The Moody Blues was being disingenuous in rhapsodizing “Letters I’ve written / Never meaning to send.” To be precise, the rock band was doing nothing but sending it in “Nights in White Satin” (1967), a heavenly epistle that reached an enraptured Taiwanese high schooler from an austere neighborhood one afternoon after school, invited to a wealthy classmate’s mansion to enjoy his vinyl albums. (He grew up to become a prominent politician in Taipei a decade ago.) I was awestruck by the well-heeled and their “high” culture. I still recall being bewitched by the futuristic cover to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), apparently a recent acquisition through ways and means inconceivably to anyone but the most affluent in the backwater of the mid-1970s Taiwan. To this day, half a century later, I still hum “Blue birds flying high / Tell me what you sing” and other snatches in showers. Subconsciously, I have substituted “sing” with “see,” the visual dimension far more fitting than the auditory one, given the great distance. In any event, any listener would hear and understand what the vocalist is crooning “up there.” Read More
