Turn my mic up louder, I got to say somethin'

The haze of controversy shrouding the demand of banning Harry Potter books smells foul. Surely burning an entire forest of children fantasy on religious basis is downright outrageous and health hazardous?

I find Rob Boston’s stand in stamping the Harry Potter series as dangerous as they teach children occult, Wicca witchcraft, dark arts, Satanism and so forth, shaky, and my opposition team’s argument that the books invoke rebellion, vengeance, ‘dark’ traits and inappropriate behaviors, is somewhat shallow as both only explore the literal and surface context.

So it is written that the books expose children to a fantasy world that does not exist, inhabited by people doing things that defy the laws of nature and inhabited by creatures that only live in one’s imagination, thus the readers will be influenced into believing everything on the pages and will soon not be able to differentiate between virtual and reality. But, if we were to be theoretical about it, Lawrence Kohlberg’s moral development modal proves that the reader will absorb the deeper lessons of ethics and proper social conduct rather than the superficial ‘hocus pocus’.

He pointed out that the story is relatable to children as the situations that the fictional characters find themselves in, and the dilemmas they face, are similar to the issues children will encounter in the ‘real’ world. And the teachings behind every solution to the problems, despite the ‘magical setting’, can be applied to daily woes, such as the scene where Harry and Ron fought off the troll in the toilet and rescued Hermoine. The troll in this situation serves as a magnified and hyperbolized version of a bully, a more enthralling way to send the message that bullies are not to be tolerated and that there is nothing wrong in fending and protecting your friend from harm.

Kohlberg drew up three levels of moral development, with two stages in each level.  The first is Punishment and Obedience in the primary level of Preconventional. It observes the social background of children regarding their capability to obey rules and to what extend their obedience stretches to avoid punishment. For example, some children are more concerned when Ron breaks a house rule and gets a scolding from his mother, while others may react more to Harry’s punishment from his Muggle uncle of being locked up or physically abused. Depending on the way a child is punished for wrongdoing at home, he or she will react differently to various punishment scenes in the books, and thus learn how the characters deal with the punishment and method of avoiding future occurrence, which they can apply it to their own lives.  

In the second stage Instrumental Exchange, children will behave and act a certain manner that they assume is acceptable so as to obtain a desired result. This is a stage whereby a child will treat his new friends with fairness to sustain a friendship with them, just as Harry does on his first train ride to Hogwarts, when he shares the candies he buys with Ron, a less well-to-do boy. Children will be encouraged to imitate Harry’s generous trait after they experienced the joy and excitement of the two new friends as they tried different sweets, hence instill a sense of togetherness that can spur a child to be big hearted with his friends.   

      

Up a notch, the Conventional level’s Interpersonal Conformity sees children’s understanding of the depth of an action, which affects their motivation of attaining praises, while Social System and Conscience Maintenance discuses the ability to abide by rules to keep social order.  Both stages are effectively depicted by Hermoine in the first book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Although she is a strict follower of rules and regulations by nature, Hermoine does so in the first half of the book mainly to earn the professors’ approval and points for her House. As she becomes fast friends with Harry and Ron, her rules-abiding tendency shifts to encompass the well-being of the student body, like how she refuses to enter the room with the three-headed dogs to explore the trapdoor because it is forbidden for good reason.

Moving on, the Post Conventional level consists of Prior Rights and Social Contract. The achievement of this stage is attained by most adults and some adolescents, and it observes the acceptability of breaking of rules should the action serves a higher purpose. One of the striking examples is when Harry, Ron and Hermoine decide to save a Hippogriff from its death sentence. They understand that by doing so, they are risking expulsion and the wrath of the Ministry of Magic, but they also know that if they do not break the rule, an innocent creature will be executed for retaliating an attack by Draco Malfoy.

The last stage Universal Ethical Principles is rare and no one has ever reached this state save perhaps the noblest of people, such as Jesus, Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

However, I believe the greatest mental stimulation the author can provide her young readers is the call for inquisitions and debates insinuated within the usage of cognitive moral conflict. The series contains seven books, and by reading them in sequence, children are growing, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, with Harry Potter and his friends at Hogwarts. Even though a 13-year old child may read all the books within a year, by the time he reaches the seventh book, he has already attained the moral development, and perhaps a portion of maturity, of a 17-year old, the age Harry is in that book. Also, through arguments participated by the characters, the reader can learn of others’ reactions, opinions, insights and methods of solving an issue. And it is good to note that the series is written by a matured adult, from whom young readers can absorb wisdom and teachings from one of higher moral development level than them.

