiling above.

它位于上东区的一座大理石豪宅中，有一个螺旋形的大理石楼梯，当你上升时，恩雅的名字投射在上面的天花板上。

The crowd skews young and hip — a mix of music journalists and Warner employees flown in for the occasion.

人群主要是年轻人和时尚人士——其中有音乐记者和华纳公司的员工专程赶来参加这个活动。

One, in his late thirties, tells me that seeing Enya has been his life’s dream: “I’ve seen Cher and Adam Lambert, so now I’ve seen them all.”

一位三十多岁的人告诉我，见到恩雅是他一生的梦想：“我见过雪儿和亚当·兰伯特，所以现在我已经见过他们所有人了。”

Clustered at small cocktail tables, everyone’s invited to turn off cell phones so as to “replicate the experience” of the locale invoked by the album — a real island, Sark, off the coast of France, where the 600 residents have committed to emitting no light pollution.

聚集在小鸡尾酒桌上，每个人都被邀请关掉手机，以“复制体验”专辑中提到的场景——法国海岸附近的一个真实的萨克岛，那里的 600 名居民承诺不排放光污染。

People start closing their eyes, trancelike — even the journalists with the coolest hair — and get that softened look people get in their faces when watching a wedding, or a sunset.

人们开始闭上眼睛，恍惚地——即使是头发最酷的记者——也会看到人们在观看婚礼或日落时脸上的柔和表情。

The "Enya" look.

“恩雅”的样子。

When the intro to “Echoes in Rain” plays, the exec sitting in front of me goes nuts, in a subdued, candlelit way.

当《Echoes in Rain》的前奏响起时，坐在我前面的高管以一种柔和的、烛光般的方式发疯了。

“This is the shit !” he whisper-shouts.

“这就是狗屎！”他低声喊道。

Then there’s a ballad, “So I Could Find My Way,” that a journalist will later tell Enya will be perfect for a breakup scene in a rom-com, and “Sancta Maria,” the sort of escalating march to which my brother and I would’ve made an intricately choreographed dance when we were 6 and 9.

然后是一首民谣《So I Could Find My Way》，一位记者后来告诉恩雅，这首歌非常适合浪漫喜剧中的分手场景，还有《Sancta Maria》，这是一种不断升级的进行曲，我和哥哥在我们 6 岁和 9 岁的时候，会跳一段精心编排的舞蹈。

An exec from Warner Music UK comes out and effuses about Enya and her 80 million records.

英国华纳音乐公司的一位高管出柜，对恩雅和她的 8000 万张唱片赞不绝口。

When he mentions that Enya’s one of the only artists who’s been on their roster since the ‘80s, it’s with gratitude, tinged with just the slightest bit of desperation.

当他提到恩雅是自 80 年代以来仅有的几个一直在他们名单上的艺术家之一时，他的语气里充满了感激之情，还夹杂着一丝绝望。

And while her albums have performed well ( A Day Without Rain sold 15 million and became the fifth-biggest international album of 2001; Amaratine , released in 2005, sold 6.5 million copies; her Christmas album, And Winter Came, sold 3 million in 2008), the numbers for Dark Sky Island won't be what they used to be, even for an artist whose core audience might still buy CDs.

尽管她的专辑表现良好（《A Day Without Rain》售出 1500 万张，成为 2001 年第五大国际专辑；2005 年发行的《Amaratine》售出 650 万张；她的圣诞专辑《And Winter Came》在 2008 年售出 300 万张），但《Dark Sky Island》的销量将不再像以前那样，即使对于一位核心观众可能仍会购买 CD 的艺术家来说也是如此。

For the first time, Enya is talking publicly, and seriously, about the idea of a tour.

恩雅第一次公开、严肃地谈论巡演的想法。

In the meantime, she's adapting to this new landscape.

与此同时，她正在适应这个新环境。

A 2013 Volvo ad with Jean-Claude Van Damme featuring her 2000 single "Only Time" has been viewed 81 million times on YouTube and launched the song back into Billboard 's Hot 100 over a decade after its initial release.

2013 年尚格·云顿 (Jean-Claude Van Damme) 为沃尔沃拍摄的广告中收录了她 2000 年的单曲《Only Time》，在 YouTube 上的观看次数达到了 8100 万次，这首歌在首次发行十多年后重新跻身 Billboard 热门 100 强。

The song has 36 million streams on Spotify, where Enya's artist channel has 1.2 million monthly listeners; there's a reliable market for music that can meld so seamlessly into the background.

这首歌在 Spotify 上有 3600 万次播放，恩雅的艺人频道每月有 120 万听众；可以无缝地融入背景的音乐有一个可靠的市场。

"In the next year you'll start to see all kinds of usages for the songs on Dark Sky Island ," says Dion Singer, executive vice president of creative at Warner Bros.

华纳兄弟创意执行副总裁迪翁·辛格 (Dion Singer) 表示：“明年，你将开始看到《黑暗天空岛》中歌曲的各种用途。”

"It's all about finding ways of exposing her music while being absolutely aware that it needs to keep the elegance and respect of her compositions.

“这一切都是为了寻找暴露她的音乐的方法，同时绝对意识到它需要保持她作品的优雅和尊重。

We can also see how being in films and commercials kept her music so front-of-mind.

我们还可以看到电影和广告中的音乐如何让她的音乐如此引人注目。

It's exciting when you see how many people stream her entire catalog every week and the different kinds of playlists she ends up on."

当你看到每周有多少人播放她的整个目录以及她最终进入的不同类型的播放列表时，真是令人兴奋。”

Enya emerges from the shadows wearing a full-length black taffeta dress and a velvet shrug.

恩雅 (Enya) 从阴影中现身，身穿黑色塔夫绸长裙，耸肩耸肩。

She’s 54, but she has the skin of someone much younger — or someone who spends most of her time in an Irish castle.

她已经 54 岁了，但她的皮肤却比她年轻得多——或者说她大部分时间都在爱尔兰城堡里度过。

She looks like a mix of Deanna Troi and my mom, which is to say, she is the most beautiful woman in the world.

