'I would only write a letter of complain..."

My friend recently asked me why did I write a letter to the Forum? I was a bit taken aback by that comment. I asked, 'Do you disagree with it? Was it very poorly written?' 'No,' she said, she had not read it yet, just wondering why would anyone bother with writing something unless one had been very upset about it.

My favourite kinds of writing are not letters of complaints, but letters of praise.

So often, when I write, especially when something suddenly makes sense to me, like a few separate things I've read and pondered about suddenly come together to create something new, I get a sense of goosebumps on my back and a shaking of my spirit.

It sounds crazy, but that's a very sacred moment for me. When I get it, I come here, I blog, or I just stop a moment and thank God.

It's almost transcendental. It's a feeling that starts from the brain and goes all the way down the spine. And it fills me with feelings of gratitude.

Just now, I got it. I was reading up about the ritual act of raising the flag. It is something so integral to the understanding of patriotism, but so easily dismissed and overlooked by many people. What's the big deal with the flag and symbols and rituals. We have so underestimated their significance and power, and that feeling of love and pride and sense of awe and greatness that is captured in them when they are periodically used for purposes that lift our spirits to a level beyond the common and day-to-day.

Suddenly, I feel so grateful, so grateful I am studying the topic that I am studying.

New concept (ritual) vs old concept (story)

As you may have already been told, I recently changed my PhD thesis topic, after nearly quitting it. I changed it from "story" to something along the lines of "ritual".

I am reading up on ritual now and wondering what is it about rituals that appeal to me more than story? I think the answer lies in my personal make up.

Stories and storytelling is a very verbal act that involves a lot of talk, it is a way of talking, persuading, influencing, tickling, shocking... And I am actually someone of few words (not online, but yes, in person). Stories happen in person, off-the-cuff, spontaneously a lot of the times.

Now, rituals have a stronger element of "doing", it's often accompanied by "saying" but predominantly it is a performance and action. This, kinda fits who I am as a person better. A woman of few words but much action. It is about tradition and symbols, about embodying a message, changing insidiously, infecting transcendentally... It's almost magical, or to use a more academic word, numinous.

That... excites me. It's about things we find hard to fathom and describe... Why is it that seeing the flag rise as the national anthem is sounded when Joseph Schooling takes first place and three others take second, makes some of us feel goosebumps or the rising of the hairs on our backs? What is that magical feeling? Where did it come from?

Gosh... This feeling is also felt in the church, especially with the awe-inspiring architecture from ancient days and majestic music from the pipe organ and the pews all facing the front and stained glass windows... Plus the rituals of candle lighting, bowing before Christ, and the cross signal across the heart... They cause people to feel something.

That I feel is what made me more excited about the current topic that the previous... :)

Doing a PhD is like exploring a jungle

I am at the beginning stages of the PhD right now. I am reading here and there, trying to get a sense of the territory. I feel like I just arrived on an island and there's this big jungle before me. As I slowly walk into the jungle, I am seeing a little plant here, a little rock there, and it is only sufficient for me to make a mark on my blank sheet of paper. But my goal is to create a map of the whole place.

So I have been making tiny marks, little scratches on my paper, but I still have little idea what this jungle is like. There are some parts that I know better than other, but most of the island and jungle remain unknown to me.

So this is how it feels like...

I'm doing my best to read up as much as I can, whatever others who have come before me have recorded about islands and jungles in general and particular that I think are similar to the one I'm on, hoping it can shed some clue on my particular island and give me some guidance which paths to take down the jungle.

So this is what stage I'm in now...

Making little scratches on my notebook so that later on I can put them all together into some sort of a research proposal, before I go ahead and conduct my research.

It makes you feel something...

“What you're seeing is young men having been through a very traumatic experience and trying to process that experience. These guys on the ground, hey had no idea what was going on or what they were part of, and there was a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty, a lot of tension between the human and the historical scale. It's difficult to put into words which is why you make the film and use the image rather than write an article about it. Because it makes you feel something that is true and relevant.” Christopher Nolan, interviewed by Alison de Souza, on his new movie Dunkirk in Life (19 July 17)

Hmmmmmmm... hard to put into words... is that why we do ceremonies, commemorations, church services, the way we do? With much visuals, moving music, special awe-inspiring moments and atmosphere to win you over, to make you feel before you can think, embrace before you can reject, draw you in before you even know it.