Subsequently, the art of role playing ignited by entrancing story of Harry Potter helps children to adopt good moral qualities, ethics, personalities and characters. Rather than Rob Boston’s belief of readers’ mimicking and cultivating practices of occult by role playing Harry, Ron or Hermoine, Lana A. Whited and M. Katherine Grimes argue that the young minds are absorbing the traits and bringing out the best of their favorite fictional characters instead. Should I scrap Harry Potter out of the picture and replace him with Cinderella instead, do you pretend you are a damsel in distress and act out the love story in your role play, or do you catch mice to try to converse with them and attempt to squeeze into a pumpkin?  

Books and words shape us more than we ever care to admit and the idea of children consuming negative influence from them strings the parents tauter than any other fears. And matching the speed of fire catching dry hay, a tiny spark will set the fear ablaze across hundreds of minds, in which case religious belief is the lighter. But this is not a reason to ban a book, partially because doing so means you doubt the strength of your faith against the influence of books, and partially because there is no solid scientific prove that the books have damaging effects on children. And also, it only provokes a child to challenge the forbidden, as you are denying him a world.

Besides, if a child is not to read the Harry Potter series, along with Wizard of Oz, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby and so on, what exactly is he to read? Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Then tell me what is the difference between swishing wands and a chocolate factory owner who eats children after they turned into pieces of chocolate upon falling into the chocolate pools?

Here comes the sun

"You accuse that print media sentences forests to extinction, I say that visualized media kills your imagination and creativity, electronic gadgets with screens burns your eyes. Ms. Yap hit a brilliant point: with all the movie adaption of novels, how many of us actually bother to read the written version before heading to the cinemas? Or more precisely, when reading a description of a character, do you paint your own illustration of their face, or do you conveniently borrow an actor’s or actress’ because they had once played a role similar to that character?"  -An excerpt from my journal for Introduction to Mass Communication. 

The joy and excitement I find in this class balance the depressing pull of my other subjects. And someone who loves the Mortal Instruments and another who can fluctuate at the same frequency with me on books and movies as classmates? Life is beautiful.

I need a doctor

Books will be the death of me.

I take reading in public to the extreme. If I give in to the temptation, which I always do, my book will wrap its fingers around the hand of my thoughts and lead my body across the road, up and down flights of stairs, along corridors, and through (if I am lucky) open doors. The surroundings will fall away, with my nose shoved between the pages of my book, smelling the sun-baked fields of another world; my mind’s eyes sweeping a foreign landscape; my mouth tweaking in amusement as my ears hear the petty arguments of the characters; my senses are so occupied that they have neither the mood or time for reality.  

Oh yes, books will be the very death of me. 

Love to love you

People meet and people part; sometimes our trains speed along side-by-side for years before our railway tracks diverge; sometimes our encounters are barely a knock between the bumper cars we ride in. Our lives will never ceased crisscrossing others, under and out, up and over, through and through. And at the end of the day, the manner of which is insignificant, because, ultimately, it is the bond during that indiscernible span of collision that matters most.

If I were you, I would duck, or get strike by lightning.

Traffic cones sometimes are just hindering obstacles that disrupt your journey and upset your planned route. At moments like this, you just have to knock those mocking plastic things down and show them who's boss. And that is exactly what I am about to do >:)

I would never do nothing to let you cowards fuck my world up

The only thing I missed about my high school days is my relationship with music. It had been so simple and mess-free. It was the accompaniment to the memories I created with my best friends, nothing more, nothing less. Yet explicitly quintessential to my, to our, existence there. 

But recently? It became a tug-of-war of love-hate relationship; the term fluctuates between 'Me and Music' and 'Me against Music'. What was once a free choice is now merely an option within the choices dictated by others. And sometimes I just do not know how to feel about the music I play, or if I should feel anything at all. Understanding and memorizing the history behind the various genres do not change things. Respect does not always translate to love. 

Often, music is not about telling people how you feel; it is about making people feel what they want to feel. Like when my mood swing sews together a playlist of Bossa Nova pieces to blanket the house or the tiny space of my car, it is not because of having an obsession with the genre, but simply because I want to feel just that; the unclasping of all my tensions, the soft chords like the firm hammock that beckons me to lay down and relax, the clocking of the bass notes alternating between the root and fifth akin to the push and pull of tide against the shore that washes away my stress. I want to come undone with my emotions, and Bossa Nova happens to give me just that. 

This is what I turn to music for; it is my voice when my words stay silent, when my heart is incapable of expressing, when my mind cannot find any other way to speak. Music is a language and the genres are merely dialects. We write the same beanstalks of notes after all, we just have a different manner of pronouncing them; if we can accept the Chinese having one form of written characters with varying sounds of articulation that is termed dialect, why can’t we with musical genres? Our playing style is merely geographically or music culturally shaped slangs and accents.

