208: Chapter 216 Recording is not allowed here.

Two days later, it was time for the July cover shoot for the Chinese edition of Harper's Bazaar.

The Chinese team flew specifically to Los Angeles, where the studio was draped in red background fabric.

Chen Mo wore custom Anta sportswear in Chinese red, with the characters "Changsha" embroidered on the chest.

These two characters were extracted by Anta's designers from Chen Mo's handwritten tour notes; the vertical hook was slightly crooked, and the horizontal stroke tilted upward.

This sportswear was rushed out by Anta specifically for this shoot, featuring a traditional Chinese stand-up collar, with the abbreviation of Chen Mo's full name embroidered on the inside of the collar.

The photographer was Chinese, and his shooting style was completely different from the previous Western photographers.

He had Chen Mo perform several dynamic movements: jumping, punching, and tilting his head back.

Chen Mo did it smoothly, knees slightly bent before jumping, chin tucked when punching, and revealing a clear jawline when tilting his head back.

After shooting, Chen Mo panted slightly and said, "You guys like power."

The photographer replied, "We do like power, but we like power with roots even more. Did you write those two characters on the clothes yourself?"

Chen Mo looked down and gently touched the strokes where letters and Chinese characters intertwined with his finger, nodding as he said, "They were extracted from my handwriting, so I suppose you could say I wrote them."

The exclusive interview was conducted by a Bazaar China reporter; the questions were soft, but each one hit the mark.

"With a hundred-show tour, do you get homesick?"

"The Changsha show is on New Year's Eve. That night, the whole venue will tell me 'Welcome home,'" Chen Mo joked. "You know, not returning home after achieving success is like wearing fine robes in the dark."

The reporter asked him what he wanted to say to Changsha.

Chen Mo said one sentence in Changsha dialect: "Wait for my return."

"You sound pretty good speaking Changsha dialect." The reporter mimicked a sentence in the dialect.

After finishing the shoot and interview, Chen Mo threw himself back into intense rehearsals, barely sleeping.

On June 5th, a reporter from The New Yorker was granted permission to enter the rehearsal studio for an interview, but was not allowed to take photos or make recordings.

This was the first time The New Yorker had allowed an interviewee to refuse recording, simply because Chen Mo said he didn't want to be recorded during rehearsals, and the reporter agreed.

The reporter sat in the corner of the rehearsal room, watching for two hours.

The New Yorker reporter was named Ben, in his forties, wearing round-rimmed glasses and a washed-out oxford shirt, sitting on that uncomfortable folding chair in the corner of the rehearsal room.

Before coming, he had sent three emails to Scott, repeatedly confirming the interview rules.

In the final reply, Scott wrote one line: "He agrees to let you into the rehearsal room, but no photos and no recordings; those are the conditions."

Ben replied with one word: "Accepted."

Chen Mo walked over from the mixing console, holding a bottle of mineral water, and sat down on the floor in front of the reporter.

The wooden floor of the rehearsal room was polished shiny by the dancers' shoe soles, and the blocking map made of fluorescent green tape still lay quietly on the ground.

Ben asked, "Why not allow recording?"

Chen Mo placed the water bottle at his feet and said, "Every word spoken during rehearsal is temporary. It might not count once you walk out that door, but a recording turns temporary things into permanent ones, and I haven't decided yet if I want to make it permanent."

Ben asked, "Is this how you make music? Leaving uncertain things for later."

Chen Mo thought for a moment and said, "Yes, if it's uncertain, it means it's not time yet. When the time is right, it will stay on its own."

Ben tapped his ballpoint pen on his notebook twice. He didn't turn on the voice recorder, just looked down and wrote a few lines, then asked, "How do you feel things have changed after the Grammy Awards?"

Chen Mo leaned against the leg of the folding chair behind him, looking up at the rehearsal room ceiling, and said, "More tired, but not physically. Everyone's expectations of me are higher."

After winning three Grammy Awards, everyone was waiting for his next number-one single, waiting for him to break the records he had set, waiting for him to write a song more popular than "7 Years," an arrangement more complex than "Closer," and a piano solo quieter than the one at the Grammy meditation moment.

But songs aren't for breaking records; songs are about a person sitting in a recording studio, fishing back the things that flash through their mind bit by bit.

Sometimes what you fish up is right, sometimes it's wrong, and the thing you fear most in this process is someone waiting on the sidelines to see the result.

Ben asked, "Who is this 'someone'?"

Chen Mo raised an eyebrow and said, "Myself. I am my own harshest critic."

Ben followed up, "Which part of today's rehearsal were you most satisfied with?"

Chen Mo said without hesitation, "The chorus of the third 'Wake Up.' My voice was starting to get tired, but not completely exhausted yet. There was a little bit of fuzziness when that high note hit. Do you want to hear it?"

Chen Mo pressed the playback on the monitor, and the high note poured out from the rehearsal room's monitor speakers, lingering in the air for several seconds before slowly dissipating.

The two of them sat there in silence, listening to that "fuzzy" part together.

Ben wrote a few sentences in his notebook, then looked up at Chen Mo and said, "I know now why you don't allow me to record."

If this snippet were recorded and put online, everyone would say Chen Mo was showing off, but just now, they were just two people sitting on the rehearsal room floor, listening to a slightly rough high note.

Without a recording, there is no evidence, only memory.

This is the privacy of the rehearsal room, and also the privacy of music.

When the interview ended, Ben closed his notebook and said, "I hope to interview you in New York next time."

Chen Mo smiled and said, "Of course, but not in the rehearsal room; there are no comfortable chairs there."

Ben smiled and said, "I've interviewed many artists; every single one of them wanted me to record because they were afraid of being misquoted, and you are the first person to ask not to record, just because you weren't sure if what you said was right."

Chen Mo is the kind of person who wants to leave the time for saying things poorly to himself, and only speak when he has thought it through.

"Chen Mo, you are the most unlike-21-year-old 21-year-old I've ever interviewed. You talk like a thirty-year-old, but you smile like a six-year-old."

Just now, when Chen Mo pressed the playback, he was frowning for the first few seconds, but the moment the high note came out, his eyes suddenly lit up, and the corners of his mouth tilted slightly upward, like the joy of sharing something good with a friend.

When Ben left the rehearsal room, he stood at the door for a while.

Chen Mo had already stood up again, walked back to the mixing console, and put on his monitor headphones.

Ben later used this detail to conclude his long interview in The New Yorker:

"He won't let the things he's unsure of become permanent, but the things he is sure of, like that high note, he will share with you. It doesn't necessarily have to be through a recording; it's just a fleeting moment of presence—you have to be there to witness it. This is why he wouldn't let me record; he wasn't protecting himself, he was protecting the music."