她看起来就像迪安娜·特洛伊和我妈妈的混合体，也就是说，她是世界上最美丽的女人。

She appears, nods as the room applauds her, and disappears without a word.

她出现了，在全场为她鼓掌时点了点头，然后一言不发地消失了。

“Now, for a light mingle,” the exec announces.

“现在，进行轻松的交流，”这位高管宣布。

In the next room, Enya has a receiving line, like a bride in all black.

隔壁房间里，恩雅有一条接收线，就像一位身穿黑衣的新娘。

Everyone has a story to tell her: Here is what you mean to me; here is where your music made room in my life.

每个人都有一个故事要告诉她：这就是你对我的意义；这是你的音乐在我的生活中腾出空间的地方。

“Was that a harpsichord I heard on ‘Sancta Maria’?” someone asks.

“那是我在《圣玛利亚》中听到的羽管键琴吗？”有人问。

“Oh, we never reveal our secrets,” she says, with a half-smile.

“哦，我们从不泄露我们的秘密，”她半笑着说。

She’s referring to the work of the so-called “triad” that make up Enya, the musical entity.

她指的是构成音乐实体恩雅的所谓“三合会”的作品。

Enya conjures the melodies; husband-and-wife team Nicky and Roma Ryan are responsible for the production (him) and lyrics (her).

恩雅召唤出旋律；夫妻团队 Nicky 和 Roma Ryan 负责制作（他）和歌词（她）。

Nicky Ryan is a student of Phil Spector’s famed “wall of sound” school of production, and applies the same principle to each of Enya’s songs, layering her voice up to 500 times, then adding in a mix of instruments, some of which Enya plays and others he’s sampled.

尼基·瑞安 (Nicky Ryan) 是菲尔·斯佩克特 (Phil Spector) 著名的“声音之墙”制作学校的学生，他将相同的原理应用于恩雅的每首歌曲，将她的声音分层多达 500 次，然后添加混合乐器，其中一些是恩雅演奏的，另一些是他采样的。

Nicky and Roma go everywhere that Enya goes, and they’re here at the listening party, holding court, flanking her during the dinner party and staying even after Enya glides away before the dessert course arrives.

恩雅去的地方，尼基和罗玛都会去，他们会出席聆听派对，在晚宴期间陪伴在她身边，甚至在恩雅在甜点上桌之前离开后，他们也会留下来。

I ask the twentysomething waiter if he’d ever heard of Enya.

我问那个二十多岁的服务员是否听说过恩雅。

He pauses, looks over at a poster of her face on the wall, and says, “That’s her song in that car commercial with Van Damme, right?”

他停顿了一下，看着墙上一张她的脸的海报，然后说：“那是她在 Van Damme 的汽车广告中唱的歌，对吗？”

Enya, born Eithne Ni Bhraonáin, grew up in the Northwest corner of Ireland in a town called Gweedore, in County Donegal.

恩雅（Enya）原名埃思尼·尼·布哈奥纳因（Eithne Ni Bhraonáin），在爱尔兰西北角多尼戈尔郡一个名叫圭多尔（Gweedore）的小镇长大。

“There’s the mountains, the bitter Atlantic, and that’s it,” Enya explains.

“这里有山脉，还有苦涩的大西洋，仅此而已，”恩雅解释道。

Her father led a band before opening up the family pub; her mother was a piano teacher, but had little time to teach Enya, the sixth of nine children.

她的父亲在开设家庭酒吧之前曾领导过一支乐队。她的母亲是一名钢琴老师，但几乎没有时间教恩雅，恩雅是九个孩子中的第六个。

She grew up speaking Gaelic and was regularly summoned — at family gatherings, at the pub, wherever — to sing in front of crowds.

她从小就讲盖尔语，经常被召唤——在家庭聚会、酒吧等任何地方——在人群面前唱歌。

“At 3 years of age, I used to go to singing competitions,” she says.

“三岁时，我经常去参加歌唱比赛，”她说。

“And part of the competition would be for the whole family, and we’d have to sing harmonies after hearing a song once.

“比赛的一部分是针对全家人的，我们必须在听完一首歌后唱和声。

I never found it strange.”

我从来没觉得这有什么奇怪的。”

Enya was in the deep middle of the birth order.

恩雅的出生顺序处于中间位置。

“Let’s say there’d be a question like ‘Will we go to the pictures today?’" Enya recalls.

“假设有一个问题，比如‘我们今天去看电影吗？’”恩雅回忆道。

“What chance did I have to say yes or no?” At this, she laughs: It’s not a point of resentment.

“我有什么机会说是或不是？”说到这里，她笑道：这并不是什么怨恨的事。

“By the time it came down to number five, — that’s me — it was just like, Here we go .

“当它降到第五名时，——那就是我——就像是，我们开始吧。

It was difficult to be heard, but I was very comfortable with that because I was able to be myself, able to be let alone.” Enya taught herself to play the piano on her own, borrowing her mother’s instructional books, leading herself through the levels.

虽然很难被听到，但我对此感到非常舒服，因为我能够做我自己，能够不受干扰。”恩雅借用了母亲的教学书籍，自学弹钢琴，引导自己通过各个级别。

“I got the duets, and I asked my sister to play a bit, and she’d refuse.

“我得到了二重唱，我请我姐姐演奏一下，但她拒绝了。

I’d say, ‘I’ll give you my sweets for a week if you play it!’”

我会说，‘如果你玩的话，我会给你一周的糖果！’”

Growing up amid The Troubles, she learned to live with the quiet terrors of everyday life.

在麻烦中长大的她学会了忍受日常生活中无声的恐惧。

The “six counties” occupied by Britain separated Enya’s hometown from Dublin, and her family was regularly pulled over and searched on the way and back.

被英国占领的“六郡”将恩雅的家乡与都柏林隔开，她的家人在往返途中经常被拦下搜查。

“You’d go into a shop in Derry and you’d be checked by people standing with guns,” Enya says.

