美国国家公共电台 NPR Emperor X: 'We Are Much More Than The Sum Of The Diseases And Disabilities We Carry'

 

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Chad Matheny dropped his pursuit of a master's degree in physics for a career as a musician. Under the name Emperor X, he's released eight albums, a bunch of cassettes. He had one of his songs used in a major motion picture. That was "Veronica Mars." Sam Greenspan reports that Matheny's done at all while facing some serious health issues.

SAM GREENSPAN, BYLINE¹: If you're looking for Chad Matheny when he rolls through your town, a good place to find him is at your local public transit² hub.

Hey, Chad.

CHAD MATHENY: Hey, Sam. Thanks for picking me up at the station.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRAIN NOISE)

GREENPSAN: I met Chad Matheny at the Amtrak station in Emeryville, Calif., just next to Oakland. Matheny's whistle-stop visit to the Bay Area was one leg of a tour across North America playing music from the latest Emperor X record, "Oversleepers International."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "30,000 EUROS")

EMPEROR X: (Singing) I owe 30,000 euros to the German corporation that just cured me of a terminal cancer. Now I've got 87 notices reminding me they can't care at all if my ending came too soon.

GREENPSAN: Matheny was diagnosed with an advanced case of testicular cancer in 2014. He wrote and recorded the album while in recovery from an invasive surgery and throughout six months of chemotherapy.

MATHENY: I didn't want this to be the cancer record, you know? The cancer thing, to me, didn't seem like that big of a deal because I've always been trying to accomplish something that the universe keeps telling me I shouldn't do.

GREENPSAN: Matheny is referring to the fact that he's legally blind. He was born with a condition that prevents the lenses and muscles in his eyes from working as well as they should. And then in 1994, when he was 15...

MATHENY: I was in a car with a friend, and we were involved in an automobile³ accident. And the airbag blew up in my face and caused internal bleeding in my right eye.

GREENPSAN: Ever since, one of Matheny's eyes has low vision, and the other is nearly useless. That means he can't drive a car. And so for the past 15 years, he's been touring the world using public transportation. And in the U.S., that means mostly Greyhound bus.

MATHENY: I could rank the Greyhound stations of America from nicest, Milwaukee, to scariest, Dallas, and everything in between.

GREENPSAN: Matheny estimates that he crisscrossed the country by bus more than 20 times in the span of five years. And then in 2012, he left the U.S. for Berlin. In Europe, Matheny found that trains made his life as a touring musician with low vision remarkably⁴ easier. But just as his career was starting to look up, cancer. Fortunately, even as an uninsured person in Germany, Matheny was able to get treatment right away. He's now in remission. And in starting to deal with the hospital bills, Matheny thought a lot about what his life would've been like had he gotten cancer here in the States.

MATHENY: Not only have I thought about it - but I've done the numbers.

GREENPSAN: Like many musicians, Matheny went years with minimal⁵ health insurance or none at all. In Germany with no health insurance, he wound up in debt about 30,000 euros, roughly $35,000, which Matheny calculates is about the same amount of money he'd owe here in the U.S. if he did have insurance. And without it...

MATHENY: It would've been minimum a quarter million dollars, probably half a million, I'm guessing. It just would've been unsustainable. I would've declared bankruptcy⁶ or something.

GREENPSAN: In a study done in 2013, the Future of Music Coalition⁷, a nonprofit that advocates for musicians, found that more than half of the musicians it surveyed did not have any health insurance. That was nearly triple the national average at the time. Kevin Erickson is the coalition's national organizing director.

KEVIN ERICKSON: We found that the more time that people spent on their artistic⁸ careers, the less likely they were to have insurance.

GREENPSAN: Now, the study was done before the rollout of the Affordable⁹ Care Act. Erickson does say that things seem to have gotten much better since then but not for everyone.

ERICKSON: I'm just so tired of having to see benefit concert after benefit concert after benefit concert for musicians in health crisis. I mean, I do think about the songs that we'll never hear because it's just too hard for people to keep going.

(APPLAUSE)

MATHENY: I'm going to sing a fictionalized-true, true-fictionalized - I don't know which - song.

