遇上抢手的片子，影艺戏院会最先满座。因为它的放映厅座位最少。上届想看的丹麦影片 Reconstruction 就因影艺满座没看成。这次又遇到了同样的命运。售票窗的老太一指边上的告示：满座。面临两种选择：撤，找个地方闲逛；赖，找别人要多余的票。就冲着德国导演 Thomas Riedelsheimer 追随聋女打击乐手 Evelyn Glennie 一年拍摄，然后再花一年剪辑的精神，我选择了后者。再说这是一部与声音有关的纪实片，会很有看头。
离开场还有5分钟，到达的观众多半直入戏院，只有两个人在等朋友，男孩在开场前两分钟等来了他的另两位朋友，三人欢喜入场。剩下一个女孩，脸上有点着急。于是我厚着脸皮说如果朋友不来就让一张票给我。她朝我笑笑没说什么。开场后两分钟，她的朋友也出现了，我的最后一个希望泡泡破灭。门口只剩下我一人。被检票的胖子不时以带问号的目光扫一下。这胖子衬衫领带，秃顶，剩下侧翼的头发梳得油光整齐，两只杏仁般的大眼珠。活脱脱三四十年代大班家的人。去年我来影艺扑菲时就看到他了，当时正值放映中，他在门口的椅子上悠然打着瞌睡。仿佛老相识，于是我壮着胆子上前说因为来晚了没票，还是专程从广州赶来的。胖子一听就明白，小声对我说，你去售票窗买张下一场的票子，过来交给我就行了。我就这样进了放映厅！心里充满了对胖检票员的感激。
以仰慕的姿态观影，一来对这位艺人和导演确实钦佩，二来黑压压的剧场只在第三排找到空位，不得不把头抬得高高的。在导演手下，影片的画面成了聋人看世界的全新视角。在打击乐手的眼中，纷乱的世界自有它的韵律。有了接触，就有了声音。Evelyn 的双手化腐朽为神奇，将杂音梳理，内在生命瞬间彰显。活生生的一部教科书，应该组织小学生观看这部片子，从小培养如何观察周遭世界。片中更拍到 Evelyn 和声音艺术家 Fred Frith 在 Pfeiffer & Langen 废弃厂房里的排练和大段即兴演奏的过程。直呼过瘾！
通过接触去体验声音，它的生命力如此具象。这是电脑音乐无法给予的。听听 Evelyn 的肺腑之言：
"Hearing is a sensation for which you need your whole body. And my whole life is about sound. It's what makes me tick as a human being. There's sound absolutely everywhere. You have to listen. That's it really... I want to be open to absolutely everything that comes my way. I mean, this is the most interesting thing with a musician, this sound journey."
"Silence is probably one of the loudest sounds and heaviest sounds that you're every likely to experience. At the end of the day, we still know that within everything that we see, there's sound... we know that. We just don't have the sensitivity to hear what is going on around us."
how do we hear: "If someone asks me: 'Oh well, how do you hear that?' - then I simply say: 'I really don't know, but I just basically hear that through my body, through opening myself up. How do you hear that?' - 'Oh well, I hear it through the ears... 'So, when you try to bounce the question back to a so-called hearing person, then they simply do not know how to answer these questions. So therefore, why should I be put in that position?"
the opposite of sound: "The opposite of sound… definitely isn't silence. Well, there must be an opposite, actually … but what that is, I don't know. I wonder whether it is something that is more static, something that you can take away with you … It's the closest thing that I can imagine to death."
a form of touch: "Hearing is a form of touch. Something that's so hard to describe, something that comes, sound that comes to you... you can feel as though you can literally almost reach out to that sound and feel that sound. You feel it through your body, and, sometimes, it almost hits your face."
we are the sound: "Here we are, we've got all these human beings, of different sorts, all different dynamics, different ages, different accents. Imagine them on a page, of music, imagine them, human beings being the dots on a page … and it can be quite amazing to be part of that. And then you understand, wow, we are the sound!
like the first time: "I believe that Richard Long said: 'Artists are people who are in touch with the energy that they had when they were children.' It's never left them and so that sense of seeing something or hearing something for the first time and being excited by it … I think, you should try to hang on to that. It's great. In the end, it's about listening. It starts from listening and it ends with listening. (Fred Frith)
equivalent of life: "Everything will be let go, in the same way that all your music will disappear. But yet, no sound is lost, they live on, but what happens to them, I actually don't know. It's the equivalent of a life."
individual sound: "I believe that we all have our own individual sound. We are configured uniquely, we have different weight, we have a different stance, physical stance, we have a different means of attack, we approach the instruments differently. But more importantly, we hear the sound within ourselves differently."