“你走进德里的一家商店，就会被拿着枪的人检查，”恩雅说。

“And my family, we’d have to be careful speaking Gaelic: If you did, you were pinpointing where you came from, and it was too political at the time.

“而我的家人，我们必须小心地说盖尔语：如果你这样做，你就在指出你来自哪里，而且当时这太政治化了。

Whereas for us, it was our first language, and we didn’t see anything wrong with it.”

而对我们来说，这是我们的母语，我们没有发现它有什么问题。”

As a child, Enya had resigned herself to attending the local school, which lacked a music program.

小时候，恩雅就放弃了就读当地学校的机会，因为那里没有音乐课程。

A nearby boarding school did, but the family was already paying for private school for three of Enya’s siblings.

附近的一所寄宿学校这样做了，但家里已经为恩雅的三个兄弟姐妹支付了私立学校的费用。

“I thought, Oh well, it’s not possible to send us all .

“我想，哦，好吧，不可能把我们所有人都派出去。

But I was very close to my granddad and grandma, and they took me there one day and showed me around, and asked if I’d like to go.

但我和我的爷爷和奶奶非常亲近，有一天他们带我去了那里，带我四处参观，并问我是否愿意去。

There was choir, and there was music, and at the time I was reading Malory Towers and all the boarding school books, and I just thought it was going to be all midnight feasts — I was over the moon.”

有唱诗班，有音乐，当时我正在读马洛里塔和所有寄宿学校的书籍，我只是以为这将是所有午夜盛宴 - 我欣喜若狂。”

At this, Enya gets the sort of look on her face that former campers do when describing their childhood summers.

说到这里，恩雅脸上的表情就像以前的露营者在描述他们童年的夏天时所做的那样。

“Parents ask me, ‘I don’t know whether to send my kid to boarding school,’ and I say, 'It’s either for you or it’s not.' And it was definitely, definitely for me.”

“父母问我，‘我不知道是否要送我的孩子去寄宿学校，’我说，‘要么适合你，要么不适合。’这绝对、绝对适合我。”

Meanwhile, three of Enya’s siblings and twin uncles were in a band, Clannad, that was starting to receive notice in Ireland.

与此同时，恩雅的三个兄弟姐妹和双胞胎叔叔组成了一支名为 Clannad 的乐队，该乐队开始在爱尔兰受到关注。

Nicky was their manager, and listened closely when Enya’s sister, Maire, told him about Enya’s incredible vocal range.

尼基是他们的经理，当恩雅的妹妹梅尔告诉他恩雅令人难以置信的音域时，尼基仔细聆听。

“I knew what she could be,” he says, admitting that Enya’s beauty was part of the equation.

“我知道她会成为什么样的人，”他说，并承认恩雅的美丽是其中的一部分。

When Nicky clashed with others in the group over their drinking, Enya had a choice.

当尼基与小组中的其他人因酗酒发生冲突时，恩雅有一个选择。

“Stay with us or be famous or go with him and be nothing,” the ultimatum supposedly went.

最后通牒据说是这样写的：“留在我们身边，要么出名，要么跟他走，什么都不是。”

Enya went with Nicky — and watched as Clannad’s popularity exploded in 1982, when “ Theme from Harry’s Game ,” sung entirely in Gaelic, became an international hit.

恩雅 (Enya) 和尼基 (Nicky) 一起前往，并见证了 1982 年《Clannad》的人气爆发式增长，当时完全用盖尔语演唱的《哈利游戏主题曲》风靡全球。

Noel Duggan, Ciaran Brennan, Moya Brennan, Padraig Duggan, and Paul Brennan of Clannad.

Clannad 的诺尔·杜根 (Noel Duggan)、塞兰·布伦南 (Ciaran Brennan)、莫亚·布伦南 (Moya Brennan)、帕德里格·杜根 (Padraig Duggan) 和保罗·布伦南 (Paul Brennan)。

If Enya regretted her decision, it doesn’t come out in the telling.

如果恩雅对她的决定感到后悔，故事中也不会表现出来。

“Those were some of the simplest and happiest times,” Roma says.

“那是最简单、最快乐的时光，”罗马说。

They cobbled together a studio in the background, auguring the soundboard with a blowtorch, and Nicky, whose aptitude and reputation for mixing sound was becoming gradually known, made a living producing the albums of traditional Irish groups.

他们在后台拼凑了一个工作室，用喷灯预兆音板，而尼基在混音方面的才能和声誉逐渐为人所知，他以制作传统爱尔兰乐队的专辑为生。

Meanwhile, Enya composed, fiddled, and worked with Nicky to produce the distinct vocal layering and synth sampling that would become her trademark.

与此同时，恩雅与尼基一起作曲、演奏和合作，制作出独特的声音层次和合成器采样，这将成为她的标志。

That sound wouldn’t go public until 1986, when she was commissioned to compose the soundtrack to the BBC miniseries The Celts, and Enya, the monolithic entity, was born.

这种声音直到 1986 年才公开，当时她受委托为 BBC 迷你剧《凯尔特人》创作配乐，恩雅这个庞大的实体就此诞生。

“That’s when I convinced her to change the spelling of her name to Enya,” Nicky says.

“就在那时，我说服她将名字的拼写改为恩雅，”尼基说。

“Before, it was spelled the way it’s spelled it Gaelic: Eithne.

“以前，它的拼写方式与盖尔语的拼写方式相同：Eithne。

But I knew that anyone who’s not Irish would look at that and say ‘Eth-ney.' So I told her, ‘Why don’t we spell it phonetically?’” They also dropped her last name, a decision that no one will explain, but they do chuckle at the mention of all the great divas who’ve gone by one name: Madonna, Cher, Beyoncé, and Adele — an artist whose return after five years away and general reluctance, when it comes the public eye, mirrors Enya’s own.

但我知道任何非爱尔兰人看到这个都会说“Eth-ney”。所以我告诉她，‘我们为什么不按语音拼写呢？’”他们还去掉了她的姓氏，这一决定没有人会解释，但当提到所有伟大的女主角都用同一个名字时，他们确实咯咯地笑了：麦当娜、雪儿、碧昂丝和阿黛尔——这位艺术家在离开五年后回归，在公众眼中普遍不情愿，这反映了恩雅自己的名字。

“Adele put music first,” Enya says.

