“Arizona”
Thank you for your music, and thank you for reading this far in a letter, if it reaches you, from a stranger.
感谢您的音乐，也感谢您阅读这封来自陌生人的信（如果您收到了这封信）。
Though we have never met face to face, I could say that I’ve known you since I was a teen-ager growing up in Pittsburgh, Pa., in the fifties, born fifteen years or so before you were born, Mr. Jackson, and I wanted to be you, or rather wanted with all my soul, a soul real to me as the faces of people in my family, to sing like you would sing the music we both inherited and you would keep alive in the eighties, nineties with your talent and gifts.
虽然我们从未见过面，但我可以说，我在五十年代在宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡长大时就认识你了，我出生在你出生前十五年左右，杰克逊先生，我想成为你，或者更确切地说，我想成为你，或者更确切地说，我想成为你，一个对我来说真实的灵魂，就像我家人的面孔一样，像你一样唱我们共同继承的音乐，你将凭借你的才华和天赋在八十年代、九十年代保持活力。
Listening to your voice, I hear the old music again—the Dells, Diablos, Drifters, Flamingos, Spaniels, Five Satins, Midnighters, Soul Stirrers—and it takes me back to those voices on the corner, in church, on records, radio, teaching me the fires in my belly, dance steps in my feet, the hungers, fun, sadness, loves lost and found all around me I only half understood and still don’t, old man that I am today, but yearn so badly, teen-ager and now, to stay part of, that swirling, full-to-the-brim, overflowing life that sometimes fills me up, sways and staggers me, sweeps me off my feet, that elusive, loud, shaking, shouting world that could sometimes go silent and disappear, here then abruptly gone, passing me by as if I were nothing, nobody, less than a speck of dust or a tear no one sees falling, all of that, and more bitter and more sweet because, like you, Freddie Jackson, I was a colored boy and my world, my people, surrounded by others not colored, others inexplicably mean, crude, intimidating, evil as death.
听着你的声音，我又听到了古老的音乐——山谷、暗黑破坏神、漂流者、火烈鸟、西班牙猎犬、五缎子、午夜者、灵魂搅动者——它把我带回到街角、教堂、唱片、收音机里的那些声音，教我肚子里的火焰，脚下的舞步，饥饿、乐趣、悲伤、失落的爱和发现在我周围的一切，我只是半懂半懂，而且仍然不明白，我今天是个老人，但是十几岁的时候和现在，我都非常渴望成为那个旋转的、充满的、溢出的生活的一部分，它有时会填满我，摇晃我，让我摇摇晃晃，让我神魂颠倒，那个难以捉摸的、大声的、颤抖的、叫喊的世界，有时会变得沉默和消失，然后突然消失，从我身边走过，仿佛我什么都不是，什么人，比一粒灰尘或一滴没有人看到的眼泪还要小，所有这一切，更苦涩，更甜蜜，因为，像你一样，弗雷迪·杰克逊，我是一个有色男孩，我的世界，我的人民，周围都是非有色人种，其他人莫名其妙地卑鄙，粗鲁，令人生畏，邪恶如死亡。
Anyway, I don’t need to tell you about coming up colored.
不管怎样，我不需要告诉你关于有色人种的事情。
When I hear you sing I remember you were there beside me and here I am now beside you, listening once more to all the stories, facts, times, people, voices that the music passes on, gives back, recalls, steals, wishes for, touches and lets go.
当我听到你唱歌时，我记得你就在我身边，而我现在就在你身边，再次聆听音乐传递、回馈、回忆、偷窃、愿望、触摸和放手的所有故事、事实、时代、人物和声音。
I should admit straightaway I can’t claim to be a devoted fan or student of all your music.
我应该立即承认，我不能声称自己是您所有音乐的忠实粉丝或学生。
I’m writing to let you know one song in particular that you recorded, “You Are My Lady,” seems part of a story I’m trying to compose.
我写这封信是为了让你知道你录制的一首歌曲“你是我的女士”，似乎是我正在尝试创作的故事的一部分。
Composing now as we speak.
现在就在我们说话的时候作曲。
Or rather as I imagine myself speaking and imagine we are speaking together.
或者更确切地说，当我想象自己说话并想象我们一起说话时。
Pretending to speak with you my way of telling a story.
假装用我讲故事的方式跟你说话。
Our silences really, not our voices, engaged in conversation.
真正进行对话的是我们的沉默，而不是我们的声音。
Though I hear you singing.
虽然我听到你唱歌。
Softly.
轻轻。
Clearly.
清楚地。
Your song, “URML,” in my story, inseparable from it before there is a story.
你的歌《URML》在我的故事里，离不开它，才有故事。
Point of this letter is not exactly to ask permission to put you in a story I’m writing, Freddie Jackson.
这封信的目的并不是要请求允许将你放入我正在写的故事中，弗雷迪·杰克逊。
Rather, I’m letting you know (informing/fessing up/sharing) I have no choice.
相反，我让你知道（告知/坦白/分享）我别无选择。
You are in it already without being asked, without any exit offered, like the color we share, which this country assigns to us before we are born.
你已经在其中，没有被要求，没有任何出口提供，就像我们共享的颜色，这个国家在我们出生之前分配给我们的颜色。
Story I’m attempting to put together concerns my son, youngest of my three grown children, a prisoner now, in Arizona serving a life sentence for committing murder in 1986, when he and his victim both fifteen years old.
我试图整理的故事涉及我的儿子，我三个成年孩子中最小的一个，现在是一名囚犯，因 1986 年犯下谋杀罪而在亚利桑那州服无期徒刑，当时他和他的受害者都是 15 岁。
I have tried to write his story many, many times—as a short piece of fiction that stands alone, as an episode in longer narratives, fiction and nonfiction, published and unpublished.
我曾多次尝试把他的故事写下来——作为一部独立的短篇小说，作为较长叙事、小说和非小说、已出版和未出版的故事中的一个插曲。
Each attempt failed.
每次尝试都失败了。
Failed probably for a variety of complicated reasons in each case, but the simple fact is none of my efforts to write my son’s story freed him.
每种情况都可能因各种复杂的原因而失败，但简单的事实是，我为写儿子的故事所做的一切努力都没有让他获得自由。
And that one negative outcome they all share certifies their collective futility: my son remains incarcerated.
他们共同的一个负面结果证明了他们集体的徒劳：我的儿子仍然被监禁。
Getting him out is the sole justification, if any legit justification exists, for me writing about him.
如果有任何正当理由的话，让他出去是我写关于他的唯一理由。
Even a grieving, conflicted father possesses no right to ignore his injured son’s request not to discuss in public his son’s wounds, especially when at best the father able only to speculate, guess the nature of the wounds and their effects.
即使是一位悲伤、矛盾的父亲也没有权利忽视受伤儿子的要求，即不要在公开场合讨论儿子的伤口，尤其是当父亲最多只能推测、猜测伤口的性质及其影响时。
No excuse for a story’s probes, prods, provocations unless they promise to produce, at a very minimum, the possibility of a cure.
故事中的探索、刺激、挑衅没有任何借口，除非它们承诺至少能够产生治愈的可能性。
Why else disturb a son’s privacy (an inevitable result no matter how scrupulously I endeavor to avoid it).
否则为什么要打扰儿子的隐私（无论我如何小心翼翼地避免，这都是不可避免的结果）。
Why intrude after finally, expressly, he’s forbidden me to write about him.
既然他最终明确禁止我写关于他的事，为什么还要打扰呢？
Why discuss in public a horrific series of events unless the retelling, the painful, incriminating exhumation liberates my son, sets him free.
为什么要在公开场合讨论一系列可怕的事件，除非重述、痛苦的、有罪的挖掘工作能够解放我的儿子，让他获得自由。
None of my previous efforts to tell his story have disentangled him from the consequences of a crime beyond my power to change.
我之前讲述他的故事的努力都没有让他摆脱我无力改变的犯罪后果。
My helplessness feels unalterable.
我的无助感是无法改变的。
I find myself unable to foresee a different scenario.
我发现自己无法预见不同的场景。
So I’m asking myself, asking you, Mr. Jackson, if I should try a story about my son once more.
所以我问自己，问你，杰克逊先生，我是否应该再次尝试写一个关于我儿子的故事。
And if I try to write it, for whose benefit, whose sake, on whose behalf, for what purpose would I be performing.
如果我尝试写它，我会为了谁的利益、为了谁、代表谁、为了什么目的而写。
I ask you because you are an artist, Mr. Jackson, and because sometimes your singing achieves what the best art accomplishes.
我问你是因为你是一位艺术家，杰克逊先生，而且因为有时你的歌声达到了最好的艺术所能达到的效果。
A song you sing creates a space with different rules, different possibilities.
你唱的一首歌创造了一个具有不同规则、不同可能性的空间。
A space opens that doesn’t exist until a listener tunes in and hears your voice, a sudden space that may disappear the very next instant but changes that instant, too, no doubt, and it doesn’t matter that the previous moment and the ones before remain whatever they were and lock a person down with unforgiving, unalterable rules and possibilities.
