Get high and die

Author: Wang Shuo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: When I was young, I thought there were many important things ahead, and as long as I kept running, I would see them. After going through them, I realized that the important things had all happened behind me and had already passed. Moving forward, there was just an endless void. There is nothing to regret about the past, and there is no such thing as coincidence; everything was something that had to be experienced. I don’t believe one can have more than two choices. These books were all written ten years ago or earlier. At that time, I was very self-assured, believed in many things, distrusted many things, had strong desires, and thought that what I already knew was everything. The people, scenes, and conversations in these books were things I had experienced back then. They weren’t particularly special in life—only because I didn’t know more, I thought they were interesting and wrote them down with pretense. These scenes are gone, the people have scattered, the living are aging prematurely, and I no longer speak or see myself in the same way. Sometimes I feel I have lost the ability to continue writing. Culture is terrifying, like food—you either don’t eat it and die, or eat it and are shaped by it. I doubt its core has been encoded into our genes and no longer needs to be acquired through education. I feel like I’m swimming in the sea, with endless waves that can never be exhausted. When will I be able to reach the other shore, with a clear and innocent mind like a newly fallen primitive person from a tree? As for these books, I personally think they are a witness to a dark age. To live, to live in self-invented and self-satisfied illusions, is perhaps the fate of a writer. Understanding it is useless.