“阿黛尔把音乐放在第一位，”恩雅说。

“I know that.

“我知道这一点。

She took a big break!” At this, there’s delight in Enya’s voice, as if she and Adele are on the same mystically reticent team.

她彻底休息了！”说到这里，恩雅的声音里充满了喜悦，仿佛她和阿黛尔是同一支神秘沉默的队伍。

Reticence has been her posture from beginning, when, after the 1988 release of Watermark , people were showing up en masse to the record store demanding the “Sail Away” song — prompting the label to give the track, originally entitled “Orinoco Flow,” its parenthetical second half for the remaining 11 million sold.

从一开始，她就保持沉默，1988 年《Watermark》发行后，人们成群结队地来到唱片店索要“Sail Away”这首歌，这促使唱片公司将这首原名为“Orinoco Flow”的歌曲的后半部分附加到了剩余的 1100 万张销量中。

When Enya first sat for interviews, she was shy and receding, as amazed as everyone else that a sound like hers would find itself sandwiched between Bon Jovi and MC Hammer.

当恩雅第一次接受采访时，她害羞且退缩，和其他人一样惊讶于像她这样的声音会发现自己夹在 Bon Jovi 和 MC Hammer 之间。

In her first national American interview in 1989, she and Joan Lunden smiled warmly at each other with matching haircuts of different shades.

1989 年，在她第一次接受美国全国采访时，她和琼·伦登 (Joan Lunden) 深浅相配的发型互相温暖地微笑。

Enya was even more soft-spoken than she is now — and clearly overwhelmed.

恩雅说话比现在更加温和，而且显然不知所措。

“It was such a whirl,” Enya recalls of that time.

“那真是一场旋风，”恩雅回忆起那段时间。

“But from the beginning, I didn’t feel like a celebrity.

“但从一开始，我就不觉得自己是名人。

When people heard 'Orinoco Flow,' they didn’t know if it was a band, if it was a man or a woman; they had no idea.

当人们听到“奥里诺科河”时，他们不知道这是一支乐队，是男人还是女人；他们不知道。

So I had to be the spokesperson for the music.”

所以我必须成为音乐的代言人。”

Shepherd Moons , her 1991 follow-up to Watermark , spent 238 weeks on the Billboard charts; Paint the Sky With Stars , her 1997 greatest hits compilation, hung out there for four years; in 2000, a radio-friendly remix of “Only Time,” the lead single from A Day Without Rain , hit No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary Chart.

她 1991 年继《Watermark》之后的《Shepherd Moons》在公告牌排行榜上停留了 238 周；她 1997 年的精选集《Paint the Sky With Stars》在那儿挂了四年； 2000 年，《A Day Without Rain》中主打单曲《Only Time》的混音版在电台上广受欢迎，在当代成人排行榜上名列第一。

It appeared in commercials for everything from Friends to benefits for the survivors of 9/11, effectively sealing Enya’s role as life’s ambient soundtrack.

它出现在从《老友记》到 9/11 幸存者福利的各种广告中，有效地确立了恩雅作为生活背景音乐的角色。

It also cemented the collective fortunes of Enya, Nicky, and Roma, which are unassumingly on display at the studio designed uniquely for their use, off the Ryans' gated home in Killiney.

它还巩固了恩雅（Enya）、尼基（Nicky）和罗马（Roma）的集体财富，这些财富在瑞安一家位于基利尼（Killiney）的封闭住宅外专为他们设计的工作室中低调地展出。

The road there used to be a quaint avenue, with trees on either side so high they’d touch in the middle.

那里的路曾经是一条古色古香的大道，两边的树都高得中间都碰到了。

Now it’s more like a thoroughfare, and one of several things that, in Nicky’s words, “niggle” him, including the leashless dogs of Killiney Park, and every single song he’s ever produced.

现在它更像是一条大道，用尼基的话说，是让他“烦恼”的几件事之一，包括基利尼公园里那些没有拴绳的狗，以及他制作的每一首歌。

Like Enya, he’s a perfectionist, the drawbacks of which he discusses as we pull into the driveway, where an interior gate trimmed with golden stars and the names "NICKY," "ENYA," "ROMA" guard the entryway to the studio.

和恩雅一样，他也是一个完美主义者，当我们驶入车道时，他讨论了完美主义者的缺点，那里有一扇装饰着金色星星的内门，上面有“NICKY”、“ENYA”、“ROMA”的名字，守卫着工作室的入口。

Nicky Ryan, Enya, and Roma Ryan (seated) at an event for 2008's And Winter Came .

尼基·瑞安 (Nicky Ryan)、恩雅 (Enya) 和罗玛·瑞安 (Roma Ryan)（坐在）在 2008 年《冬日来临》的活动中。

“It’s a bit much, but I don’t care what other people think,” Nicky says.

“这有点多了，但我不在乎别人怎么想，”尼基说。

“We got it when Paint the Sky With Stars hit four years on the American charts.

“当《Paint the Sky With Stars》在美国排行榜上连续四年时，我们就得到了它。

”

The entrance to the studio is lined with awards: four Grammys and dozens of others — from Japan, from Germany, from the Phoenix Film Critics Society.

工作室的入口处排满了奖项：四项格莱美奖和数十项其他奖项——来自日本、德国、凤凰城影评人协会。

There’s a giant piece of glass etched with the cover of Shepherd Moons .

有一块巨大的玻璃，上面蚀刻着牧羊人月亮的盖子。

“Radio City Music Hall sent this to her in the hope she would do 15 concerts there,” Nicky narrates.

“无线电城音乐厅把这张照片发给她，希望她能在那里举办 15 场音乐会，”尼基叙述道。

“But, she didn’t.” From the control room, you can see into the recording space, where a Steinway piano, three antique mics, and a well-cushioned white leather easy chair form a loose triangle.