一个直到听众收听并听到你的声音之前并不存在的空间打开了，一个突然的空间可能会在下一瞬间消失，但毫无疑问也会改变那一瞬间，并且前一刻和之前的时刻保持不变并用无情的、不可改变的规则和可能性锁定一个人并不重要。
None of that matters when I experience the undeniable presence, the unique truth a particular song can deliver—your song, “URML,” my best example—because then I know time, my time, my life is always more than it appears to me.
当我体验到不可否认的存在、一首特定歌曲所能传达的独特真理时，这些都不重要了——你的歌曲“URML”是我最好的例子——因为那时我知道时间、我的时间、我的生活总是比我看起来的要多。
Didn’t that voice, that snatch of music just remind me that there’s more in any moment, more to the life I think I’m caught up in, than I can ever know, ever understand, ever come to terms with, make peace with, survive, so much more and more and different and other than it had seemed an instant before the music.
那声音、那段音乐难道不是提醒我，在任何时刻，我认为我所陷入的生活中都有更多的东西，比我所知道的、理解的、接受的、和解的、生存的要多得多，比音乐出现之前的那一瞬间要多得多、不同和不同。
If I listen, if I let it be, let it alone, just listen to the music while it delivers inklings and intimations of things very different than I thought they were, are, and sometimes I do go there, into a different space, thank you, thank you, the music reveals, that other, more than possible place, and I go there, can’t help myself, because I need it, need help so much, I do, I do, I yearn, I hear the music and nothing is what it was an instant before or ever after, maybe, if I listen, keep believing, learning my life is less than nothing and also perhaps a tiny, tiny bit more than everything I believed I already knew, every damned body already knows, if I really listen, let myself hear when a song speaks.
如果我听，如果我顺其自然，别管它，只是听音乐，它传递出一些与我想象的非常不同的事物的暗示和暗示，有时我确实去那里，进入一个不同的空间，谢谢你，谢谢你，音乐揭示了，另一个，比可能的地方，我去那里，无法帮助自己，因为我需要它，非常需要帮助，我确实，我确实，我渴望，我听到音乐，一切都不再是之前的那一瞬间或从此以后，也许，如果我倾听，继续相信，我的生活比什么都没有还要少，也许比我相信我已经知道的一切多一点点，每个该死的身体都已经知道了，如果我真的倾听，让自己听到一首歌在说话。
How do you work the magic of your art, Mr. Jackson.
杰克逊先生，您如何发挥您艺术的魔力。
What makes your music special when it’s special.
当你的音乐很特别时，是什么让你的音乐变得特别。
How do you offer a space with your voice that feels real enough for a listener to enter.
如何用你的声音提供一个足够真实的空间让听众进入。
What secrets have you learned to please an audience.
你学到了什么秘密来取悦观众？
How do you put all of yourself into a song, but then disappear so there’s only music and it belongs to the listener.
你如何将自己全部投入到一首歌中，然后又消失，只剩下音乐，它属于听众。
When your voice breaks silence, how does it make silence speak.
当你的声音打破沉默时，它如何让沉默说话。
You did it at least once, certainly, for my son and probably countless times for others, including me.
当然，你至少为我儿子做过一次，也可能为包括我在内的其他人做过无数次。
How does a song reach out and touch.
一首歌如何传达和触动。
Do you sing to please yourself.
你唱歌是为了取悦自己吗？
When a song feels good to you while you are singing it, is that the best test.
当你唱一首歌时感觉很好，那就是最好的考验。
Is that the answer to all this letter’s dumb questions.
这就是这封信中所有愚蠢问题的答案吗？
Or maybe simply an answer I want, need.
或者也许只是我想要、需要的答案。
“URML” ’s secret.
“URML”的秘密。
I had a friend once who killed his lady.
我有一个朋友曾经杀了他的女人。
Crime occurred in Philly, about eight years before a song you addressed to your lady reached No. 1 on Billboard’s rhythm-and-blues chart.
费城发生了一起犯罪事件，大约八年前，你写给你女士的一首歌登上了公告牌节奏蓝调排行榜的第一名。
Years before he committed a murder, I’d lost touch with him, my former friend, occasional cut-buddy when I was an undergrad at Penn in the early sixties.
在他犯下谋杀案之前的几年，我和他失去了联系，他是我以前的朋友，六十年代初我在宾夕法尼亚大学读本科时偶尔的好友。
A guy who hung out around campus, long-haired, scraggly-bearded, a kind of sloppy, happy-go-lucky, sinister phony, a powerfully persuasive and manipulative guy with a malodorous charm about him, Charlie Manson before anybody had heard of Charles Manson, other than my friend and his coterie of fellow eccentrics and visionaries who circulated among themselves counterculture news and views through a kind of crude precursor of the Internet before anybody else had heard of Internet or Manson.
一个在校园里闲逛的家伙，长发，胡须稀疏，有点邋遢，无忧无虑，阴险的虚伪，一个有强大说服力和控制欲的家伙，他身上有一种恶臭的魅力，查理·曼森，在任何人都没有听说过查尔斯·曼森之前，除了我的朋友和他的一群古怪的和有远见的人，他们通过互联网的一种粗糙的前身在他们之间传播反主流文化的新闻和观点。其他人听说过互联网或曼森。
My friend, a nice kid on the lam from middle-class, suburban Jewish parents, had transformed himself into a Philly street character whose intimidating range of knowledge, arcane reading, provocative ideas, and batty eloquence, despite my reservations about his lack of personal hygiene, drew me to him as he was drawn to me, despite or because of our obvious differences, me growing up poor, therefore street tough, streetwise, he assumed, a jock who played college ball, physically attractive, smart enough, though intellectually underdeveloped, politically unsophisticated, naïve, poorly read, innocently gregarious, but my new buddy soon perceived that I was ambitious, ruthless and predatory in my dealings with other people as he was, my insightful, observant, preternaturally selfish, shamelessly inquisitive, greedy new acquaintance.
我的朋友，一个来自中产阶级、郊区犹太父母的逃亡好孩子，已经把自己变成了一个费城街头人物，尽管我对他缺乏个人卫生持保留态度，但他的知识范围令人生畏，阅读晦涩难懂，具有挑衅性的想法和疯狂的口才，吸引了我，就像他吸引我一样，尽管或因为我们之间存在明显的差异，我成长贫困，因此街头强硬，街头智慧，他认为，一个打大学篮球的运动员，外表有吸引力，足够聪明，尽管智力上我不发达，政治上不成熟，天真，读书不多，天真合群，但我的新朋友很快就发现我在与他人打交道时野心勃勃，无情且掠夺性，就像他一样，我的洞察力，观察力，异常自私，无耻好奇，贪婪的新朋友。
In the role of professor/guru he enjoyed explaining himself to me.
作为教授/大师的角色，他喜欢向我解释自己。
Claimed he answered to no one.
声称他没有回答任何人。
Responsible only to himself.
只对自己负责。
Made it clear that nobody possessed rights he was bound to respect.
明确表示没有人拥有他必须尊重的权利。
Even in Powelton Village, Philly’s wannabe version of the Village in New York—your city, Mr. Jackson, where you grew up in Harlem—we must have been an unusual sight: tall, fit black guy, and squat, flabby white guy, the unlikely pair of us roaming neighborhood streets, parties, participating in rallies, arts festivals, demonstrations, defying cops and authority, hitting on women, getting stinking drunk in local bars, but welcomed almost always, anywhere we showed up, by the helter-skelter mix of all sorts of people that constituted Powelton’s inhabitants.
即使在费城的鲍威尔顿村，也就是你的城市，杰克逊先生，你在哈莱姆区长大的地方，我们也一定是一个不寻常的景象：高大、健康的黑人，和矮胖、松弛的白人，我们这对不太可能的情侣在附近的街道上闲逛，聚会，参加集会，艺术节，示威，反抗警察和权威，勾搭女人，在当地酒吧喝得烂醉，但几乎总是受到欢迎，无论我们出现在哪里，鲍威尔顿的居民由各种各样的人杂乱地混合在一起。
An odd couple, but didn’t we embody, maybe, a new day, a new dispensation, a social and cultural revolution everybody back then wanted to believe they desired or at least were willing to accommodate since it promised better sex, better drugs, unbounded freedom and license, an option to be contemptuous of traditional styles, conventions, and rules, an inalienable right to hit the road, Jack, and head out for far away, for exotic destinations when the place where we find ourselves becomes unsatisfactory.
一对奇怪的夫妇，但我们不是代表了，也许，一个新的一天，一个新的分配，一场社会和文化革命，当时每个人都想相信他们想要或至少愿意适应，因为它承诺更好的性，更好的毒品，无限的自由和许可，一个蔑视传统风格，习俗和规则的选择，一个不可剥夺的上路权利，杰克，当我们发现自己的地方变得不满意时，前往遥远的异国目的地。
My former hangout partner, whom the cops arrested in 1979 for killing his lady friend, who still maintains his innocence though convicted twice—once in absentia because while out on bail awaiting trial, he’d fled the States, then found guilty a second time in another Philadelphia courtroom after being extradited to America from a farm in France, a fugitive seventeen years on the run, hiding under assumed names and fake identities—my old intimate, my fellow bullshitter and relentless pursuer of any pretty girl we hoped seducible (including one he admitted he tried hard to catch and didn’t catch, but I did, a girl whose background mirrored his, except her parents lived in Connecticut and much richer than his, a girl I eventually married, mother of my children, including my son in prison, the marriage in name anyway lasting for thirty years neither party has yet to forgive the other for inflicting, enduring, and even so during those thirty-plus years, Mr. Jackson, on numerous occasions I would have counted myself lucky to have possessed a voice like yours and your song, “URML,” to serenade her, which goes to show what .
