Meraikan Pengalaman yang Berulang

Antara sebab ramai penonton Malaysia hari ini berpindah dari Astro ke Neflix ialah mereka sudah bosan dan jemu menonton rancangan sama berulang-ulang kali. Netflix memberikan pilihan yang sangat banyak ke tahap kita kadang-kadang tidak menonton kerana tidak tahu bagaimana hendak membuat keputusan. Selain itu, Netflix akan menyusun dan menawarkan isi kandungannya mengikut cita rasa akaun peribadi penonton. Tetapi cara Netflix mengatur algoritma masih terbatas; ia tidak mengetahui sejarah hidup, personaliti, pembacaan, selera muzik, filem kegemaran seorang penonton. Melainkan Netflix ada akses kepada akaun Google pengguna tersebut. Justeru, akhirnya, Netflix masih akan menolak ke skrin penonton siri dan filem terbaru yang sedang popular. 

Arus media digital mendorong pengguna untuk mengejar isi kandungan terkini dan semasa. Video yang melebihi durasi 1 minit dilihat sebagai bosan dan tidak menarik. Tetapi selaju mana pun teknologi bergerak, manusia akan sentiasa dibatasi oleh tubuh dan memori. Menelan maklumat tidak sama dengan menikmati rasa keindahan sebuah karya seni. Menariknya, perkara ini sudah diterokai dengan sangat mendalam oleh Marcel Proust. Saya akan turunkan di bawah petikan daripada buku kedua In Search of Lost Time ketika watak Marcel sedang berkunjung ke rumah Swann. Di situ Marcel melihat dan mendengar isteri Swann duduk bermain muzik sonata Vinteuil. Ini ialah kali pertama Marcel mendengar muzik itu dimainkan. Dia akan mendengar semula muzik beberapa kali sepanjang hidupnya. Setiap kali muzik itu akan membuka rahsia baru yang sebelum itu mungkin dia tidak pernah bayangkan. Ini antara kekuatan suara naratif Proust di mana naratornya menulis dari masa kini untuk merenung dan menceritakan pengalaman dari masa lalu. 

Terjemahan di bawah ialah hasil tangan James Grieve. 

* * *

Listening for the first time to music that is even a little complicated, one can often hear nothing in it. And yet, later in life, when I had heard the whole piece two or three times, I found I was thoroughly familiar with it. So the expression "hearing something for the first time" is not accurate. If one had distinguished nothing in it on the real first occasion, as one thought, then the second or the third would also be first times; and there would be no reason to understand it any better on the tenth occasion. What is missing the first time is probably not understanding but memory. Our memory span, relative to the complexity of the impressions that assail it as we listen, is infinitesimal, as short-lived as the memory of a sleeping man who has a thousand thoughts which he instantly forgets, or the memory of a man in his dotage, who cannot retain for more than a minute anything he has been told. Our memory is incapable of supplying us with an instantaneous recollection of this multiplicity of impressions. Even so, a recollection does gradually gather in the mind; and with pieces of music heard only two or three times one is like the schoolboy who, though he has read over his lesson a few times before falling asleep, is convinced he still does not know it, but can then recite it word for word when he wakes up the following morning....

Not only does one not immediately discern a work of rare quality; but even within such a work, as happened to me with Vinteuil sonata, it is always the least precious parts that one notices first. So not only was I wrong in my belief that, since Mme Swann had played over for me the most celebrated phrase, the work had nothing more to reveal to me (the result of which was that, for a long time afterward, showing all stupidity of those who expect that their first sight of Saint Mark's in Venice will afford them no surprise, because they have seen the shape of its domes in photographs, I made no further attempt to listen to it); but more important, even after I had listened to the whole sonata from beginning to end, it was still almost entirely invisible to me, like those indistinct fragments of a building that are all once can make out in the misty distance. Therein lies the source of the melancholy that accompanies our discovery of such works, as of all things which can come to fruition only through time. 

* * *

Pengalaman Marcel dengan sonata Vinteuil sebenarnya sama dengan pengalaman sesiapa yang kali pertama membaca novel In Search of Lost Time. Kanvas naratif Proust sangat kaya dan subur dengan watak, imej, dan renungan demi renungan, kita tidak mungkin akan dapat menjamah kesemuanya dalam sekali pembacaan. Ia menuntut pengulangan pembacaan untuk dinikmati. Ibarat mengunjungi sebuah pekan berulang-ulang kali sehingga kita boleh hafal setiap lorong, simpang, dan bangunan-bangunan yang menghiasi jalanannya.