I am not a specialist on Bali. I did live in Bali for more than a year in total over the past several decades, thus witnessing first hand its changing lifeways. I am a cultural and intellectual historian of Bali's neighbouring island of Java, and I carried out research on the central Javanese, specifically Solonese, shadow theatre in the early part of my career. I spent around five years in the city of Solo between 1972 and 1984, half of that time attending performances, and the other half hanging out with puppet masters, shadow theatre aficionados, and students of shadow theatre, and organising a project on collecting branch stories, stories that deviate from the trunk stories of the Solonese shadow theatre repertoire. The repertoire I was researching was the Javanese Mahabharata and Ramayana stories, a repertoire with which I was quite familiar. I was asked to be part of this special review to offer comparative insights between southern Balinese and central Javanese cultures from the point of view of the performing arts. From this perspective, I felt exhilarated to read Richard Fox's More than words and to read how literally alive Balinese letters, writ large and small, are in present-day Bali.

我不是巴厘岛的专家。在过去的几十年里，我确实在巴厘岛生活了一年多，从而亲眼目睹了它不断变化的生活方式。我是巴厘岛邻近的爪哇岛的文化和知识史学家，在我职业生涯的早期，我对爪哇中部，特别是梭罗人的影子剧院进行了研究。1972年至1984年间，我在梭罗市呆了大约五年，其中一半时间参加表演，另一半时间与木偶大师、皮影爱好者和皮影剧院学生闲逛，并组织了一个收集分支故事的项目，偏离索隆斯皮影剧院剧目主线故事的故事。我研究的曲目是爪哇摩诃婆罗多和罗摩衍那的故事，我非常熟悉的曲目。我被邀请参加这次特别审查，从表演艺术的角度提供巴厘岛南部和爪哇中部文化之间的比较见解。从这个角度来看，我很高兴读到理查德福克斯的在当今的巴厘岛，不只是文字，还可以阅读大大小小的巴厘岛字母。