我以前的聚会伙伴，于 1979 年因杀害他的女朋友而被警察逮捕，尽管他两次被定罪，但仍然坚称自己无罪——一次缺席，因为在保释候审期间，他逃离了美国，然后从法国的一个农场引渡到美国，在费城的另一个法庭上第二次被判有罪，他是一名逃亡十七年的逃犯，以化名和假身份躲藏起来——我的老密友，我的废话同伙，我们希望能诱惑到的任何漂亮女孩的无情追求者（包括一个他承认他努力想要抓住但没有抓住的女孩，但我做到了，一个背景与他相似的女孩，除了她的父母住在康涅狄格州，而且比他富有得多，我最终娶了一个女孩，我的孩子们的母亲，包括我在监狱里的儿子，名义上的婚姻无论如何持续了三十年，双方都没有原谅对方的伤害，忍受，即使如此，在这三十多年里，杰克逊先生，在很多场合我我会认为自己很幸运，拥有像你这样的声音和你的歌曲“URML”，为她唱小夜曲，这表明了……
.
。
.
。
nothing of course, as my bearded mentor would insist, except the poor taste in choosing lovers certain pretty, seducible girls exhibited back in the day and how fickle, how unfaithful songs and singers can be).
当然，正如我的大胡子导师所坚持的那样，除了某些漂亮、诱人的女孩在选择情人时表现出的糟糕品味，以及歌曲和歌手是多么善变、多么不忠实）。
My former buddy continues to claim that he is an innocent victim of a C.I.A.
我的前好友继续声称他是中情局的无辜受害者。
frameup organized to discredit and get rid of him because the C.I.A.
因为中央情报局组织了一场陷害来抹黑并除掉他。
knows he knows too much about contacts it established with an advanced, extraterrestrial civilization, contacts that notorious agency desperately wishes to keep secret from the American public.
知道他对它与先进的外星文明建立的联系了解太多，而臭名昭著的机构迫切希望对美国公众保密。
But I bet if I visited him in prison and we got an opportunity to converse in guaranteed privacy, he might not leak any nitty-gritty about the C.I.A./Star Wars connection, but if the chance arose, he would confide to me that he killed his lady for more or less the identical reason that I attribute to you as your explanation of why you sing as you do.
但我敢打赌，如果我去监狱探望他，我们有机会在有保障的隐私下交谈，他可能不会泄露任何关于中情局/星球大战联系的细节，但如果有机会，他会向我吐露，他杀了他的女士，原因或多或少与我对你解释的你为什么唱歌的原因相同。
He’d confess, just short of bragging, and perhaps with a wistful semi-grin, yes, he loved his lady but she split, and when she came back to pick up her stuff, he believed that if he killed her, not only could he keep her, he’d please himself, and pleasing himself always good, so he did.
他会承认，只是不吹嘘，也许带着渴望的半笑，是的，他爱他的女人，但她分裂了，当她回来收拾她的东西时，他相信如果他杀了她，他不仅可以保留她，他会取悦自己，取悦自己总是好的，所以他做到了。
C’mon.
来吧。
Think about it, dude.
想想吧，伙计。
Pleasing yourself the best possible reason.
取悦自己是最好的理由。
Unless you wanna be a stooge for somebody else’s bullshit.
除非你想成为别人废话的傀儡。
A stupido stooge.
一个愚蠢的跟班。
Doing what the man says cause the man says it’s good for you.
按照男人说的去做，因为男人说这对你有好处。
Go fuck yourself, what I say.
去你妈的吧，我说的。
Your wars.
你的战争。
Your pissy little no-brainer jobs, a whiny wife, litter of whiny, ungrateful brats.
你那些烦人的、不费脑筋的小工作，一个爱发牢骚的妻子，一群爱发牢骚、忘恩负义的孩子。
For them.
对于他们来说。
Do it for them, man tells you.
为他们做这件事，男人告诉你。
Family the reason.
家庭原因。
Or God.
或者上帝。
Country.
国家。
Any goddamn reason just so you do what you’re told.
任何该死的理由都是为了让你按照别人告诉你的去做。
Don’t think.
别想了。
Just get in line, turkey.
排队吧，火鸡。
Bend over, turkey.
弯下腰，火鸡。
Be over before you know it.
不知不觉就结束了。
Before you can finish saying, What the fuck am I doing here.
在你说完之前，我他妈的在这里做什么。
Well, not me.
好吧，不是我。
Not today.
不是今天。
Not tomorrow.
不是明天。
Huh-uh.
呵呵。
I will always do what pleases me.
我将永远做我喜欢做的事。
Me.
我。
Me.
我。
Me, friend.
我，朋友。
What pleases me.
什么让我高兴。
Best reason and only reason.
最好的理由，也是唯一的理由。
And I recommend strongly, old chap, mon semblable, my darker brother, that unless you want to be the man’s bumboy chump, you best do as I do.
我强烈建议，老伙计，我的黑兄弟，除非你想成为男人的傻瓜，否则你最好像我一样做。
Be insolent, abrasive.
态度傲慢、粗暴。
Extend to yourself bottomless generosity and benevolence.
向自己表达无尽的慷慨和仁慈。
Or words more or less to that effect, what my old buddy’d say to me, if somehow we hooked up one more time for a private moment with nobody else listening in.
或者或多或少有这样的意思，如果我们能再约一次没有其他人在听的私人时刻，我的老朋友会对我说的话。
But eavesdroppers or not, bet he’d pass on the message I paraphrased above.
但无论是否是窃听者，我打赌他一定会传递我上面解释的信息。
No reason my old pal should be shy about repeating his rule.
我的老朋友没有理由羞于重复他的规则。
Especially since no one, in the forty or fifty centuries preceding this one, nor in the interval of thirty, forty years since I have been face to face with him, no matter what they practice or preach, has come up with a more compelling, self-evident rationale for how folks should behave in this best of all possible worlds.
尤其是在这之前的四十或五十个世纪中，以及自我与他面对面以来的三十、四十年里，无论他们实践或宣讲什么，都没有人能提出一个更令人信服、不言而喻的理由来说明人们应该如何在这个最好的可能世界中行事。
Mystery (chaos) abides.
神秘（混乱）依然存在。
Whether a person wants to create art, shop for clothes or dinner, wage war, fall in love, discipline kids or criminals etc., etc., no recipe exists that guarantees success.
无论一个人想创作艺术、购买衣服或晚餐、发动战争、坠入爱河、管教孩子或罪犯等等，都不存在保证成功的秘诀。
So why shouldn’t my friend say please yourself.
那么为什么我的朋友不应该说“请你自己”。
Same rule for prison inmates or Presidents of the United States.
对于监狱囚犯或美国总统也有同样的规则。
My old pal would shout, scream, cackle, laugh, giggle, holler, preach his rule today, just as he used to expound, expostulate, rap it in the middle of campus parties, street crowds, into a mike, into your ear, into a garbage can while he was barfing.
我的老朋友今天会大喊、尖叫、咯咯笑、咯咯笑、大声喊叫，宣扬他的规则，就像他过去在校园聚会、街头人群中、对着麦克风、对着你的耳朵、对着垃圾桶、呕吐时解释、规劝、说唱一样。
Let me quickly, unambiguously assure you, Mr. Jackson, that in no way, shape, or form am I equating what I guess might guide you to sing as you sing and what guided my former friend to take his lady’s life.
让我快速、明确地向你保证，杰克逊先生，我绝不会将我认为可能引导你唱歌的东西与引导我前朋友结束他女士生命的东西等同起来。
Discovering as you perform onstage that you please audiences most exactingly when your singing pleases you is immeasurably distant from my buddy discovering that terminating another’s life and pleasing himself could go hand in hand.
当你在舞台上表演时，发现当你的歌声取悦你时，你最能取悦观众，这与我的朋友发现结束别人的生命和取悦自己可以齐头并进是不可估量的距离。
Rather, I’m illustrating, admitting my own confusions, worries, fears, my inability to decide on my next move in this story.
相反，我是在说明，承认我自己的困惑、担忧、恐惧，以及我无法决定我在这个故事中的下一步行动。
My next choice.
我的下一个选择。
Whatever the ramifications of any choice—choices as different as how to sing or whether to kill or not kill—nothing is knowable until we choose.
无论任何选择的后果如何——选择不同，比如如何唱歌或是否杀人——在我们做出选择之前，什么都是不可知的。
No less mysterious after we choose.
我们选择后同样神秘。
No matter our intentions, we’re involved in guesswork, after all.
