Green Island Serenade

I had a very long dream in which I traveled around the world with two other men on some convoluted adventure the purpose of which was not terribly clear. I can't remember most of the details.

What I do remember is finding a very peculiar musical instrument and carrying it around with me, trying to learn how to play it. Whatever our mission was, my learning how to play this instrument was crucial to its success.

The main body of the instrument resembled a white ceramic Chinese ocarina, or xun (pictured), but with fewer holes. There were three narrow pipes of varying lengths, resembling hollow paintbrushes. You inserted the brush end of these into the holes and played by blowing into the pipes. One of the smaller pipes was inserted into a hole in a larger pipe rather than directly into the ocarina. There were no finger holes. You played different notes by blowing into different pipes, somewhat like panpipes.

As there were only three pipes, I couldn't figure out how to play anything, since obviously just about any piece of music is going to require more than three notes. Finally, while on a beach in the Netherlands, I discovered that you could change which note a given pipe played by modulating your breath. If you blew harder the tone would change. This was not a continuous change; rather, once you passed a certain threshold of air pressure, the tone would suddenly change. As soon as I discovered this, I was able to play fluently, and I began to play the Chinese song "Green Island Serenade." Everyone on the beach, even though they were all Dutch, spontaneously began singing along in Chinese.

In real life, despite my having lived in Taiwan for 21 years and counting, "Green Island Serenade" is the only Chinese song I really like, and the only one I know well enough to sing. Strangely, I discovered it not in Taiwan but in America, when it was recorded by Taiwanese-American singer Vienna Teng. This was just months before I unexpectedly ended up in Taiwan. I discovered the song shortly after it was released, in February or March 2004. In June, I took a job in South Korea. A few months later, due to legal issues in Korea, I applied for jobs in several other countries. The best offer happened to come from Taiwan, and I moved here in October. In retrospect, my discovery of "Green Island Serenade" (the titular island being either Taiwan itself or one of its outlying islands) seemed to prefigure the move.

This song -- the American recording by Vienna Teng -- is also the only Chinese song my Taiwanese wife listens to regularly. It's a pretty song even if you don't understand Chinese.

Note added: inb4 WG mentions The Ocarina of Time. Although I haven't played video games since childhood and never played any of the Zelda games, that's my main association as well. If the ocarina represents time then, given my recent reading, the need for only three pipes may be a reference to Ouspensky's model with only three temporal dimensions, as opposed to Dunne's infinite regress. I've never read Priestley, but according to Lachman he also thinks three temporal dimensions is enough.