狱中心灵慰藉——泰勒•斯威夫特的音乐（下） | 纽约客（中秋节快乐）
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英文选自202300902纽约客
Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison
狱中心灵慰藉——泰勒•斯威夫特的音乐
Her music makes me feel that I’m still part of the world I left behind.
虽然我身陷囹圄与世隔绝，但她的歌声让我感觉，我仍与这个世界有着某种联结
By Joe Garcia
乔•加西亚
注释：
作者乔•加西亚（Joe Garcia）是著名狱中作家
前面部分详见周三推送(以下为超链接）：
狱中心灵慰藉——泰勒•斯威夫特的音乐（上）
One of my homies at San Quentin had a pristine radio that played CDs and cassette tapes. When he earned parole, everybody hounded him for it. He knew how much I’d appreciate such a luxury, but I didn’t join the herd of pesterers making offers, and I think he appreciated that. He gave it to me as a parting gift. I was even able to have it officially documented on my property card. The MP3 player clipped neatly into the cassette door, so now I could see my playlists while I listened. My neighbor, Rasta, was the weed man for the building, so I played Swift to drown out the guys who were lighting up outside. Rasta made fun of me, but the crowd always liked her “Bad Blood” remix, featuringKendrick Lamar. “That’s the shit right there,” they’d say. “Who would’ve thought?”
我在圣昆丁州立监狱的一个兄弟有一台崭新的收音机，可以播放光碟和磁带。后来，他获得了假释，每个人都缠着他要这台收音机。他知道我有多想要这个奢侈品，但我不像其他人那样对他纠缠不休、追着开价，我想他是很欣赏这点的。于是，他将这台收音机作为临别礼物赠送给我，我甚至得以把它正式登记为我的个人财产。MP3播放器能完美地卡进磁带盒里，这样听歌的时候还可以显示播放列表。我隔壁的狱友拉斯塔（Rasta）是楼里的大麻贩子，而我每次播放斯威夫特的音乐，让音量盖过外面那帮抽烟的男人时，拉斯塔会笑话我，但外面的人不会，他们很喜欢斯威夫特与肯德里克·拉马尔（Kendrick Lamar）合作的混音版《敌对》（Bad Blood）。他们评价说：“就是这个味儿！谁能想到呢?”
Seven months after “Lover” came out, C.D.C.R. shut down all programming because of thecovid pandemic—no indoor group interactions, no volunteers from outside the prison, no visitors. C.D.C.R. brought the coronavirus into San Quentin when it moved some sick guys from another prison in. By the end of June, 2020, hundreds of us were testing positive and getting sick, including me. I lugged all my property to an isolation cell in a quarantine unit, where I shivered and sweated through a brain fog for two weeks. My only human contact came from nurses in full-body P.P.E., who checked my vitals, and skeleton crews of officers—the ones who weren’t sick themselves—who brought us intermittent meals. I followed San Quentin’s death tallies on the local news. Would I die alone in this cell, suddenly and violently breathless? I made a playlist of Swift’s most uplifting songs, listening for the happiness in her voice.
《恋人》（Lover）面市后七个月，由于疫情严峻，加州惩教署停掉了所有的电视节目，禁止室内人群聚集，禁止外部志愿者进入，禁止探视。加州惩教署在从另一间监狱接收一些感染犯人时把新冠病毒带到了圣昆丁。2020年6月底，包括我在内的上百名犯人病倒，被测出阳性。我拖着全部家当搬到隔离区域的一间独立监室，整整两周，我瑟瑟发抖、冷汗如瀑、头晕目眩。我唯一能接触到的就是来查看我生命体征、身着全套防护服的护士，还有尚且健康、维持监狱运转的工作人员，他们偶尔来给我们送饭。我持续关注着当地新闻上公布的圣昆丁死亡人数，担心自己会呼吸骤停而暴毙，在这监牢里孤独死去。我把斯威夫特最能鼓舞人心的歌曲做成一个播放列表，从她的歌声中寻求慰藉。
Alone in a prison cell, it’s virtually impossible to avoid oneself. As my body and mind began to recover, I started to question everything. What really matters? Who am I? What if I die tomorrow? I hadn’t been in touch with my sweetheart in more than two years, because she had told me that she was trying a relationship with someone who cared about her. Now, though, I wrote her a letter to see if she was O.K.
