Is white the color of purity and innocence?

[This post is written for literarians, or fathers or mothers who have had intention of divorce]
Mentioning white color, most people think of children in pure white shirts going to school every day, or unblemished and spontaneous things like a 3-year-old kid’s soul. But it’s just the tip of the iceberg, white is an extreme obsession for those is suffering severe trauma. In Le Quynh Tran’s eyes, the scariest moment of white is when family affection has begun to be rifted.

Love is like a tale
Father has long since not read.
Love is like a friend
Mother has not met for long.
A white window
A girl with hidden tears
Stars are falling outside
In a night of twinkle moonlight.

In the first comparison “Love is like a tale”, the composer half opens a world full of magic. But why does he compare love with tale? Maybe because tale is about miraculous world of kids and love is about the magic between parents. The magic of love connects and leads them to be a father and to be a mother. But in the story that the father has forgotten, may that magic just get faded?

The next comparison is much more ordinary. Love is like a friend but “long time no see”, it’s unforgettable but so distant. We doubtfully understand that love between “father” and “mother” has not been fervid as before. The song’s melody also partly reveals that emotion’s disappearance, we find that when being set to music, the comma is transformed from text punctuation to a silent sound which is so fast but also motionless, a silent sound is enough for listeners to feel the pain of “a girl”.

Le Quynh Tran continues to insert some details illustrating the real-life tragedy of that family to his music story.

Behind each frosty word,
Time still flies.
Behind the happy smile,
Tears still fall when no one’s watching.

Perhaps, the love between parents may not be so wonderful, instead, there are cold and apathetic words. All of those used to love so hard but they are now, with happy smiles on the outside, still blubbering when getting back home in lonely night. By song lyric, the composer also sends us a message about the love consolidation before time flies so fast and so far.

An empty house
A sleepless night like sorrows in winter nights
Or flowers are waiting for the spring to bloom.

The special story about a cold home of “the girl” is unveiled in a music space full of white color: “ô cửa trắng” (white window), “đêm trắng” (it means sleepless night, but “trắng” also means “white”). But why it is “đêm trắng”? We get used to the word “đêm trắng” (sleepless night) as a description of the sleeplessness in anxiety. But using the word “trắng đêm” (being sleepless for the whole night) to describe a girl’s sleeplessness seems too mature for her age. The word “đêm trắng” brings about purity and innocence but a little glumness and loneliness in frigid winter nights.

Le Quynh Tran always has subtly deep comparisons. He compares “đêm trắng” - a cold color with “sorrow” in winter nights - an emotion. With compact words, although not imagining the realistic white color of a sleepless night, we can partly feel for the unfortunate girl’s painful soul which is made by her lovers in her family.

Le Quynh Tran’s music really makes a special impression of a personal feeling in music lover’s hearts. It is sad but not suffocating, just vague and quite anxious.

Falling asleep, she is dreaming about being a swift flying in the mist,
Across the ocean
Flying to remote galaxy.

With a kind heart, the composer doesn’t want “the innocent girl” to undergo the sadness when her house is not a home in the true sense of the word. He transforms her sorrow into a beautiful dream with little daisy waiting for the spring to bloom. In reality, we may not able to magic an obsessed sleepless night into happiness. However, the artist, with music in particular and art in general, can turn that into kid’s dreams looking alike folks told by the melody. That is a beautiful dream with swifts flying in the sky, across the boundless ocean, across verdant forests and interminable Mongolian grasslands and reach to the new region, where the girl would have both of a happy family and parent’s love. “White” tends to repel sadness, which seems like the story “The Little Match Girl” of Andersen.

The adults in our challenging growth may lose the passionate love of the youth in our heart. The composer reminds us of the most careless and beautiful period when we still believed in that magic. Why do the parents really want to steal the happy-go-lucky world of their children?

The last hidden intention of Quynh is to wake parental vocation in adults. He would like to send a message that for a kid, white should not be the color of sleepless nights or terrifying nightmares, instead, it should be the purity of “gentle dreams staying in the heart”. Images about “home”, “swifts” and “the spring” will be the representative of happiness, reunion and coziness of a family.

Let the white
Like gentle dreams staying in the heart
And in the roof
Swifts are coming back with the spring.

The unfortunate children, living with the violence and curses, always have incurable pain in their soul caused by “white”. This can be compared with the most savage method of torture in the world: the white room. The common feature of both is to create psychological disorders that seem unrecoverable for the victims. So, when mentioning the white, we should think in different ways, because “the white” is not so innocent as we usually imagine.

“White” is the song about children written for adults. Le Quynh Tran not only has comforted children’s heart but also has awakened parents’ love in a very subtle, deep and humane manner. In this way, he also sends a message about love and family affection to those responsible for bringing up a child. I hope that parents in similar situations can think thoroughly so that your children can have confidence, honesty, courage and resilience to face ups and downs in this life.

(This writing has some reference points from the Internet)