不管我们的意图如何，我们毕竟都在猜测。
Gutwork.
内脏。
Trapped inside ourselves.
被困在我们自己的内心。
Our minds.
我们的心。
Our feelings.
我们的感受。
Selfish, arbitrary, and dark as my once-upon-a-time friend’s.
像我从前的朋友一样自私、专断、阴暗。
And that truth cuts much deeper than different strokes for different folks, I believe.
我相信，这个真理比不同人的不同击球更深刻。
Any point of view not the only possible one.
任何观点都不是唯一可能的观点。
Always many.
总是很多。
Always changing.
总是在变化。
Smallest piece of something represents, replicates, renews, becomes larger, becomes whole.
事物的最小部分代表、复制、更新、变得更大、变得完整。
The whole always fragile, shatters, incomplete as the smallest piece.
整体总是脆弱的、破碎的、不完整的，就像最小的一块一样。
Both the entire shebang and each infinitesimal byte forever exchanging places, and we can’t have one without the other.
整个 shebang 和每个无穷小的字节都永远交换位置，缺一不可。
Though often I wish I could forget, Mr. Jackson, Freddie Jackson, that endless simultaneity, recover those flurries of forgetfulness.
尽管我常常希望自己能够忘记，杰克逊先生，弗雷迪·杰克逊，那种无尽的同时性，恢复那些匆忙的健忘。
Distance from Phoenix to Flagstaff, Arizona approximately one hundred and forty-five miles.
从菲尼克斯到亚利桑那州弗拉格斯塔夫的距离大约为一百四十五英里。
A drive north of about two hours, eighteen minutes on I-17.
沿 17 号州际公路向北行驶约两小时十八分钟。
If you are interested, time-lapse videos posted on the Internet can get you there faster, in anywhere from 1:42 to 47:10.
如果您有兴趣，互联网上发布的延时视频可以让您更快地到达目的地，时间范围为 1:42 到 47:10。
The two lawyers, one in charge, one to drive, who met my son’s plane at Sky Harbor airport in order to escort him to a jail in Flagstaff, where he’d be locked up until tried for murder, may or may not have been in a hurry.
两名律师，一名负责，一名驾驶，在天港机场迎接我儿子的飞机，护送他到弗拉格斯塔夫的一所监狱，他将被关在那里，直到因谋杀罪受审，他们可能很匆忙，也可能不匆忙。
Being in a hurry doesn’t necessarily get you any quicker to where you wish to go.
着急并不一定能让你更快地到达你想去的地方。
Nor does the wish to never arrive at a particular destination necessarily retard arrival.
永远不会到达某个特定目的地的愿望也不一定会延迟到达。
I wasn’t in the car hauling my son to jail that day in Arizona, thus can’t say who was in a hurry and who was not.
那天我并没有在车里把我的儿子拖进亚利桑那州的监狱，因此不能说谁着急，谁不着急。
My son a fugitive for twelve days before he called his uncle and asked for help.
我儿子逃亡了十二天，然后才打电话给他叔叔寻求帮助。
Before his uncle called us and we engaged lawyers.
在他叔叔打电话给我们之前，我们聘请了律师。
How do my son’s twelve days of running compare to my old buddy’s seventeen years of flight and hiding.
我儿子十二天的奔跑与我老朋友十七年的逃亡和躲藏相比如何？
I should know better than to ask such a silly question, Mr. Jackson.
我应该知道不要问这样一个愚蠢的问题，杰克逊先生。
As if aging and loss and cancer and fear and mourning and despair are not species of time.
仿佛衰老、失落、癌症、恐惧、哀悼和绝望都不是时间的种类。
As if instead, time consisted of a certain quantity of repeating, unchanging, definable units, like inches, miles, pounds.
相反，时间似乎是由一定数量的重复的、不变的、可定义的单位组成的，比如英寸、英里、磅。
As if the length and weight of a boy’s time on the road were measurable, a fifteen-year-old who hasn’t maybe had sex yet or attended a funeral or slept alone away from home a single night with no family, no adult, no companions keeping him company, as if such a boy’s terror after killing, for no reason, he comprehends his roommate in an Arizona motel on a pleasure trip supervised by an expensive, élite boys’ camp in Vermont, as if anyone not that boy might grasp how time passed for him on the run or passes now in prison where bars and cages do not stop the running, but torture and bend time so time collapses, empties, or swells like a corpse decomposing, or towers like some suppurating beast many stories tall with bloody talons pawing the air.
仿佛一个男孩在路上的时间长度和重量是可以衡量的，一个十五岁的孩子可能还没有发生过性行为，没有参加过葬礼，或者独自在外睡了一晚，没有家人，没有成年人，没有同伴陪伴，仿佛这样一个男孩杀人后的恐惧，无缘无故，他理解他的室友在亚利桑那州的一家汽车旅馆里进行一次由佛蒙特州昂贵的精英男孩营地监督的愉快旅行，仿佛任何人那个男孩可能无法理解他在逃亡中的时间是如何度过的，或者现在在监狱里度过的，那里的栅栏和笼子并不能阻止他的奔跑，但他会折磨和弯曲时间，让时间崩溃、空虚，或者像尸体腐烂一样膨胀，或者像一些化脓的野兽一样高耸入云，用血淋淋的爪子抓着空气。
Stink, moans, a dreadful roaring to halt my son in his tracks, keep him fleeing.
恶臭、呻吟声、可怕的咆哮声阻止了我儿子的脚步，让他逃跑。
Three days of running from the fact I did not know my son’s whereabouts had broken me.
三天以来，我一直在逃避不知道儿子下落的事实，这让我崩溃了。
My son’s roommate, assigned randomly one August night from the pack of boys on a trip to the western U.S., boys who’d been summer campers together in Vermont for years, that kid found stabbed to death, and my son gone, no one knew where, perhaps a captive of the madman who stabbed my son’s roommate, perhaps my son bound and being tortured somewhere by the kind of marauding monster who would storm armed into a motel room, stab one boy and kidnap the other at gunpoint to enjoy, dismember, maybe eat him at his leisure, his pleasure—that’s what I could not stop myself from imagining as I ran away from and ran after facts that might explain a vanished son.
我儿子的室友，八月的一个晚上，从一群男孩中随机分配到美国西部旅行，这些男孩在佛蒙特州一起参加夏令营多年，那个孩子被发现被刺死了，而我的儿子却不见了，没人知道在哪里，也许是刺伤我儿子室友的疯子的俘虏，也许我的儿子在某个地方被那种掠夺性的怪物绑住并遭受折磨，这些怪物会全副武装冲进汽车旅馆房间，刺伤一个男孩，然后绑架另一个男孩。枪口指着他享受，肢解，也许在他闲暇时吃掉他，他的快乐——这就是我在逃离并追寻可能解释失踪儿子的事实时无法阻止自己想象的事情。
Three days, three periods of twenty-four hours each on other people’s clocks, stretched for me longer than any life span I could bear, and I slid down a pine tree I’d been hugging in a Vermont forest, crumpled to a weeping heap on the ground beside the tree’s trunk, my life’s time abruptly passing, consumed.
三天，三个周期，每个周期在别人的时钟上，对我来说比我能承受的任何寿命都要长，我从佛蒙特州森林里抱着的一棵松树上滑下来，在树干旁边的地上瘫成一团哭泣的一堆，我生命的时间突然过去了，消耗殆尽。
Enough.
足够的。
Nothing.
没有什么。
More time than I could handle.
时间超出了我的承受能力。
If I’d been an occupant of the car proceeding north on I-17 taking my son to stand trial in Flagstaff, I would not have been privy to what other occupants thinking, the lawyers’ thoughts, my son’s thoughts invisible to me then as now, tapping out letter by letter an invisible story to make it visible.
如果我是车上的乘客，沿着 17 号州际公路向北行驶，带着我的儿子去弗拉格斯塔夫受审，我就不会像现在一样了解其他乘客的想法、律师的想法、我儿子的想法，而这些想法对我来说是不可见的，我会逐字逐句地敲出一个看不见的故事，使其可见。
And rescue him.
并救他。
Over the many years following that car ride, Mr. Jackson, I got to know both lawyers pretty well, stayed in one’s palatial Phoenix home once, commiserated often in my mind with the other as he suffered problems threatening to drag him down, out of his profession, till he got well and practiced law again and still may be.
杰克逊先生，在那次乘车之后的许多年里，我对这两位律师都非常了解，曾经在一个人位于凤凰城的富丽堂皇的家里住过一次，当他遇到威胁要拖垮他、离开他的职业的问题时，我经常在心里对对方表示同情，直到他康复并再次执业，而且可能仍然如此。
On the afternoon I handed over my son to them, the lawyers were strangers to me, except for several phone calls exchanged and a description from a lawyer friend of my then wife, my son’s mother, recommending the one in charge more than highly, without reservation.
在我把儿子交给他们的那天下午，律师们对我来说是陌生的，除了几次电话往来以及我当时妻子、我儿子的母亲的一位律师朋友的描述，毫无保留地高度推荐负责人。
Strangers or not, men I’d never laid eyes on before, men into whose hands, literally and figuratively, I was placing my son’s life while I waited for my wife’s plane so we could drive to Flagstaff together.
