Oh, hey, this is my first post of 2014! This is my fourth year of blogging. That's crazy. What better way to start of the year than by blogging about one of my favorite things?
Well, this topic is kind of a stalling tactic because the real event in my life has been being the Master Electrician of the Dolphin Show, but I'm not fully done processing that experience, so it'll be another week or two before I can write about that. So, until then, Harry Potter.
I came to be thinking a lot about Harry Potter as a result of my work on Dolphin. It was a really long and challenging tech process because of the scale of the show, and so to deal with the stress I found myself turning to wizard rock. I came home from a particularly stressful day and played through an entire Lauren Fairweather album (The Prince's Tale) with my guitar. It made me feel so much better, as did the familiarity of my "Nerd," "Harry Potter," and "Starkid" playlists. I had also started the month by watching A Very Potter Musical with friends, and so the Starkid version of things was also strong in my mind and I wandered around the theater for multiple weeks humming "Coolest Girl." My wizard rock phase happened to be during my first Dolphin, so the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I think that the reason I find so much comfort in Harry Potter is because it is a different world, one that I am extremely familiar with and love to explore. It's an area of expertise for me, and a story I can easily get lost in. The mythology of Rowling's wizarding world is extensive and the commentary, analysis, and headcanon that the fan community produces to this day make me reconsider the perspectives I took as a child and teenager.
More than that, Harry's world is a frame of reference for practically everyone in my social circle. The discovery and sharing of the I'm a Hufflepuff video was a high point for me in the last month because everyone seemed to love it as much as I did. It sparks conversations about what houses we are in, how things went with Pottermore (does anybody still use that site?), how we sort ourselves, how we sort each other...the list goes on. We discuss evil in terms of Voldemort, love in terms of Lily and James, Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny, Severus and Sirius...and Dumbledore is a symbol of both what a wizard is and what an educator can be. Each time I uncover new layers of meaning I am reminded of how robust and beautiful a world Rowling crafted, and it is an excitement I can share with people around me.
I had a fantastic conversation with a friend this week about sorting. We were discussing how the houses we identify with have changed over time, which I believe to be the point of the entire YA trope of categorization of humans by personality trait. People grow, change, and evolve, so whatever the categories are, we have qualities in each that assert their dominance in different ways and at different times. We are all brave, ambitious, intelligent, and loyal, but where we are in life tends to determine the percentages of each at any given moment. This whole thing started when I was sorted into Hufflepuff by three friends in the last few weeks. I have always put myself in either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw (a Gryffinclaw, if you will) because of the way I identify with Hermione, Lily, and intellect/cleverness. But my friend with whom I had the sorting conversation explained it as a valuation of the who over the what in a given endeavor, which I see. Once I understood Hufflepuff, I always admired them as a house, so being placed there is pretty cool at this point.
I love the way that Harry Potter is ever-present. That I can talk about the values of a house as the basis for an argument and my peers understand me. That there is a world full of people who love these books as much as I do. That the music of his world can keep me grounded when things are crazy in mine. That Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.
Today is awesome because of Harry Potter.
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