Introductions are often necessary.

So I started this blog not really knowing what I was doing with it, updated once, and then promptly stopped, without a word to introduce or conclude myself. Something in the past two weeks has inspired to give it another go. Of course this incentive had to come during the busiest two weeks of the semester, but here I am, attempting it now. We’ll see if it sticks this time. I’d sure like it to.

I am a Freshman English/Theater double major at Barnard College, Columbia University. I can’t say that I really know what I want to do with my life, or what I want to concentrate in, except that I hope to be a part of the theater community for the rest of my life, in whatever niche makes me happiest. In the meantime, I am a voracious theatergoer, attempting to see as much as I can, as cheaply as I can, while still attempting to maintain some semblance of a high GPA. It’s going fairly well so far.

While I have managed to maintain blogs before, never something so public, or something that I ever really intended others to read who weren’t my friends, who already knew who I was talking about. And maybe my friends will be the only ones who will ever see this thing, or maybe not even them, and that’s okay, too. Audience is not really the point here.

I’d like this to be a place to keep my thoughts about the things I do, mostly the things I see. I spend most of my time seeing theater, reading books, watching tv, and studying. Most of it is pretty average, except for maybe the theater part. I predict this will mostly house my theater reviews, as I’ve never had quite the same desire to write about books, movies or tv like I do about theater, but we’ll see. My first post was unexpectedly about a book, so who really knows.

I’d love to wake up in twenty years with the largest accumulation of culture I can muster, whatever that looks like. But mostly I just want to think about what I experience, and react to it, in order to improve myself as an observer, consumer and creator.

Nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak.

I have just finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in its entirety for the first time since the release of Deathly Hallows in 2007.  When I first realized this, I was rather astounded, for I’m almost always rereading some Harry Potter book or another.  I don’t know why, but until the most recent read through, I have almost always looked at Half-Blood Prince as good, but not quite up to par with my favorites of the series.  Whether it is my age, or because I’m reading this with the events from Deathly Hallows in mind, I have begun to appreciate and love the sixth installment as much as every other book.

I began reading the series more than eleven years ago, when I was seven years old, and surely not able to look critically at the story and its characters.  For me, Dumbledore has merely been a lovable, omnipotent and omniscient character.  I loved him and all I though he represented, goodness, but never thought much beyond that.  It wasn’t until this most recent reading that I truly began to appreciate the theme by which Dumbledore lived, practiced, and taught: Love.

Some themes of the books are discussed so often (Lily’s eyes, for example) that I have never thought much of their significance.  Lily died to save Harry, so therefore Harry is protected by her love.  Yeah, so what?  Cleary Harry had similar thoughts about this as well: “I know!” said Harry impatiently. “I can love!” It was …great difficulty that he stopped himself adding, “Big deal!

This idea of love is mentioned without specifics, and as a reader, it is easy to take this piece of information as is, and never really think much about what this means in the world of magic.  And Rowling sheds no light on this idea until the sixth book, and it has taken me this many readings in order to pick it up.

“I have experimented; I have pushed the boundaries of magic further, perhaps, than they have ever been pushed —”

“Of some kinds of magic,” Dumbledore corrected him quietly. “Of some. Of others, you remain . . . forgive me . . . woefully ignorant.”

For the first time, Voldemort smiled. It was a taut leer, an evil thing, more threatening than a look of rage.

“The old argument,” he said softly. “But nothing I have seen in the world has supported your famous pronouncements that love is more powerful than my kind of magic, Dumbledore.”

It wasn’t until this moment that the power of love, in the magical sense, was something so important to the wizarding world.  Also, it’s immense importance to Albus Dumbledore, and not just where it concerns Harry.  This is also the first time I have read Half-Blood Prince with the knowledge of Dumbledore’s sexuality.  Surely, he was forced to think of love differently than others, because his was not accepted.

This information is nothing new, but I have come to look at Dumbledore in an incredibly different light.  I feel like I know him much more than I did just a few days ago.  Dumbledore is good, everybody knows that.  But it is more than that, Dumbledore takes great stock in love, something that I can identify with greatly.

“I am not worried, Harry,” said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. “I am with you.”

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