无论陌生人与否，我以前从未见过这些人，无论是字面上还是比喻上，我在等待妻子的飞机以便我们一起开车前往弗拉格斯塔夫时，都将我儿子的生命交到了他们的手中。
The two lawyers’ thoughts, my son’s thoughts unguessable in the car they were riding in to Flagstaff.
两位律师的想法，我儿子在前往弗拉格斯塔夫的车上的想法是无法猜测的。
Unguessable for me now, nor could the occupants see each other’s thoughts that day in 1986 on an Arizona highway, though each must have been wondering, more than wondering, probably searching for clues in each other’s expressions, gestures, silences, maybe asking out loud, Who are you, why are we here, where are we heading, what is happening to me, us, how will it end, whose story is this.
现在我无法猜测，1986年亚利桑那州高速公路上的那天，车里的人也无法看到彼此的想法，尽管每个人一定都在想，不仅仅是想，可能在彼此的表情、手势、沉默中寻找线索，也许大声问，你是谁，我们为什么在这里，我们要去哪里，我、我们身上发生了什么，它会如何结束，这是谁的故事。
As I try to tell mine, will I find myself rolling along, in a hurry or not, listening, learning their stories on the way to Flagstaff.
当我试图讲述我的故事时，我是否会发现自己在前往弗拉格斯塔夫的路上，无论是否匆忙，都在倾听、了解他们的故事。
Will all our stories end or start once more when the car doors open and cops stand there waiting with handcuffs .
当车门打开，警察戴着手铐站在那里等待时，我们所有的故事会结束还是重新开始。
.
。
.
。
At some moment before that Flagstaff arrival is when your voice, Mr. Jackson, your song, “URML,” entered the car.
在弗拉格斯塔夫抵达之前的某个时刻，杰克逊先生，你的歌声“URML”进入了车内。
I want to say filled the car, but I wasn’t there, was I.
我想说满车，但我不在那儿，是吗？
Don’t know who in the front seats, who in the back.
不知道谁在前座，谁在后座。
Was car radio on or music just in my son’s portable tape deck, earphones.
汽车收音机是否打开，或者我儿子的便携式录音机、耳机中是否有音乐。
Car radio playing I’m almost sure, somehow.
我几乎可以肯定，汽车收音机正在播放。
Pods wired to machines not so ubiquitous in young people’s ears back in 1986.
早在 1986 年，连接到机器的 Pod 在年轻人耳中并不常见。
Element of surprise part of story.
故事的惊喜部分。
“URML” suddenly.
突然“URML”。
A moment altered.
一瞬间改变了。
Who is playing car radio.
谁在播放汽车收音机。
How loud.
多么大声啊。
Who tuned it in.
谁调的。
Who listens.
谁听。
How can a person help listening.
一个人如何才能帮助倾听。
No matter what else, where else your thoughts.
不管怎样，你的想法还在哪里。
If you wish to listen or not.
不管你想听还是不想听。
Could you ignore the radio, drift off through a window, study fractured, flat desert, gaze at spines of mountains rimming the distance.
你能否忽略收音机，透过窗户，研究破碎、平坦的沙漠，凝视远处山脉的脊椎。
Remember another’s voice you are missing or trying to forget.
记住另一个你错过或试图忘记的声音。
How can you not hear if a loud radio fills a car.
如果汽车里充满了大声的收音机，你怎么会听不到呢？
Or a good tune fills it softly.
或者一首好曲子轻柔地充满它。
“URML.” Did a lawyer or my son pick the station.
“URML。”是律师还是我儿子选的电台？
Random d.j.’ing.
随机 d.j.’ing。
Let the kid do it.
让孩子去做吧。
Let him play with the dial, push buttons, let him make this terrible ride shorter or longer or make it disappear.
让他玩转旋钮、按钮，让他让这个可怕的旅程变得更短或更长，或者让它消失。
Just so he doesn’t drown us, sink us, minstrelsy us, mug us on some urban dark corner, station very, very, overbearingly loud, filling the car so impossible to think.
这样他就不会淹死我们，让我们沉没，让我们吟游诗人，在城市的某个黑暗角落抢劫我们，站得非常、非常、霸道地大声，让车里充满了难以想象的东西。
Remember, young man, not just you inside here, as big, as sorry as your sorry story is, truly, truly, bad and ugly—we heard about the other poor gored kid in Flagstaff, son—but there’s three of us stuck together in here awhile, like it or lump it and the dead boy, too, but do not despair quite yet, young man, maybe we will plea-bargain the judge down from first-degree murder and death to life imprisonment (though Arizona looking for an under-sixteen to execute and thus lower the death-penalty age threshold and here comes your son, a handy colored killer to make the State’s case easy, the lawyers warned us).
记住，年轻人，不仅仅是你在这儿，和你的故事一样大、一样令人遗憾，真实、真实、糟糕和丑陋——我们听说过弗拉格斯塔夫的另一个可怜的被刺伤的孩子，儿子——但我们三个人在这里呆了一段时间，喜欢它或把它和死去的男孩也混在一起，但不要完全绝望，年轻人，也许我们会向法官讨价还价，从一级谋杀和死刑降为终身监禁（尽管亚利桑那州正在寻找一个十六岁以下的人来处决）从而降低死刑年龄门槛，你的儿子来了，一个方便的有色杀手，让国家的案件变得容易，律师警告我们）。
Our job to save your life, seems a nice enough scared kid, his skinny fear filling the car louder than anything he might punch in on the radio, but we are big boys, we can bear it, the noise, the heat, the fear, besides he won’t get that urban-station way-too-loud stuff way out here middle of nowhere, anyway let him d.j., seems a reasonable enough, smart enough kid, nice parents, what in the world happened—and just about somewhere in there, hills now to the left, one behind another to a hazy horizon, to the right, dramatic contours of frozen sand, countless cacti, layers of every drab-color cloud climbing, clamoring an endless sky to heaven, the thickets of thoughts coming and going to and fro and battering air inside the car like wings of gigantic bats too large to see, two middle-aged, palish human men and one slightly colored boy, three total to whom the thoughts belong, hovering insubstantial as images in desert heat, trapped on the road to Flagstaff and there’s Freddie Jackson singing “URML” suddenly there also in the car, and my son as if with wings not as big as the bats or so much larger, so, so much, he’s lifted, rides their draft and gone.
我们的工作是拯救你的生命，看起来是一个足够善良的害怕的孩子，他的瘦弱的恐惧充满了汽车，比他在收音机上打出的任何东西都响亮，但我们是大男孩，我们可以忍受它，噪音，炎热，恐惧，此外他不会在这个偏僻的地方听到城市电台太大声的东西，无论如何让他d.j.，看起来是一个足够合理，足够聪明的孩子，好父母，世界上发生了什么——就在那里的某个地方，现在是山上左边，一个接一个地望着朦胧的地平线，右边，冰冻沙子的戏剧性轮廓，无数的仙人掌，每一层单调的土色云层攀爬，呼唤着无尽的天空，呼唤着天堂，思想的丛林来来去去，敲打着车内的空气，就像大得看不见的巨大蝙蝠的翅膀，两个中年，苍白的人类男人和一个浅色的男孩，总共三个思想属于他们，像沙漠炎热中的图像一样虚无缥缈，被困在在去弗拉格斯塔夫的路上，弗雷迪·杰克逊突然也在车里唱着《URML》，我儿子的翅膀仿佛没有蝙蝠那么大，或者大得多，所以，太多了，他被举了起来，乘着它们的气流离开了。
And if such were literally the case—my son free, Mr. Jackson—I wouldn’t be writing this letter or story, would I, Mr. Jackson.
如果事实确实如此——杰克逊先生，我的儿子自由了——我就不会写这封信或故事了，杰克逊先生。
Yes and no, maybe.
是的，也不是，也许吧。
“URML” a beautiful song.
“URML”是一首优美的歌曲。
Worth a story at least.
至少值得一个故事。
Many.
许多。
One of my all-time favorites so perhaps one day I would be tempted to try.
这是我一直以来的最爱之一，所以也许有一天我会想尝试一下。
Try despite an incalculable sadness your song always invokes for me, whatever else.
尽管你的歌总是为我带来无法估量的悲伤，但无论如何，请尝试一下。
I keep going back to “URML” for many of the same reasons I believe people want to hear again songs they love.
我不断回到“URML”，原因有很多，我相信人们想再次听到他们喜欢的歌曲。
Revisiting unhappy songs as often as happy ones, and, strange as it seems, people recall sad ones, my guess, more than happy songs.
回顾不快乐的歌曲和快乐的歌曲一样频繁，而且，虽然看起来很奇怪，但我猜，人们回忆悲伤的歌曲比快乐的歌曲更多。
Or perhaps no difference.
或者也许没有区别。
Certain songs too deep to be happy or sad.
有些歌曲太深沉，无法表达快乐或悲伤。
Both.
两个都。
(Smokey’s “Tracks of My Tears.”) Neither.