Human being is hypocritical bunch; they come up with these tacky lines like ‘Don’t judge a book by its covers’, preaching individualism, then they do this cute ballerina twist so you will be an unsuspecting victim to the throw knife they plant into your back when they start labeling you according to the songs that you listen to, or enjoy playing.

Whatever happened to ‘music is an expression’? And that there is no such thing as a bad music, just a differently expressed one? A person strumming pop chords does not signify he is jazz licks-challenged or he has no knowledge of other genres; he just expresses himself better in the simple four-chord style. And this sad prejudice is a shadow of mine; I have lost count of the people who are taken aback the instant I began conversing in Mandarin or told them I sat for SPM level Chinese language papers. Apparently my fluency and preference of using English language are the only headlines they want to read. How will you judge me then? Does my strength in English seem more impressive or less so, now that you realize I did not graduate from an exotic international high school?

I guess I have made my point.

Granted, current popular music may not be intellectually enhancing, according to the researches that I assume are conducted in an unbiased manner, but they are more than just tunes and pretty lyrics to me than the 'real music' ever is. Because sometimes you need songs that are shallow, hollow, like a discarded seashell, so that you could deepen it with sounds of your own memories. The way accompanying music gives depth to a film.

In a sense, music is the soundtrack to our movie. When I hear certain songs, I do not visualize them in the commercialized music videos; instead, I see the faces of my friends with the backdrop of those moments captured in the nets of these tunes. Us flinging ourselves off the edge and into the water to the techno beats of Black Eyed Peas’s I Got a Feelin’ during our annual pool party; us feigning drunk after a sip of homemade cocktails while swaying to Amy Winehouse’s Rehab; and us singing our anthem of Jojo’s Too Little Too Late every time we missed our homework deadline, which was, well, all the time. Our scrapbook is so thick that it is no wonder my mind has no space for reality. And this, this is yet another tread of music that we tend to overlook as it weaves itself so tightly into our life’s tapestry.  

What I cannot overlook is, the incredulity people wear to fend themselves from my deadly statement of me listening to mainstream, popular songs. They do not bother to flip beyond the cover page to the stories behind my song choice. It does not matter if no two people in the world love or listen to music for the same reason, much less enjoy the same songs. All they care is equating your favorite playlist to your music skills.

It is amazing how judgmental the world has become. Or it has always been this way, and it was my naivety that protected me.

And sadly, being a music student in this particular university somehow deprives me of the luxurious simplicity of enjoying songs that I love, without having to hide in the shadows and pray no one will stumble upon my mp3 player and suffer a heart attack from viewing my song list. Even letting known my favorite tunes has a price to pay.

I guess I have said it, but I will say it again: I sure miss the good ol’ days of high school when it was just us, our mad streak and our cache of songs to fit the puzzles of our rendezvous. 

Perfectly lonely

Sometimes I cannot help wondering, is all this bubbling frustration and seething hatred toward everyone and everything is my form of bereavement. I still have not sat down and cry since last November. I refused to, still refuse to. Coz doing that means I have accepted she has passed. And screw that shit about something better will come along when you have learnt to let go. You give me a time machine or a resurrection pill then we can talk.

Not that I could if I summoned the strength to. I left for Japan 4 days after the funeral, then for Christmas caroling in Genting a week upon touchdown back here. I tried to think of it as a time-out for my mind, even as I felt guiltily elated and in peace with myself; I blame the mesmerizing weather and scenery of Gifu and the joyful company of my caroling mates. But I did feel my heart lurch painfully every time I came across these adorable plushies in Japan that only grandma and I are obsessed about; something beautiful to call ours.

Then classes started and I was busy dodging the attacking bodies of grief to get my subjects into the goals of Pass, Full Attendance and Seen Improvement. But I made up by ringing my grandpa up daily, mostly to fill up both our loneliness, occasionally just for the sake of dialing their number and seeing her name appear on my cell phone screen. Depressing, it is. I guess individuality includes manner of handling loss.

Now, it seems, the cords that have been keeping the shredded bits and pieces of my heart together are becoming undone; the quivering strings sending waves of anger and annoyance to every part of me, stirring up paranoia and unjust assumption of people mocking me behind me. I want the world to know I have lost someone I loved so much so that they have a little sympathy and stop being so damn happy all the time, then the next second I will be horrified to have that selfish thought because I understand that the sadness is mine to bear.

And so my mood flickers between extreme loathing towards people's joy and self-pity and an suppressible yearning for her and everything to be the way it was last Summer.

To make things worst, this Sunday is her birthday and I will not be around for prayers. I feel like crying already.