Lessons on Humanity

Thoughts from a Cultural Workshop in Batam

‘Music is not about telling a story, or describing a picture. Music is about feelings.’ In one of his Young People’s Concerts, Leonard Bernstein touched upon the topic ‘What does Music mean?’ The above was his answer. While the concert itself was given way back in 1958, I only had the opportunity to listen to it in DVD format in the comforts of a suite in Turi Resort, Batam. It was my first involvement with LPT ever since I ‘graduated’ in 2003.

Mr Wong had been preparing for the Batam Workshop at least a month before 16^th Nov 2008 when we departed Singapore. I was lucky enough to have had the chance to meet him for discussions on his objectives for the trip and how these objectives could be met. Through the discussions, I could sense this desire in Mr Wong, to develop ‘sensitivity’ in his students towards culture and ultimately, towards their own feelings. This was going to be about development in humanity.

The problem with an education in sensitivity is that one cannot teach it. One can only expose others in as different ways as possible, in the hope that one or a couple of these ways can evoke that ‘enlightenment of self-feeling’ within others. Having acquired an acute sensitivity of one’s own feelings, one is then able to truly appreciate culture and music, thereby transcending into a genuine appreciation of life in general. The Batam Workshop was thus that, a rigorous experimentation that the children and their parents were put through, visiting cultural venues such as ‘Tua Pek Kong’ and ‘Kong Zi’ Temple, natural spots such as mangrove swamps, local commerce culture such as the street markets and shopping malls, as well as an indigenous village. Just as Mr Wong described it himself, the trip was like a maze, he never really knew which path would lead to an outcome, or even if any of the paths would lead to anything at all.

For every activity and venue, the participants were given a list of questions that would serve as ‘guiders’ to bring out their feelings and thoughts. Mr Wong would also share his own feelings and viewpoints. The questions moved from the more tangible, observational types like ‘what are the differences between … and …’ to the more intangible ones on impressions, feelings and ‘what music arose during the visit’. The children and parents expressed themselves in words and sketches. The intention behind this simple exercise was simple – to get the participants to be more observant about things around them. The more observant one is, the more feelings one feels in greater depth. The greater the variety of feelings one is exposed to, the greater the range of expressions one is able to convey, be it through your writing, music, dance or any other form of design and communication.

At the end of the trip, the participants were divided into groups according to age to make their own sand design, based on the theme of ‘a diary in Batam’. The younger students created a temple out of the sand, but with surprising detail to the structural symmetry and wall design of the temples they had seen. The older students explored the philosophical paradigm of ‘life as a boat’ and the more raw expression of emotion of a struggle between a ‘snake and a chicken’ which they had seen in one of the villages. The adults chose to depict the journey from Singapore to Batam and their thoughts on the trip.

Throughout the trip, the children also kept a log of their answers to the questions posed and their thoughts in general. The visit to the village where they experienced little children selling fruits left a deep impression on quite a few of the older children. Most of their writings revealed a deeper sense of emotions beyond the superficial, ‘I felt that pity wasn’t the right emotion to describe my feelings then as they seemed happy and contented as they were selling or had sold the fruits’; ‘If I had to give up all I had now to come here to stay, I would not be too happy as I would have lost many opportunities.’ Different people had different thoughts, but all were equally original journeys of self-discovery into trying to explain what they were feeling and why they were feeling that. The key to me therefore, is that when it comes to your own feelings, there can be no right or wrong, there can only be whether you have experienced deeply or superficially.

Friends who I had informed of the trip had asked me, ‘Why go on a cultural trip to Batam? It’s a place of vices! Prostitution, gambling..’ I think the participants on the trip would be able to reflect a very different side of the reality. If we as humans simply take the pre-conceived, popular notion of things, and let these things guide us, then it is very difficult for us to understand ourselves as individuals. But if we put aside everything, and put our senses to the task of observation, and our mind to the understanding of our feelings, we can then find our own individuality, our own appreciation of our existence!

I am not sure how well Mr Wong has achieved his objectives and only time can really tell. But again, as he said, he had already laid the seeds of opportunity to his students and their parents. From the feedback of parents and children alike, everyone had probably started on the same footstep (be it bigger or smaller) in that direction…(for example, some students were very strong on their observations, while others were beginning to express in-depth self-reflection.)

“If each time after you feel, you think and try to understand why you felt what you felt, then in the future, you will be better able to express yourself in a way that helps others to feel what you want them to feel too! But if you do not feel, and do not train yourself to be observant in the first place, then you will find it very difficult to evoke any form of emotion in others at all. And gradually, humanity would have lost something ...” my own thoughts on art and communication