（斯莫基的《我的泪痕》。）都不是。
More.
更多的。
Less.
较少的。
Who am I to tell you about songs, or singing.
我是谁来告诉你歌曲或歌唱。
Or audience responses, Mr. Jackson.
或者观众的反应，杰克逊先生。
But I admitted from the git-go, I’m writing this to myself as much as to you.
但我从 git-go 中承认，我写这封信既是写给自己的，也是写给你的。
Plenty people (all?) sing to themselves, don’t they.
很多人（所有人？）都会给自己唱歌，不是吗？
I do.
我愿意。
Even in the shower, or especially in the shower people sing—alone, wet, warm, soaping up, scrubbing up, usually not the worst of times.
即使在淋浴时，或者尤其是在淋浴时，人们也会唱歌——独自一人，湿漉漉的，温暖的，擦肥皂的，擦洗的，通常不是最糟糕的时候。
Rushing water’s close-up noise in your ears if it’s a good, strong shower, water to take the edge off false notes, water to swim in, drown in.
如果是一场强劲的淋浴，湍急的水声会在你耳边响起，水可以消除错误的音符，水可以在水中游泳，淹没。
Why not listen to myself.
为什么不听听我自己的话。
Though you are a pro and sing for a living, do you still sing to yourself.
尽管你是一名职业歌手并以唱歌为生，但你仍然为自己唱歌吗？
Do you listen, Freddie Jackson.
你听着吗，弗雷迪·杰克逊。
In the shower.
在淋浴间。
No offense intended, but could the shower be where you, too, do your best work.
无意冒犯，但淋浴间也可以是您发挥最佳工作能力的地方吗？
An audience of only one hears my best work.
只有一个观众才能听到我最好的作品。
Hears the voice inside my head no other person will ever share.
听到我脑子里的声音，没有其他人能分享。
Better than anyone else’s voice.
比任何人的声音都好听。
Unspeakably good.
说不出的好。
Closer to what I wish to sound like than any sounds I’m able to produce.
比我能发出的任何声音更接近我想要的声音。
When I get it going in the shower, I give my voice more than the benefit of the doubt.
当我在洗澡的时候，我会发出自己的声音，而不是怀疑。
All benefits.
所有的好处。
No doubts.
毫无疑问。
Let imagination work between the lines, speaking a story for which there are no words, speaking for what’s missing always.
让想象力在字里行间发挥作用，讲述一个无言的故事，讲述一直缺失的东西。
I imagine more than what’s there, fill in what’s impossible, lost, searched for, those things a song desires to happen while it’s sung and plays inside, one listener only, only inner lips, ears, eyes, feet, hands working and the invisible elders busy remembering, reminding me how it goes, what it means and says, once and only once, audience of one, never exactly the same, never over, because a person keeps it inside, alone always when she or he sings, writes.
我想象的不仅仅是那里的东西，填满了不可能的、迷失的、寻找的，那些一首歌在里面唱和演奏时希望发生的事情，只有一个听众，只有内心的嘴唇、耳朵、眼睛、脚、手在工作，看不见的长辈忙着回忆，提醒我它是如何进行的，它意味着什么和说了什么，一次且只有一次，一个观众，永远不会完全相同，永远不会结束，因为一个人把它放在里面，在她或他唱歌、写作时总是独自一人。
I couldn’t help smiling, Freddie Jackson, thinking one afternoon about poor, long-suffering tough-guy mafioso Tony Soprano on TV, romanced and undermined by his female psychoanalyst as vice versa he endeavors to undermine and romance her in her office.
弗雷迪·杰克逊，有一天下午，我想起电视上可怜的、长期受苦的硬汉黑手党托尼·索普拉诺，他被他的女精神分析师浪漫和破坏，反之亦然，他在她的办公室里努力破坏和浪漫她，我忍不住笑了。
She sits, big, nyloned legs crossed across the room and he leans forward in his chair straining to hear her saying what she hears him not saying and he can’t say aloud even inside himself.
她坐着，尼龙的大腿交叉在房间的另一边，他在椅子上倾身向前，努力听她说出她听到他没有说的话，而他甚至在自己内心也无法大声说出来。
Her office a shower of sorts, too, spa where Tony goes to come clean, where every once in a while butt-naked Tony lets go, belts out his privacies, his innermost, imprisoned stories verse by verse, singing away, no holds barred, to seduce his shrink with beaucoup boo-hoos and hangovers from bad old days when he was coming up the hard way on mauling, murderous streets, and worse at home, Tony Soprano croons, chirps, coos to her.
她的办公室也是一个淋浴室，托尼会去水疗中心坦白，时不时赤裸着屁股的托尼会放开手，逐句地讲述他的隐私，他最内心深处的、被囚禁的故事，唱着歌，没有任何限制，用美丽的嘘声和过去糟糕日子的宿醉来引诱他的心理医生，当时他在伤痕累累、凶残的街道上走来走去，在家里更糟，托尼女高音对她低吟、叽叽喳喳、咕咕叫。
She hears, “URML.”
她听到“URML”。
I wonder sometimes when I watch the classic video of you, Freddie Jackson, totally fly in your pure white suit, serenading a young woman, “URML,” with your eyes as much as your voice, if the face and body beside you in the video are the ones you are addressing or if, inside your head, in a song only you are able to see, there is another lover listening, not the pretty actress caught on tape smiling back at you.
有时，当我观看你的经典视频时，我会想，弗雷迪·杰克逊，穿着纯白的西装，用你的眼睛和你的声音，为一位年轻女子唱小夜曲《URML》，视频中你旁边的脸和身体是否就是你正在讲话的人，或者，在你的脑海里，在一首只有你能看到的歌曲中，是否有另一个情人在听，而不是录像带上对你微笑的漂亮女演员。
I wonder, of course, because I glide so seamlessly into the make-believe scene I’m watching, letting your voice be mine, wishful-thinking that voice into the ear of a woman you don’t know, have never seen, but I adore her, want her to adore me.
当然，我想知道，因为我如此无缝地滑入我正在观看的虚构场景，让你的声音属于我，一厢情愿地将那个声音传入一个你不认识、从未见过的女人的耳中，但我崇拜她，希望她崇拜我。
Room for us, my lady and me, though you and your lady don’t disappear.
房间留给我们，我的女士和我，尽管你和你的女士并没有消失。
Both of you professionals, more than convincing performers who reach out and touch, skilled, sticky as a tarbaby, who once Brer Rabbit pokes in a paw, Gotcha, old Mr. Tarbaby say and he ain’t never gon let go.
你们两个都是专业人士，不仅仅是令人信服的表演者，他们伸出手来触摸，技巧娴熟，像塔巴比一样粘人，一旦兔子兄弟戳了爪子，明白了，老塔巴比先生说，他永远不会放手。
It’s once upon a time each time the “URML” video commences.
每次“URML”视频开始的时候都是一次。
Viewers see, listen, tumble live into a song’s story.
观众可以看到、听到、沉浸在歌曲的故事中。
Shape-shifting.
变形。
Black holes.
黑洞。
Voodoo.
巫毒。
“I, for one, will be glad when rock season is over.” Cartoon by Mick Stevens Link copied
“当摇滚季节结束时，我会很高兴。”米克·史蒂文斯 (Mick Stevens) 创作的漫画 链接已复制
Rumors, speculations, full-blown conspiracy theories circulate on the Internet, in fan magazines, newspapers, TV, and radio about the nature of your sex life, Mr. Jackson.
关于你的性生活本质的谣言、猜测和成熟的阴谋论在互联网、粉丝杂志、报纸、电视和广播中流传，杰克逊先生。
According to the perspective of many commentators who get paid or blog to please themselves or maybe just can’t stop themselves from pursuing and commenting on such matters, you have been coy, evasive, manipulative, fearful, not helpful to the cause, irresponsible, exploitative, naïve, inconsistent, dishonest for the long duration of a very successful, very public career because you never flat out declared your own gender identity, or gender preferences when it comes to choosing lovers.
根据许多靠报酬或博客取悦自己或无法阻止自己追求和评论此类问题的评论员的观点，在一个非常成功、非常公开的职业生涯中，你一直害羞、回避、控制欲强、害怕、对事业没有帮助、不负责任、剥削性、天真、不一致、不诚实，因为你在选择恋人时从来没有坦率地宣称自己的性别认同或性别偏好。
I’m no expert on this aspect of your life, any more than I’m an aficionado of the entire corpus of your work.
我不是你生活这方面的专家，就像我不是你整个作品集的爱好者一样。
However, searching for examples of what your voice might sound like when you’re not singing, I found an interview I particularly enjoyed in which you didn’t—as I’m pretty sure I would have—tell the interviewer to go fuck himself, yet still in your dignified and uncompromising fashion let him know in no uncertain terms that your business none of his business.
然而，在寻找你不唱歌时你的声音听起来是什么样子的例子时，我发现了一次我特别喜欢的采访，其中你没有——我很确定我会这么做——告诉面试官去他妈的，但仍然以你有尊严和不妥协的方式让他明确地知道你的事与他无关。
Your life, your privacy not material for interviewers to label, commodify for other people’s consumption.