(Singing, playing guitar) I owe 30,000 euros to the German corporation that just cured me of a terminal cancer.

GREENPSAN: Back in San Francisco, Matheny is playing a house show for about 20 people crowded into a living room. He'll make about 60 bucks¹⁰ for his set tonight, enough to get him on a train down to Santa Cruz, where he'll play another show in another living room. The pay is nowhere close to what he'd need for a round of chemotherapy in an American hospital if his cancer were to come back.

MATHENY: It would be self-destructive to come back just for the insurance reason, let alone the transportation reason. And being a member of the middle class going to Europe and traveling as a musician - it really changed the way I looked at tour. I felt like an organ of society instead of a flea¹¹ on the skin of a giant, cybernetic creature. I feel like the machine of the United States of America is allergic¹² to me.

GREENPSAN: Chad Matheny is back in Europe now, touring music from Emperor X's not-cancer record.

MATHENY: We are much more than the sum of the diseases and disabilities that we carry with us. And I like to think that this record reflects that just very universal, human fact. Sam Greenspan, NPR News, San Francisco.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BROWN RECLUSE¹³")

EMPEROR X: (Singing) And I know we won't react like the others do. It's okay. We won't panic and hide from the brown recluse.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 transit   

n.经过，运输；vt.穿越，旋转；vi.越过

参考例句：

• His luggage was lost in transit.他的行李在运送中丢失。
• The canal can transit a total of 50 ships daily.这条运河每天能通过50条船。

3 automobile   

n.汽车，机动车

参考例句：

• He is repairing the brake lever of an automobile.他正在修理汽车的刹车杆。
• The automobile slowed down to go around the curves in the road.汽车在路上转弯时放慢了速度。

4 remarkably   

ad.不同寻常地，相当地

参考例句：

• I thought she was remarkably restrained in the circumstances. 我认为她在那种情况下非常克制。
• He made a remarkably swift recovery. 他康复得相当快。

5 minimal   

adj.尽可能少的，最小的

参考例句：

• They referred to this kind of art as minimal art.他们把这种艺术叫微型艺术。
• I stayed with friends, so my expenses were minimal.我住在朋友家，所以我的花费很小。

6 bankruptcy   

n.破产；无偿付能力

参考例句：

• You will have to pull in if you want to escape bankruptcy.如果你想避免破产，就必须节省开支。
• His firm is just on thin ice of bankruptcy.他的商号正面临破产的危险。

7 coalition   

n.结合体，同盟，结合，联合

参考例句：

• The several parties formed a coalition.这几个政党组成了政治联盟。
• Coalition forces take great care to avoid civilian casualties.联盟军队竭尽全力避免造成平民伤亡。

8 artistic   

adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的

参考例句：

• The picture on this screen is a good artistic work.这屏风上的画是件很好的艺术品。
• These artistic handicrafts are very popular with foreign friends.外国朋友很喜欢这些美术工艺品。

9 affordable   

adj.支付得起的，不太昂贵的

参考例句：

• The rent for the four-roomed house is affordable.四居室房屋的房租付得起。
• There are few affordable apartments in big cities.在大城市中没有几所公寓是便宜的。

10 bucks   

n.雄鹿( buck的名词复数 )；钱；（英国十九世纪初的）花花公子；（用于某些表达方式）责任v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的第三人称单数 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃

参考例句：

• They cost ten bucks. 这些值十元钱。
• They are hunting for bucks. 他们正在猎雄兔。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 flea   

n.跳蚤

参考例句：

• I'll put a flea in his ear if he bothers me once more.如果他再来打扰的话，我就要对他不客气了。
• Hunter has an interest in prowling around a flea market.亨特对逛跳蚤市场很感兴趣。

12 allergic   

adj.过敏的，变态的

参考例句：

• Alice is allergic to the fur of cats.艾丽斯对猫的皮毛过敏。
• Many people are allergic to airborne pollutants such as pollen.许多人对空气传播的污染物过敏，比如花粉。

13 recluse   

n.隐居者

参考例句：

• The old recluse secluded himself from the outside world.这位老隐士与外面的世界隔绝了。
• His widow became a virtual recluse for the remainder of her life.他的寡妻孤寂地度过了余生。