“但是，她没有。”从控制室，您可以看到录音空间，那里有一架施坦威钢琴、三个古董麦克风和一张软垫良好的白色皮革安乐椅，形成一个松散的三角形。

There’s a particularly soothing incense-like smell — “that’s Enya’s doing” — and a wall-to-wall curtain, which, with one button, recedes to reveal a massive acreage, an entire avenue of trees.

房间里有一种特别舒缓的熏香气味——“那是恩雅的作品”——还有一个从墙到墙的窗帘，只要按一下按钮，窗帘就会后退，露出一大片土地，一整条林荫道。

It’s the first time back to the studio in months — enough time for the Steinway to go woefully out of tune.

这是几个月来第一次回到录音室——这段时间足以让施坦威严重跑调。

After the release of the Christmas-themed album And Winter Came in 2008, they took an indeterminate break.

2008年发行圣诞主题专辑《And Winter Came》后，他们就暂时休息了。

“I felt I didn’t know what to do,” Enya would later tell me.

“我觉得我不知道该怎么办，”恩雅后来告诉我。

“I thought I needed a break, and the music needed a break.” That break ended up spanning three years.

“我想我需要休息一下，音乐也需要休息一下。”那次分手最终持续了三年。

“I know it sounds like a long time,” she said, “but to me, it felt like six months.” Eventually, Roma shared some of poems she’d been writing — rotating around the loose concept of the “dark sky island” of Sark.

“我知道这听起来很长，”她说，“但对我来说，感觉就像六个月一样。”最终，罗马分享了她一直在写的一些诗——围绕萨克岛“黑暗天空岛”的松散概念。

Only then did she finally feel the urge to come back.

直到这时，她才终于有了想要回来的冲动。

Enya after winning her 2007 Grammy for Best New Age Album, Amarantine .

恩雅 (Enya) 在赢得 2007 年格莱美最佳新世纪专辑奖后，《Amarantine》。

Nicky plays one of the bonus tracks from the album.

尼基演奏了专辑中的一首额外曲目。

“We always controlled the music,” he says.

“我们总是控制音乐，”他说。

“From the beginning, we never allowed an A&R man here, or anyone who wanted to deviate or move the album in any direction.” Enya has never worked with anyone other than Nicky and Roma — and, since pairing with Enya, Nicky and Roma have never worked with anyone but her.

“从一开始，我们就不允许 A&R 人员在这里，或者任何想要偏离或将专辑朝任何方向移动的人。”恩雅从未与尼基和罗玛以外的任何人合作过，而且自从与恩雅合作以来，尼基和罗玛除了她之外从未与任何人合作过。

He starts to say more, but there’s a bustling sound at the door: “The girls are here!” Roma and Enya enter, a flurry of kisses and velvet overcoats.

他还想再说什么，门口却传来一阵喧闹的声音：“姑娘们来了！”罗姆和恩雅进来了，两人亲吻并穿上了天鹅绒大衣。

“Welcome to our home!” Enya says.

“欢迎来到我们家！”恩雅说。

“Did you get a chance to see Dalkey?

“你有机会见到达尔基吗？

It’s a nice wee village.

这是一个不错的小村庄。

Did you do the trip to Bono’s house?”

你去过波诺家吗？”

“Neil Jordan lives out on the point,” Nicky adds.

“尼尔乔丹活在要点上，”尼基补充道。

“You’ll see him walking about the park.”

“你会看到他在公园里散步。”

It’s unclear whether it’s just happenstance that every major Irish celebrity lives within five miles of one another.

目前尚不清楚每位爱尔兰名人都住在彼此相距不到五英里的地方是否只是巧合。

“When I moved out here, I had no idea about who lived here,” Enya tells me.

“当我搬到这里时，我不知道谁住在这里，”恩雅告诉我。

Enya laughs, concedes.

恩雅笑了，承认了。

When she laughs, as when she speaks, it’s even-toned, like there’s an upper register of emotion to where she’ll allow herself.

当她笑的时候，就像她说话的时候一样，语气很平静，就像她允许自己表达出一种高亢的情感。

“It was, it was, back in Victorian times." Now she overlooks Bono’s house.

“那是，那是，回到维多利亚时代。”现在她俯瞰着波诺的房子。

“It’s really quite covered,” she says bashfully.

“真的很隐蔽，”她害羞地说。

“There’s a lot of trees.

But you do see the top of his house.”

“We meet very often,” she admits.

“我们经常见面，”她承认。

“Because of the areas we frequent to eat, I see a lot of him.”

“因为我们经常去吃饭的地方，我看到了很多他。”

Like at a small seafood place down near the shore, where the trio would break for lunch every day at 1:30 while recording.

就像在靠近海岸的一家海鲜小店，三人组每天下午 1:30 一边录音一边休息吃午饭。

But it’s different here than in America — there are no paparazzi waiting to catch them.

但这里与美国不同——没有狗仔队等着抓他们。

“You can get your privacy,” Nicky says.

“你可以获得自己的隐私，”尼基说。

“Enya can go there undisturbed.”

“We go in for a little bit of conversation, a little banter with the staff about their weddings; it’s so tiny, noisy.

“我们进行了一些交谈，与工作人员就他们的婚礼进行了一些玩笑；它很小，很吵。

Brilliant food and so fast,” Enya adds.

食物很棒，而且速度很快。”恩雅补充道。

And then it’s back to the studio, where they usually work until 5 or 6, at which point Enya’s driver arrives to whisk her back the short miles to the castle.

然后回到工作室，他们通常工作到五点或六点，此时恩雅的司机会来接她回到几英里外的城堡。

Enya has what Americans would call resting bitchface, mixed with a general shyness, which has led many commentators to call her aloof or snobby.

In person, it just feels like she’s operating on an entirely different wavelength — like everyone else is speaking in the crazy, sped-up sound of nightmares, and only Enya’s figured out the right pacing.

就我个人而言，感觉就像她在一个完全不同的波长上运作——就像其他人都在用噩梦般的疯狂、加速的声音说话，只有恩雅找到了正确的节奏。

She pauses, always, before answering; she rarely inserts herself into a conversation, and she feels no need to fill silences.