你的生活、你的隐私不应该被采访者贴上标签、商品化以供其他人消费。
You let him understand that simply because you possessed the gift, the art to sing your ass off, did not license him to be coy, evasive, manipulative, not helpful to the cause, irresponsible, exploitative, naïve, inconsistent, dishonest during an interview.
你让他明白，仅仅因为你拥有天赋，有唱得尽兴的艺术，并不意味着他在采访中表现得含糊其辞、闪烁其词、善于操纵、对事业没有帮助、不负责任、剥削性、天真、前后矛盾、不诚实。
Not forgetting to add your humble suggestion that perhaps in a contemporary world inches away from exploding or imploding there are more urgent, more germane issues for the media to attend to than the in-and-out gossip of your sex life.
别忘了加上你谦虚的建议，也许在当今世界，离爆炸或内爆只有几步之遥，媒体需要关注的问题比你的性生活的进进出出的八卦更紧迫、更密切。
Still, I’m guilty, more hungry than that interviewer to learn your secrets.
尽管如此，我还是很内疚，比面试官更渴望了解你的秘密。
But different secrets for different reasons, I hope.
但我希望，出于不同的原因，有不同的秘密。
The most crucial reason being how much I’m moved by your song’s power to free my son.
最重要的原因是我对你的歌曲解放我儿子的力量感到非常感动。
Not exactly envious, but more than desperate to figure out how you do what you do.
并不完全是嫉妒，而是非常渴望弄清楚自己是如何做自己所做的事情的。
I want to learn to emulate your example and save him.
我想学习效仿你的榜样来拯救他。
Please allow me to continue to wonder about the particular face or faces conjured up for you when you sing “URML.” How do songs, stories—the unique ones that are art, the no less special everyday ones locked up inside people’s heads or bantered back and forth with other folks—become narratives in which daydreams, words and sounds of actual lives/life are embedded.
请允许我继续想知道当你唱“URML”时，你脑海中会浮现出哪张特定的面孔。歌曲、故事——独特的艺术作品，同样特别的日常故事，被锁在人们的脑海里或与其他人来回开玩笑——如何成为嵌入白日梦、现实生活/生活的文字和声音的叙事。
Maybe stories, fiction or not, give solace, context, possibility, as much with their stable, recurring forms as with their infinitely various contents, and thereby produce examples of lives shaped, framed so they are recognizably distinguishable from emptiness, from darkness that seems always to surround and render lives unseeable.
也许故事，无论是否是虚构的，都以其稳定、反复出现的形式和无限多样的内容，提供安慰、背景、可能性，从而产生生活的例子，这些生活的塑造和框架使它们与空虚、与似乎总是围绕着生命并使生命变得不可见的黑暗明显区分开来。
I’m reaching out, asking you.
我伸出手，问你。
Do songs and stories create real shapes, colors, smells, sounds.
歌曲和故事创造出真实的形状、颜色、气味和声音吗？
Real even if futile vis-à-vis the absolute arbitrariness of what happens to be happening moment by moment, day by day.
相对于时时刻刻、日复一日发生的事情的绝对任意性而言，即使是徒劳的，也是真实的。
I’ve had mummies on my brain lately.
最近我的脑子里一直有木乃伊。
They keep cropping up unexpectedly.
他们不断地突然出现。
In unpredictable, unlikely, unavoidable places, Mr. Jackson.
在不可预测、不可能、不可避免的地方，杰克逊先生。
Mummification old as the oldest documented civilization and practiced globally.
木乃伊制作作为最古老的有记载的文明历史悠久，并在全球范围内实行。
My old Philly buddy who killed his lady attempted to mummify her, sealing her corpse in a box with stuff he believed would preserve it, stowing the box in the ceiling rafters of his Powelton Village apartment, hoping to conceal his crime by causing his lady to disappear.
我的费城老朋友杀死了他的女士，他试图将她制成木乃伊，用他认为可以保存尸体的东西将她的尸体密封在一个盒子里，然后将盒子放在他鲍威尔顿村公寓的天花板椽子上，希望通过让他的女士消失来掩盖他的罪行。
That mummy didn’t work.
那个木乃伊没有工作。
Leaked, stank.
漏了，发臭了。
Led to my friend’s arrest.
导致我朋友被捕。
I have no doubt his extreme oddness, bookishness, dabbles in the occult, fantasies of invincibility, though they failed to provide him with a proper chemical formula for mummifying his lady’s corpse, supplied him copiously with lore, ritual, history, chants, prayers for launching her into immortality.
我毫不怀疑他的极端古怪、书生气、对神秘学的涉足、无敌的幻想，尽管他们未能为他提供适当的化学配方来将他女士的尸体制成木乃伊，但却为他提供了大量的传说、仪式、历史、圣歌和祈祷，让她永生不朽。
Whether my former friend believed he could arrange life after death for his lady, I can’t say, but I know he thought a lot about his various projects.
我不能说我以前的朋友是否相信他可以为他的女士安排死后的生活，但我知道他对他的各种计划想了很多。
Often intelligently, with a meticulously organized, relentless, insane, patient thoroughness and self-assuredness.
通常是聪明的、精心组织的、无情的、疯狂的、耐心的、彻底的和自信的。
And that horrific launching my once-upon-a-time friend perpetrated, his desperate, doomed attempt to spare himself from the consequences of his crime and spare his lady’s body the indignities of decay and dissolution, his effort to save her and save himself, made the choice of mummification perhaps an irresistible option.
而我从前的朋友所犯下的可怕的发射事件，他绝望的、注定要失败的尝试，目的是让自己免受犯罪的后果，并使他的女士的身体免受腐烂和溶解的侮辱，他为拯救她和拯救自己而做出的努力，使得木乃伊化的选择也许是一个不可抗拒的选择。
No matter what he was thinking, his choices, his actions barbaric, despicable, profoundly unacceptable.
无论他在想什么，他的选择，他的行为都是野蛮的、卑鄙的、令人极其不可接受的。
All of the above and more.
以上所有以及更多。
Worse.
更糟糕的是。
His actions especially spooky and unsettling because they linked his crime to an ancient, honorable, sacred art, an art cultures devised to prepare their dead for a journey that would be a continuation of life.
他的行为尤其令人毛骨悚然和令人不安，因为他们将他的罪行与一种古老的、光荣的、神圣的艺术联系起来，这种艺术文化旨在为死者做好生命延续的旅程的准备。
As I learned more about the traditions (desperate, selfish, foolish) of mummy launching, their secret formulas, mysterious protocols, the motivations that conceived them—the imagining of a voyage that connects life and death, the envisioning of immortality, of the necessities humans would require and desire during a perpetual trip—the innocence of those practices of mummification touched me, Mr. Jackson, revealed to me how a similar willed innocence possibly underlies all arts humans practice.
当我更多地了解木乃伊发射的传统（绝望、自私、愚蠢）、它们的秘密配方、神秘的协议、构想它们的动机——对连接生与死的航行的想象、对永生的想象、人类在永恒的旅行中需要和渴望的必需品——这些木乃伊化做法的纯真触动了我，杰克逊先生，向我揭示了类似的有意愿的纯真可能是如何实现的。是人类实践所有艺术的基础。
Same way people depend upon mummy-makers to insure the dead are ready and able to enjoy, to survive whatever pleasures and perils a journey that never ends might bring, people rely on artists and works of art (with equally scant, problematic, or no evidence at all, that such reliance achieves desirable results) to act as guides.
就像人们依赖木乃伊制造者来确保死者做好准备并能够享受、度过永无止境的旅程可能带来的任何快乐和危险一样，人们依赖艺术家和艺术品（同样缺乏、有问题或根本没有证据表明这种依赖达到了理想的结果）作为指导。
Art embodies, improvises rules of sorts for negotiating imaginary worlds—defines rewards and punishments in such worlds—confirms the existence of those imagined worlds where occasionally a person can hang out, vacation on demand, daydream or chatter about without sacrificing too much time or energy better spent on the business of ordinary living.
艺术体现、即兴制定了谈判想象世界的各种规则——定义了这些世界中的奖励和惩罚——证实了那些想象世界的存在，在这些世界中，人们偶尔可以闲逛、按需度假、做白日梦或闲聊，而不必牺牲太多时间或精力，最好花在日常生活上。
As if art—mummy-making, writing symphonies—changes time.
就好像艺术——制作木乃伊、写交响乐——改变了时间。
As if certain artisans can lift the veil of mystery that divides life from death.
仿佛某些工匠能够揭开生与死之间的神秘面纱。
As if lifted, there would be anything under the veil.
仿佛揭开了面纱，下面就会有什么东西。
As if consciousness might trump time.
仿佛意识可以战胜时间。
Mummies intended to serve the dead.
木乃伊旨在为死者服务。
Just as songs you sing (story I compose) intended to serve the living.
就像你唱的歌曲（我创作的故事）旨在服务生者一样。
Make sense of treacherous terrain.
了解危险的地形。
Travelling companions on an arduous journey.
艰难旅程中的旅伴。
Helping people along the way or opening ways.