一个人住单间牢房，就基本免不了要直面自我。当我的身体逐渐康复，意识逐渐清醒，我开始质疑一切。什么才是真正重要的？我是谁？如果我明天就死了呢？我已经与我的爱人失联两年多了，因为她告诉我她在和另一个人发展恋情，一个在意她的人。尽管如此，我还是在那个时候给她写了一封信，想知道她是否安好。
A week after I mailed my letter, I received one from her. Prison mail is slow enough that I knew it wasn’t a response—we had decided to write to each other at the same time. “The lockdown has afforded me plenty of time to reflect on all sorts of things,” her letter said. “I’ve been carrying you with me everywhere.” Reading it brought to mind Swift’s lyrics in “Daylight”: “I don’t wanna think of anything else now that I thought of you.” She was single again, and we started talking every week. In lockdown, between paltry dinner trays, I did pushups, lunges, squats, and planks in the twenty-two-inch-wide floor space in my cell. The twentieth year of my incarceration was approaching.
信件寄出一周后，我就收到了她的来信。监狱邮件送得很慢，所以我知道那肯定不是她给我的回信，而是我们心有灵犀，同时给彼此写了信。她在信中说：“封城以后，我有充足的时间来思考各种事情。无论走到哪里，我总是会想起你。” 读到这，我想起了斯威夫特《日光》（Daylight）中的歌词：“如今我的脑海中只有你，再也无心分神。”她又恢复了单身，于是我们开始每周聊天。封锁期间，在清茶淡饭的间隙，我会在牢房22英寸宽的地板上做俯卧撑、弓步蹲、深蹲和平板支撑。马上就是我服刑的第20个年头了。
注释：
1英寸=2.54cm。
In 2020, the California legislature passed a law that made anyone who served twenty continuous years, and who was at least fifty years of age, eligible for parole. I’m fifty-three, and I’ll get my first chance at release in 2024. I couldn’t help but think of “Daylight” again. “I’ve been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night,” Swift sings. “And now I see daylight.”
2020 年，加州立法机构通过了一项法律，任何监犯只要连续服刑二十年且年满五十岁，都有资格获得假释。我今年53岁，将在2024年首次获得假释机会。我不禁又想起了《日光》这首歌，斯威夫特在歌中唱道：“我在黑夜里沉睡了二十载，如今终于可以看到日光。”
These days, I call my sweetheart as often as I can. Officers can shut down the phones with the flick of a switch, and technical glitches often take the system offline, so I treat each call as if it were my last. It often feels like she’s waiting to hear from me. She tells me that it’s complicated and confusing for her, speaking to the ghost who disappeared twenty years ago. But, leaning against a wall, next to all the other guys talking with loved ones on the phone, I don’t feel like a ghost. I feel alive. Just recently, she told me, “Talking like this over the phone so much, I think we’ve gotten to know each other way better than before.” We talk about how much we have changed. “You might not even find me attractive anymore,” she tells me. “I’m not the same person I was back then.”
最近这些日子，我一有空就和恋人通话。警官只需轻轻一拨开关，便可以关掉电话，而技术问题也常常让通话掉线，所以我把每次和她的通话都珍视为最后一次。我常常感觉她在等候我的来电。她告诉我，她感觉心乱如麻，困惑不已，好像在和一个消失了20年的鬼魂对话。但是当我倚着墙壁，听着身边的人都在和爱人打电话，我却不觉得自己像个鬼魂。我感受到了自己真实的存在。不久前，她同我说道，“在电话里聊了这么多之后，我感觉我们比过去更了解彼此了。”我们谈论各自的种种变化。她在电话那头说，“下次见面，你可能都不会觉得我很好看了。我和以前不一样了。”
One morning in October, 2022, I had breakfast in the chow hall and made it back to my cell in time for “Good Morning America.” My TV doesn’t have any speakers, so I plugged it into my boom box. Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice singing an unfamiliar chorus: “It’s me, hi / I’m the problem, it’s me.” The anchors on the broadcast were giddy to announce Swift’s new album “Midnights,” and play clips from the music video of “Anti-Hero.” Swift appeared as a larger-than-life figure, arguing with different versions of herself. I laughed to myself. Here we go again.
2022年10月的某个清晨，我在食堂吃过早餐，然后回到牢房，恰好赶上电视里在播《早安美国》（Good Morning America）。我的电视机没有扬声器，所以我把它和我的手提音箱连接在一起。突然，我听到了一个熟悉的声音，但却唱着陌生的曲调：“嗨是我，我就是问题本身”。主持人眉飞色舞地宣布斯威夫特即将发行新专辑《午夜》（Midnights），并播放了歌曲《反英雄》（Anti-Hero）的MV片段。在MV中，斯威夫特以一个庞然大物的形象现身，与不同的“自己”争吵。我不禁开怀一笑。这位巨星再度重磅来袭。
Our MP3 distributor was always slow to release new music, so I spent a couple of weeks hearing about the album on the news, waiting for my chance to listen. Then, out on the prison grounds, I bumped into a volunteer whom I’d known and worked with for years. We were walking through the yard together when they started looking around to make sure no one was watching. After confirming that the coast was clear, they slipped me a brand-new copy of “Midnights” and wished me a happy birthday. The gesture nearly brought me to tears. That evening, after dinner, I peeled off the plastic and brushed a bit of dust out of the boom box’s CD player. “Lavender Haze” played as I read the liner notes. “What keeps you up at night?” Swift writes.