She pauses, always, before answering;她很少介入谈话，也觉得没有必要填补沉默。

And yet, the oddest things — the economics of fast fashion, Alfred Hitchcock, Irish breakfast — can get her excited.

然而，最奇怪的事情——快时尚的经济学、阿尔弗雷德·希区柯克、爱尔兰早餐——都能让她兴奋。

“You tried black pudding!” referring to the Irish “delicacy,” a sort of grainy blood sausage, she says.

“You tried black pudding!”她说，指的是爱尔兰的“美味佳肴”，一种粒状血香肠。

“You’re very brave,” proceeding to list all the parts of the animals, once the dietary provenance of the poor, that we treat as delicacies today.

“你很勇敢，”接着列出了这些动物的所有部位，它们曾经是穷人的饮食来源，如今被我们视为美味佳肴。

“Like pig trotters,” says Nicky, who grew up in the working-class end of Dublin.

“就像猪蹄一样，”在都柏林工薪阶层长大的尼基说。

“Had them all growing up.

When people are poor, people are poor: There’s no part of the animal that wasn’t used.”

当人们贫穷时，人们就很贫穷：动物的每一部分都被利用了。”

“You just put your fork in the whole thing, no matter the fat and the hair,” he replies.

“你只要把叉子插进整个东西里，不管脂肪和头发，”他回答道。

Enya and Roma both suck in a breath.

“I cooked oxtail and tongue when I was at boarding school,” Enya says.

“当我在寄宿学校时，我煮了牛尾和舌头，”恩雅说。

“But I never ate it.” She pronounces “ate” like “ette.” “You think oxtail soup is very refined, and then you see the tail in front of you, and you think, That is a tail.

“但我从来没吃过。” She pronounces “ate” like “ette.” “You think oxtail soup is very refined, and then you see the tail in front of you, and you think, That is a tail.

”

For a late lunch, they’ve decided on the Powerscourt Estate — a 20-minute drive away, through winding, stone-enclosed roads with the sun peeking through.

为了吃一顿较晚的午餐，他们决定去鲍尔斯考特庄园 (Powerscourt Estate)——开车 20 分钟即可到达，穿过蜿蜒的石头道路，阳光透过来。

We drive in a Maybach — “There were only two in all of Ireland,” Nicky says.

我们开着一辆迈巴赫——“整个爱尔兰只有两辆，”尼基说。

“But then the other one crashed, so it’s one of a kind” — with privacy curtains on the back window, and a massive faux-fur lining the backseats.

“但后来另一架飞机坠毁了，所以它是独一无二的”——后窗上装有隐私窗帘，后座上衬着巨大的人造毛皮。

She and Roma huddle close in the back like a pair of sisters, deep in discussion about the squirrels they’d spotted in the trees along the drive.

她和罗玛像一对姐妹一样紧紧地挤在后面，深入讨论他们在车道沿线的树上发现的松鼠。

When Nicky rounds a hairpin turn and a car nearly hits him, Enya lets out a small gasp.

当尼基转弯时，一辆汽车差点撞到他，恩雅轻轻地喘了口气。

As we crown the hill of the sprawling, 47-acre estate, the light is saturated with golden yellow from hundreds of beech trees at the height of the turn of fall.

当我们登上这座占地 47 英亩的广阔庄园的山丘时，秋末之际，数百棵山毛榉树的金黄色阳光洒满了整个庄园。

It’s raining light.

天正下着光雨。

And then there’s the hotel, with a chandelier the size of a Smart car in the shape of a birdcage, wall-to-ceiling windows that look out on the grounds where guests spot deer and foxes, scampering abound in the way of an Irish storybook.

然后是酒店，里面有一盏鸟笼形状的智能汽车大小的枝形吊灯，从墙到天花板的窗户可以看到外面的庭院，客人可以看到鹿和狐狸，像爱尔兰故事书一样蹦蹦跳跳。

Walking the length of the entryway, Enya nods once, twice, at various men heading the service: This is Enya’s territory.

恩雅走过入口通道，对着领导服务的各个人点了一次、两次点头：这是恩雅的地盘。

“There’s a delightful little pub downstairs,” she explains as we sit down.

“楼下有一家令人愉快的小酒吧，”我们坐下时她解释道。

“So wee, just a few spots, but you can get a proper pint.” (When confronted with the rumor that, back in 1988, she could “drink anyone under the table” while in Dublin recording “Orinoco Flow,” Enya’s response felt like that of a different celebrity: “That is totally untrue,” she told The Telegraph .

“所以，虽然只有几个地方，但你可以喝到适当的品脱。” （1988 年，当恩雅在都柏林录制《奥里诺科河流》时，当面对谣言称她可以“在桌子底下喝任何人的酒”时，恩雅的反应感觉就像是另一个名人的反应：“这完全是不真实的，”她告诉《每日电讯报》。

“I can party, but I certainly do not party when I’m working.”) She orders fish and chips, hold the breading, and when it arrives, she picks daintily at her bright green mushy peas.

“我可以参加派对，但我工作时肯定不会参加派对。”）她点了鱼和薯条，拿着面包屑，当面包送达时，她精致地挑选着亮绿色的糊状豌豆。

Through it all, her posture remains immaculate.

I can’t keep my elbows off the table, but Enya’s resting position, always, is with her hands folded neatly in her lap.

我的手肘无法离开桌子，但恩雅的休息姿势始终是双手整齐地交叉放在膝盖上。

Enya’s memory — for her childhood, for her work — is pointed, uncluttered.

“Anytime I hear a song, it’s the whole story of the song,” she says.

“You actually go into the moment, into that year.

It’s like a diary: going back to that day, where you had written it, worked on it, the life of it, the day you finished it.

What you ate that day, the earrings you wore.

Every song — every song is a punch in the gut.”

When asked how she spoils herself, Enya replies, “Well I have a castle and I just bought a place in the south of France — is that spoiling myself enough?” Remodeling that property, just 20 minutes from Cannes, took up much of her time between albums.