帮助人们前进或开辟道路。
Opening time.
开放时间。
Space to inhabit.
居住空间。
A choice to continue.
选择继续。
Or not.
或不。
And lo and behold .
你瞧。
.
。
.
。
sometimes it works.
有时它有效。
“URML.” Song in a car.
“URML。”车里的歌。
My son heard it, Mr. Jackson.
我儿子听到了，杰克逊先生。
Thank you.
谢谢。
I hope my intrusions into your private business, my questions, worries, and insinuations about your art haven’t chased you away.
我希望我对你私人事务的侵扰、我对你艺术的疑问、担忧和暗示没有把你赶走。
Who is this guy, what does he want from me, you may be asking yourself—if you’ve read this far.
如果你已经读到这里，你可能会问自己，这个人是谁，他想从我这里得到什么。
Let me assure you I expect no response to this letter that is not even a real letter.
让我向你保证，我预计这封信不会得到任何回应，因为这封信甚至不是一封真正的信。
I’m asking you for nothing, Mr. Jackson, though I understand how you or other people might believe that I’m asking far too much.
杰克逊先生，我对你没有任何要求，尽管我理解你或其他人可能会认为我的要求太多了。
For a piece of you.
为了你的一部分。
Like any parasite demands.
就像任何寄生虫的要求一样。
You must have encountered plenty of parasites, especially when you were at the top of the charts.
你一定遇到过很多寄生虫，尤其是当你在排行榜上名列前茅的时候。
Notorious pests in the entertainment industry as elsewhere.
娱乐业和其他地方一样是臭名昭著的害虫。
Parasites.
寄生虫。
A word I looked up once and discovered its origins Greek.
我查了一下这个词，发现它起源于希腊语。
In that ancient language the word signifies folks who are always showing up at your table for a meal, hands empty, mouths full of gimme and much obliged .
在那种古老的语言中，这个词指的是那些总是出现在你的餐桌旁吃饭、双手空空、嘴里塞满了给我并且非常感激的人。
Parasites.
寄生虫。
A word associated frequently with artists.
这个词经常与艺术家联系在一起。
With art’s arrogance when it proclaims art for art’s sake.
当艺术宣称为艺术而艺术时，它充满了艺术的傲慢。
With the proverbial, well-earned reputation of artists for laziness, greed, selfishness, nastiness, irrelevance, fecklessness, and fickleness.
众所周知，艺术家们因懒惰、贪婪、自私、肮脏、无关紧要、不负责任和善变而享有盛名。
Parasites one more compromising word in this letter, this story.
寄生虫是这封信中另一个妥协的词，这个故事。
A word getting in line with murderers, mummies, mafiosos to suggest art’s unsavory and/or failed ambitions.
这个词与杀人犯、木乃伊、黑手党相一致，暗示着艺术的令人厌恶和/或失败的野心。
Walking last fall in Brittany with a neighbor on a 10K charity trek to earn money for the local elementary school’s arts program, I pointed to a stand of trees atop the crest of a low hill in the gently rolling terrain of mainly pastureland surrounding us.
去年秋天，我和一位邻居在布列塔尼徒步旅行一万米，为当地小学的艺术项目赚钱，我指着我们周围主要是牧场的平缓起伏的小山顶上的一棵树。
The trees I indicated were not quite bare of foliage but stripped enough for limbs and branches to reveal lots of roundish puffs or nests suspended in them, big blots, blobs within the larger, more or less oval-shaped crowns of five or six trees ahead in the distance.
我所指的树木并没有完全光秃秃的叶子，但四肢和树枝的叶子都被剥光了，露出了许多圆形的蓬松物或悬挂在其中的巢穴，大斑点，远处前方五六棵树的较大的或多或少呈椭圆形的树冠内的斑点。
Gui , he said after I stumbled through an explanation in English and halting French of what had caught my eye and wanted him to give me the French word for.
在我用英语和结结巴巴的法语对引起我注意的内容进行了结结巴巴的解释后，他说道，并希望他告诉我“Gui”的法语单词。
Closer up, they are networks of something like spider webbing or skinny threads of black bone on an X-ray plate of bright morning light.
近距离观察，它们是由蜘蛛网或明亮晨光 X 光片上细细的黑骨线组成的网络。
Gui .
贵.
Mistletoe a loose translation.
槲寄生的松散翻译。
Mistletoe carrying, mixing, and matching stories from numerous languages, the plant’s name in each language suggests.
槲寄生承载、混合和匹配来自多种语言的故事，每种语言的植物名称都表明了这一点。
Saying the word in English gets me thinking about Christmas.
用英语说这个词让我想起圣诞节。
St. Nick.
圣尼克。
Santa.
圣诞老人。
Love.
爱。
Lovers and strangers tempted, ordered to kiss under mistletoe.
恋人与陌生人经受诱惑，命在槲寄生下接吻。
Nat Cole crooning about chestnuts and fire.
纳特·科尔低吟着栗子和火。
Druids with their mastery of oak lore and oak magic in charge of forests.
德鲁伊掌握橡树知识和橡树魔法，掌管森林。
Deer.
鹿。
Wizards and Witches.
巫师和女巫。
Elves.
精灵。
Gui are parasites, my neighbor said.
桂是寄生虫，我的邻居说。
Infest the host tree.
侵染寄主树。
Berries poison, I learned later.
浆果有毒，我后来才知道。
Sticky.
黏。
Berries stick to a feeding bird’s beak and when a bird scrapes them off on a branch, tiny, tiny patches of resiny stuff adhere to the tree’s bark, gradually penetrating it, though some species of gui in a hurry, I read, shoot missiles, clocked at fifty miles an hour when they exit, deep into a tree’s heart, where they begin to suck and grow and send back messages of food, water from the tree to nourish the microchip-sized growth on the surface, and if the chip is lucky, it flourishes and becomes a shadow, a cloud, a thriving, bulky colony of new life like I’d been curious about in those trees on the hill, silhouetted against the horizon we walked toward.
浆果粘在一只正在进食的鸟儿的嘴上，当鸟儿把它们从树枝上刮下来时，微小的树脂状物质就会粘附在树皮上，逐渐渗透到树皮上，尽管我读到，有些种类的桂树会匆忙地发射导弹，以每小时五十英里的速度射出，深入树心，在那里它们开始吸取食物和水的信息，从树上吸取食物和水，滋养表面微芯片大小的生长，如果芯片是幸运的是，它蓬勃发展，变成了一片阴影，一朵云，一个欣欣向荣、庞大的新生命殖民地，就像我对山上那些树木感到好奇的那样，它们在我们走向的地平线上形成了剪影。
That morning in Brittany as my friend got me finally to repeat the sound of the French word he was pronouncing by spelling it aloud—g-u-i—and also explained in a slightly disparaging tone that gui a parasite, I resisted my usual negative reaction to the word parasite.
那天早上，在布列塔尼，我的朋友终于让我大声拼写出法语单词 g-u-i 的发音，并用略带贬低的语气解释说 gui 是一种寄生虫，我抵制住了我通常对寄生虫这个词的负面反应。
Parasite .
寄生虫。
What was not a parasite.
什么不是寄生虫。
Who is parasiting whom.
谁寄生谁。
From what privileged point of view do we decide parasite or host.
我们从什么特权角度来决定寄生虫或宿主。
Were gui parasites any more or less than those six or so trees, behind us now, scuffling for nourishment from sky, ground, neighboring trees, rain, stars, those trees feeding on birds, mice, cows, insects, microbes feeding on them, up and down the food chain, Great Chain of Being, the latter chain a concept originating in the fifteenth century, popular through the eighteenth, that I had come across when I studied the birth of the English novel, both chains signifying the same grand plan and interconnection and infinite coupling and interdependencies and eating and being eaten necessary to create and sustain each moment, everyone, everything large and small, past, present, and future, Mr. Jackson, all of us parasiting our way through.
桂寄生虫是否比我们身后那六棵左右的树或多或少，从天空、地面、邻近的树木、雨水、星星，那些以鸟、老鼠、牛、昆虫、微生物为食的树木，在食物链的上下，存在的伟大链条，后者的链条是一个起源于十五世纪的概念，流行到十八世纪，我在研究英国小说的诞生时遇到了这个概念，两条链条都代表着同一个宏伟的计划和相互联系、无限耦合、相互依赖、吃与被吃是创造和维持每个时刻、每个人、大大小小的一切、过去、现在和未来所必需的，杰克逊先生，我们所有人都寄生在其中。
Chains linking, binding us, like slavery’s chains link and bind us, though slavery seldom if ever mentioned by my Oxford professors in the early sixties, whose stories taught me the origins of fiction.
锁链将我们联系起来，束缚着我们，就像奴隶制的锁链将我们联系起来并束缚着我们一样，尽管六十年代初我的牛津大学教授们很少提到奴隶制，他们的故事教会了我小说的起源。
Chain, Chain, Chain .
链条，链条，链条。
.
。
.
。
like Aretha sings, Mr. Jackson.
就像艾瑞莎唱的那样，杰克逊先生。
Like you sing.
就像你唱歌一样。
♦
❖