我们MP3发行商在发布新音乐上总是慢人一步，所以我好几周都只能在新闻上听听有关这张专辑的报道，就盼着有机会真正听到它的那一天。一次外出放风时，我碰到了一位认识并相处多年的志愿者。我们一起穿过院子时，他们左顾右盼，确保没有人在往我们这边看。在确定没有引起注意后，他们悄悄塞给我全新的《午夜》（Midnights）专辑，并祝我生日快乐。这一举动让我红了眼眶。那天吃过晚饭后，我拆去专辑的塑料外封，掸去了音箱CD播放器上的灰尘。我一边读着专辑说明，一边听着《薰衣草迷雾》（Lavender Haze）。斯威夫特写道，“是什么让你彻夜难眠？”
For the past two decades, sleep has not come easily to me. Often, when I get into bed, I think about the day I was arrested at the scene of my crime. Some neighbors called 911 and reported gunshots. I can still see the grieving family members of the man I killed, staring at me in the courtroom at my trial. I’m guilty of more than murder. I abandoned my parents and my sweetheart, too. There’s no way to fix this stuff.
过去的二十年里，我总是失眠。每当上床睡觉时，我就经常回想起在案发现场被逮捕的那天。一些邻居拨打911，向警察报告听到了枪声。在审判法庭上，被我杀死的男人家属悲痛欲绝，死死地盯着我，这一幕依旧历历在目。我背负的罪行不止谋杀这一条，我也抛弃了我的家人、我的爱人。我犯下的错误，永远无法弥补。
20-Taylor Swift is currently the same age, thirty-three, that I was when I was arrested. I wonder whether her music would have resonated with me when I was her age. I wonder whether I would have reacted to the words “I’m the problem, it’s me.” Hers must be champagne problems compared with mine, but I still see myself in them. “I’ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror,” Swift sings, and I think of the three-by-five-inch plastic mirrors that are available inside. For years out there, I viewed myself as the antihero in my own warped self-narrative. Do I want to see myself clearly?
斯威夫特现在33岁，和我被捕时一样的年纪。我想知道，如果我是她那个年纪，是否还会对她的音乐产生共鸣；是否会对“是我，我就是问题本身”有所感悟。与我的问题相比，她的问题一定是“香槟问题（Champagne Problems）”，但我依旧能从中看到我自己。她唱道，“我敢直面耀眼光芒，但无法直视镜子前的自己”，令我不禁想到狱中那些3×5英寸的塑料镜子。多年来，在我扭曲的自叙中，我都将自己视作反英雄。我是否想看清自己呢？
注释：
《Champagne Problems》是由泰勒·斯威夫特录唱的一首歌曲，收录在她的第九张录音室专辑《Evermore》中。
In “Karma,” Swift sings, “Ask me what I learned from all those years / Ask me what I earned from all those tears.” A few months from now, California’s Board of Parole Hearings will ask me questions like that. What have I learned? What do I have to show for my twenty years of incarceration? In the months ahead, when these questions keep me up at night, I will listen to “Midnights.” The woman I love says she’s ready to meet me on the other side of the prison wall, on the day that I walk into the daylight. Recently, she asked me, “If you could go anywhere, do anything, that first day out, what would you want us to go do?” That question keeps me up at night, too.
在《因果报应》（Karma）中，斯威夫特唱道，“不如问问我，从这些年里学到了什么/从这些泪水中又学到了什么。”几个月后，加州的假释听证委员会也会问我类似的问题。我学到了什么？关于我二十年的服刑生活，我收获了什么？接下来的几个月，每当想到这些问题而夜不能寐时，我都会播放《午夜》（Midnights）这首歌。我爱的女人说，她已准备好在我步入阳光的那一天，在监狱高墙的另一边与我见面。最近，她问我，“如果你能想去哪就去哪，想做什么就做什么，那么在你出狱的第一天，你想我们一起去做些什么呢？” 一想起这个问题，我也一样辗转难眠。
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