当被问到她如何宠爱自己时，恩雅回答道：“我有一座城堡，而且刚刚在法国南部买了一个地方——这样宠自己就够了吗？” Remodeling that property, just 20 minutes from Cannes, took up much of her time between albums.

You get the sense that she does a lot of gauzily puttering around, or spending many hours contemplating potential slabs of granite, or just forgetting the passage of days.

你会感觉到她经常闲逛，或者花很多时间思考潜在的花岗岩板，或者只是忘记了日子的流逝。

“Oh, is it Friday?” she’d quietly asked at Powerscourt.

“哦，今天是星期五吗？” she’d quietly asked at Powerscourt.

“Enya walks through the door,” Nicky told me, “and then I open it.”

“恩雅走进门，”尼基告诉我，“然后我打开门。”

When Enya talks about the castle — or the ceremony, held in her honor, in which a giant mass of Japanese children lit candles in a field — she gets a misty, faraway tone in her voice.

当恩雅谈到这座城堡时——或者是为纪念她而举行的仪式时，一大群日本孩子在田野里点燃蜡烛——她的声音里充满了朦胧、遥远的语气。

Part of it is her accent: Enya speaks with the slightest intonation of Gaelic, and the careful, measured breathing of a lifelong singer.

“The exterior of the castle was built in 1840, in honor of the young queen, and called Victoria Castle.

It was placed on the hill, and he was hoping to entice Queen Victoria to come to visit.

它被放置在山上，他希望吸引维多利亚女王前来参观。

It was her second year on the throne.” She pauses, like a good storyteller.

“But she never came.”

“There was a fire in the 1900s, and it sat for several years,” she continues.

“Someone sent me an old clipping of it just sitting, with no roof, just the walls, and it was so very sad.

“有人给我发了一张旧剪报，它只是坐着，没有屋顶，只有墙壁，这真是太悲伤了。

Then, it was bought, by a whiskey heir, and he called it Ayesha.

然后，它被一位威士忌继承人买下，他称之为阿伊莎。

But then it passed through some hands, and when I bought it, it didn’t know what it was.

Victorian, but also trying to be a tourist castle?”

维多利亚风格，但也想成为一座旅游城堡？”

She pauses, grabs my hand.

“Oh, do you mind me talking like this?”

“哦，你介意我这样说话吗？”

“The inside was all dark, gloomy,” she continues.

“But I wanted to make it very much a home.

“但我非常想让它成为一个家。

I brought in pretty chandeliers, redid everything .

我买了漂亮的枝形吊灯，重新装修了一切。

I made it very romantic again.

我又让它变得非常浪漫。

And because of doing all that, I thought, I should change the name.

因为做了这一切，我想，我应该改变名字。

”

“This is all very Manderley,” I say, referring to Rebecca , the best-selling Daphne du Maurier book turned Hitchcock film that heavily features a fire, a sodden castle, and affections greatly misunderstood, and which Enya chose for the castle’s new name.

“这一切都非常曼陀丽，”我说，指的是《丽贝卡》，达芙妮·杜穆里埃的畅销书改编为希区柯克的电影，其中大量描写了一场火灾、一座湿透的城堡和被严重误解的情感，恩雅选择了它作为城堡的新名字。

“It is!

“是啊！

Last night, I dreamed, of Manderley...” she says, liltingly, quoting the opening line from the movie.

昨晚，我梦见了曼德利……”她轻快地说，引用了电影的开场白。

“I used to say fame and success are two different things,” Enya says, choosing her words carefully.

“我曾经说过，名声和成功是两件不同的事情，”恩雅谨慎地选择了自己的措辞。

“I realized, there’s no rulebook that says, ‘Your music is successful; you must now become famous.’ And so I questioned: Why must I do this ?

Is the focus more on me or the music?

重点是我还是音乐？

So I started to back away from things that were focusing solely on me.” Like any interview that focused on the men in her life or the once-strained relationship with her family.

所以我开始远离那些只关注我的事情。” Like any interview that focused on the men in her life or the once-strained relationship with her family.

“It does cause an intrigue,” she says.

“这确实引起了人们的兴趣，”她说。

“Which was not my intention, either!

But when you don’t do interviews or don’t answer certain questions, people write a fiction.

但当你不接受采访或不回答某些问题时，人们就会写小说。

I’ll always retain a bit of a mystery about me, because I like to.

我将永远对自己保持一点神秘感，因为我喜欢这样做。

I never felt that if you’re an artist, you had to live in a particular way, even though if you’re creative, and mysterious, then people automatically say you’re eccentric.”

我从来不觉得如果你是一名艺术家，你就必须以某种特定的方式生活，即使你很有创造力、很神秘，人们会自然而然地说你很古怪。”

Or fixate, destructively, on you.

或者破坏性地专注于你。

Enya’s had several stalkers: One stabbed himself in the neck after being thrown out of her parents' pub in 1997; another gained access to her castle in 2005 and tied up a maid, forcing Enya to flee to a panic room.

恩雅的身边有好几个跟踪者：其中一个在 1997 年被她父母的酒吧赶出后刺伤了自己的脖子；另一个人在 1997 年被父母赶出酒吧后刺伤了自己的脖子； 2005 年，另一个人进入了她的城堡并捆绑了一名女仆，迫使恩雅逃到一个恐慌的房间。

But Enya made a decision about how she would face them a long time ago.

但恩雅早就决定了要如何面对他们。

“In the beginning, it was strange, but after a while, I saw the other side: a person who cannot deal with certain parts of life.

“一开始，这很奇怪，但过了一段时间，我看到了另一面：一个无法处理生活某些部分的人。

They’re in a very unhappy place.

他们处于一个非常不快乐的地方。

It’s not really their fault, especially if they associate something disturbing with a song.

这并不是他们的错，尤其是当他们将一些令人不安的东西与一首歌联系起来时。

I had a choice to either deal with it and move on or experience all that negativity every time.

我可以选择要么处理它并继续前进，要么每次都经历所有的消极情绪。

So I moved on.

所以我继续前进。

It does not spook me.