If that is so. How powerful. How true also we get inspiration from war-time propaganda campaigns.

A new topic

Doing research or writing a thesis eventually is like painting a picture. You first need to try to figure out what is currently known about that topic or issue, and this could be like trying to find out what colours to use for this painting, trying a few strokes on the paper. The more you read up on what others have done, the clearer you will have an idea of what is available to form your picture, your art. And later on as you have that good understanding, you can start to create with it your art. You can introduce things that are new but with the backing of the old. And as you create this image, you will eventually get a complete piece of work that is coherent and tells your story. But see, your story cannot be told without first reading the many other stories told by other people.

Wow!

I feel like I'm again at the first stage... I am scared and excited at the same time. This new project potentially will use very new skills and require me to interact with very different people including people of authority, people planning the policy (government officials), people implementing them (principals and teachers) and people receiving this curriculum (students!). I have only interacted with teachers before, and I have no idea how to interact with the others!

But before I worry about methodology, let me read whatever I can about commemorative events! Gosh, because there is so little about it, and what there is so is hard to find, it brings the explorer-adventurer out of me, like the feeling that because this seems difficult, it's going to be worth it!

Wow!

Sorry, I am surprised sometimes how exciting research can be, especially research into a little known area!

(I feel like I talk like the young spiderman... :|)

Public Memory

So I have moved away from Storytelling and what could I be potentially moving towards? Commemorative events... How schools shape public memory through the four NE days?

"... the stakes involved in public memory are far more complex. What is being remembered? Who does the remembering? How is it done, and why? What is the context in which memory work is being carried out?" (Tai, 2001, p. 1)

"The Greek playwright Agathon is reported by Aristotle to have declared: "Even God cannot alter the past." Samuel Butler answered back across two millennia: "It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can." Others, besides historians, can and do alter it as well. "It's a poor sort of memory that works only backwards," remarks Lewis Carroll's Queen in Through the Looking Glass. Indeed, memory works forward as well as backward; the past is shaped by the future as much as the future is shaped by the past. Memory creates meaning for particular events or experiences by inscribing them in a larger framing narrative, be it personal or collective. Whether implicitly or explicitly, in this larger narrative is embedded a sense of progression and vision of the future for which the past acts as prologue. In Penser la Révolution française, François Furet pointed out how the political sympathies of different actors, including historians, led them to conceptualize the French Revolution either as the end point of the narrative of the French nation or as the beginning of the Republican narrative. In Vietnam, deciding how to remember a century's worth of historical change is a matter of grave difficulty for a society filled with uncertainty about its future and only just beginning to rethink its past." (Tai, 2001, p. 2)

Oh my gosh, Tai writes so beautifully. I was immediately drawn into her words.

References
Country of Memory : Remaking the Past In Late Socialist Vietnam, edited by Hue-Tam Ho Tai, University of California Press, 2001.

Writing on demand

Recently, I have been trying out some writing for non-academic purposes, such as writing for the newspaper, for competition, for forum, for editorials, and like I always do, for blogging. These has teach me something called "writing on demand", the ability to command yourself to write and just do it. There is no mood thing, or setting aside a daily time to write thing, it is: I need this now, so I write it now.

This has been liberating in a way. Discovering that writing is not something magical or iffy that you can only do some times and not others, but when you need it, you produce it. It's like driving a car, riding a bicycle or going for a swim, a skill you have mastered, regardless how skillful you are at it, you know it can be counted on to function when you need it.

So yes, writing has changed for me. It has become a skill. And I learned this through exposing myself to different types of writing. For academic writing, you have all the time in the world to write it, a few months? Hence, you can afford to take your time and find time to write. But not for writing for a lay audience, where timing and speed is key.