它并没有吓到我。

It’s not really about me — it’s just that I’m a fixation, and it could be anyone.”

这并不是真的关于我——只是我很着迷，而且可能是任何人。”

That’s the problem, to some extent, when an artist sketches only the slightest outlines of her image: People will fill it in however they want.

在某种程度上，当艺术家只勾画出她的形象的最细微的轮廓时，这就是问题所在：人们会随心所欲地填充它。

Take questions about Enya’s love life.

询问有关恩雅爱情生活的问题。

She has never married, and doesn’t discuss specifics of past relationships.

她从未结过婚，也不讨论过去关系的细节。

“At first, I thought, How dare they!

“起初，我想，他们怎么敢！

” Enya says.

”恩雅说。

“Why did they ask me that?

“他们为什么问我这个？

What’s that got to do with music?

这和音乐有什么关系？

But you do mellow, don’t you?

但你确实很温柔，不是吗？

[Those questions] are unimaginative, yet it’s what people want to read.

[这些问题]缺乏想象力，但却是人们想要阅读的内容。

Still, all this information, it’s too much.

尽管如此，所有这些信息还是太多了。

It will turn.”

会转的。”

It’s a sentiment that Enya would articulate several times, whether regarding illegal music downloads, the rise of Kindle, or, this time, the continued spread of celebrity culture: “It’’ll turn,” she said.

恩雅曾多次表达过这样的观点，无论是关于非法音乐下载、Kindle 的崛起，还是这一次名人文化的持续传播：“一切都会转变，”她说。

“It’s turning.” It fits her anachronistic image perfectly, but it also underlines the greater thrust of her music and much of our conversation: a desire to ricochet back to a self-determinative, pre-digital simplicity, where nothing is too much, and everything is just enough .

“它正在转动。”它完全符合她不合时宜的形象，但也强调了她的音乐和我们大部分谈话的更大主旨：渴望回到一种自我决定的、前数字时代的简单，没有什么太多，一切都足够了。

When I was 6, I started piano lessons, practicing on a piano — its ivory half gone, its wood deeply scarred — with a deep, ancient sound.

当我六岁的时候，我开始上钢琴课，在一架钢琴上练习——它的象牙已经消失了一半，它的木头伤痕累累——发出低沉、古老的声音。

It was on that piano that I remember my mom, who had played since childhood, learning to play the first song off Watermark, the title track — a simple, haunting piano composition — by ear.

我记得我妈妈就是在这架钢琴上演奏的，她从小就开始弹奏，通过耳朵学习弹奏《水印》的第一首歌，即主打歌——一首简单的、令人难以忘怀的钢琴曲。

She’d press play on our massive boombox, listen to a measure, then two, press pause, and reproduce the melody on our piano, penciling the notes in a blank composition book in front of her.

她会按下我们巨大的音箱上的播放键，听一个小节，然后听两个小节，按下暂停键，然后在我们的钢琴上重现旋律，用铅笔在她面前的一本空白作文簿上记下音符。

In my memory, the afternoon light is fading, and I’m fighting the specific boredom of the mid–elementary school child.

在我的记忆中，午后的阳光渐渐暗淡，我正在与中小学生特有的无聊作斗争。

But that my mom could play Enya — was learning to play Enya, would soon play Enya — rendered her magnificent in my eyes.

但我妈妈可以扮演恩雅——正在学习扮演恩雅，很快就会扮演恩雅——这让她在我眼中变得伟大。

As I tell Enya this story, she nods solemnly and says, as she must, that it's lovely.

当我给恩雅讲这个故事时，她庄重地点点头，并说，这很可爱，这是她必须做的。

It was the latest chapter in an old tale she’s grown accustomed to hearing.

这是她已经听惯了的古老故事的最新章节。

“Some people say, 'I know what this song meant to you — but this is the story of what it meant to me.' And I’ve heard so many stories associated with so many songs, over the years, and I’m still so fascinated by them.

“有些人说，‘我知道这首歌对你意味着什么，但这就是它对我意味着什么的故事。’多年来，我听过很多与很多歌曲相关的故事，但我仍然对它们很着迷。

There are thousands, thousands of stories for each song.”

每首歌都有成千上万个故事。”

“What I gather,” Enya continues, “is that there’s a basic emotional message within a song, even without any words, without any arrangement — it’s already there.

“我认为，”恩雅继续说道，“歌曲中蕴含着基本的情感信息，即使没有任何歌词，没有任何编排——它已经存在了。

Nicky and Roma and I, we just try to enhance that.

尼基、罗马和我，我们只是努力加强这一点。

That’s all we try to do.”

这就是我们所做的一切。”

Maybe the appeal of Enya isn’t precisely anything to do with her, or Ireland, or her castle, although all of those things provide a fitting container.

也许恩雅的吸引力与她、爱尔兰或她的城堡无关，尽管所有这些都提供了一个合适的容器。

Rather, the appeal is something like nostalgia — for a moment in your own life, perhaps, but even more likely, for a time that you might not even have experienced, that maybe no one has.

相反，这种吸引力有点像怀旧——也许是你自己生命中的某个时刻，但更有可能的是，你甚至可能没有经历过，也许没有人经历过的一段时光。

It’s a distant, romantic, fictive land.

这是一片遥远、浪漫、虚构的土地。

It’s also by no means unique to our age, as it’s been conjured through the centuries, the heaven of the traditional hymn, the lost homeland of the ballad.

它也绝不是我们这个时代所独有的，因为几个世纪以来，它一直被人们所想象，是传统赞美诗的天堂，是民谣失去的故乡。

Enya is simply the most contemporary in a long lineage of soaring harmonies that, in their ambiance, their utter flexibility to fill the contours of our psychological needs, have been called escapist, or pablum, or trite — but which can be molded to mean anything to everyone.

恩雅是一长串高亢和声中最现代的一个，它们的氛围、完全灵活地满足我们心理需求的轮廓，被称为逃避现实的、或帕布卢姆的、或陈腐的——但它可以被塑造成对每个人都有任何意义。

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