Baby Humans Have an Ear for Music

"Sometimes the littlest things take up the most room in your heart."- unknown

Baby humans are strange little creatures. They turn my brain to mush. There is one who recently hit incarnation in my family. So I am hanging out with one of these alien beings lately.

 

This creature is a few days old and doesn't bother to open its eyes much. Kitten kid.

But oh, those ears are on for sure. I play some music and the little mammal forgets all about its tummy issue of the moment and cranes toward the sound. It's a garage band loop and if I forget to change chords or instruments for too long, the kid starts to get impatient. So I must keep it regular, but interesting and evolving. This baby is already an attentive listener.

We develop a sense of taste in fetus hood but our eyes take longer to get up to speed, well after birth. But we can hear the voices of people around us for months before birth. I get to watch this baby's mother play violin for the baby for the first time since the birth, and no surprise, the baby totally, obviously, notices and recognizes the song.

We know music especially for babies, lullabies, help them calm and feel better. We know music is perceived all over the brain, not just in one place, unlike many other functions. I can't think of any other animals who do anything close to what we call music. Music is special and unique to us, we seem to be born with an interest in it, and yet it is still ancient and mysterious to us, stirring something old and deep. Ever renewing, ever repeating, music is much like this fractal universe.

I wonder how we got music. I wonder where music will lead us in the future.

 

 

 

 

The Best Deal

 

"Abundance is the quality of life you live and quality of life you give to others." - J.K. Rowling

 

When shopping, you look for the best deal, right? The cheapest thing in the kind you are looking for. You are a fool if you don't. Look out for yourself or you'll be a target for others who will take their advantage, sucker! Right?

I've always felt perplexed by this attitude. Now I am starting to realize why...

 

I don't count my change. I only count change if it seems like politeness requires it. It's not because I'm too lazy to bother, but because I don't care. Besides I figure mistakes will happen in either direction and balance out. It is true I find haggling unpleasant. I'd rather chat about something meaningful. Why do we even need money, I wonder, but let's save that question for later.

I don't even tend to know how much money I have in my wallet. And when I shop, I do not always care about getting the best deal (for myself). For example, I happily pay more money for organically grown produce, even if I am buying it for someone who not only would not buy it for themselves, but scoffs at there being any difference. To me there is.

 

When I buy organic, or locally made, or even order on the internet some thing I just adore, if I pay more than if I "shop around for cheapest best deal" I actually do benefit myself more than any other way I could buy.

 

Let me explain: I ride upon a wave of gratitude wherever I go. I go around feeling secure in the expansive knowledge of an infinitely abundant universe. It feels completely harmonious and natural to let a little extra splash around me as I go, just like all of the rest of nature. Nature lets the cup overflow. And when my cup is empty, more can flow in, and always has...

 

I nurture my organic wholistic vision of the future when I buy organic, literally growing that future! I support the local economy and so, brighten up the neighborhood around me when I pay more for some neighbor to make that thing I need, and the world gets polluted less for not having to ship it far. What a great investment portfolio!

And when I do use the interweb network to find that special, beautiful or obscure thing I adore, I feel such a joy to share with that faraway artist who I found with the blessing of our newly acquired global shared brain web. Such a messenger and supply system even the greatest kings of history could never even dream of!

 

The mind set engendered by our flawed money system does not make sense. If I "save" money now by buying the cheapest thing or grabbing the best deal, (instead of investing it in a better world at every turn), how can that be a benefit to me or anyone. It is flawed logic. As if the universe were static and unchanging, and at the end of the pretend money game I, personally, will win, with the biggest money pile. Even money does not work like that. It too flows, especially when we use it in harmony with the All.

 

By my data profile, you would have to call me lower middle class, or even poor. But I feel richer than royalty! I go around with the attitude that every little thing I do will, can, and does create ripples, large and small, with effects that actually make a difference! This expectation tends to be self fulfilling. So I live and move in a self created bubble of grateful abundance.

 

Nor does it hurt that I don't have extravagant needs. Beyond taking care of basic needs, I feel fulfilled and satisfied by doing creative actions rather than buying and having. I don't need much to be entertained in this place. It is a dynamic place, sparked by intention, powered by my desire to make a difference, and guided in tiny steps by a different calculus than getting the best deal for myself. I seek the tiny, cumulative, atmosphere-shaping ways along my path to get the best deal for all of us, including me of course by definition. I believe there is such an option at every choice point.

 

I do not think of myself as a generous person. I have simply found that there always is a way through to whatever I may need that also aligns with the good of all, if I merely bother to check when a choice presents itself. This way of doing my job, that of making a difference, just feels good and is logical!

 

But I still get afraid. I still sometimes get sucked in by the twisted currents of insecurity that our money system tries to suggest. You do not have to accept the mindset of everyone out for themselves. Our monetary system, which pits all of us against each other, is historically a relatively new kind of economy, arising from patriarchy. And there is a gift lurking in the confusion of egos contending....

 

This moment is gifting to us our current cultural opportunity to experience individuality to the utmost edifying and alienating extent, so we can begin to come back together and join at a more conscious, creative, harmonious, self actualized level, creating ever greater collaborations. Self transcendence can come only when we first have self possession.

 

As we move toward being more able as a society to help everyone have access to supplying basic needs, (an almost trivial task compared to our other accomplishments as a civilization), we can finally free up more time and energy for the more ephemeral endeavors that bring delight and joy. I cannot understand why anyone frets about technology taking away menial work and freeing us up to do fun stuff!

I wonder what the world will be like when a critical mass of people embrace a more expansive way to think of wealth and the money system shifts to engage with it.

 

 

"The world is already yours - why try to conquer it?"

― Rasheed Ogunlaru

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Need of Thneeds

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It's not."

- Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

In the story by Dr Seuss, the Once-ler cuts down the forest of Truffula trees to make these knitted things that are called Thneeds. The Once-ler can cut down the virgin forest but one time, so it is used but once. And we consumers think we need these products because they are advertised aggressively, so they are called Thneeds. What we *think* we *need*. This is the story I have in mind with my latest art project.

Having lost my art studio for the moment so Granny could move in with us, I now see my much neglected yarn collection in the living room every day, heaped in baskets, brimming with colors. They call to me, like they did not when tucked away in the shelves of my remote studio. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty for just having all this yarn without using it.

As a master rainbow weaver I amassed this fabulous color collection so as to have all the colors in my artist's palette. At the peak of my pure rainbow weaving studies, in which I wove only anatomically correct spectral sequences, I created rainbows that pushed right up to the very limits of human color perception. In this series, each rainbow I construct is a gradual transition from one pure, fully saturated color to the next, comprising around seventy five steps. This is about as many pure gradations you can perceive as distinct.

 

There they are now, the flaming baskets of colors, calling out to me, nudging, gently inviting, sometimes ruefully accusing. I respond! Right now I have no less than four different fiber projects going on. The Thneed Project is a series.

I'm on number six (above) right now... In part, it is indeed inspired by the impulse to just use up all the yarn, dammit!

 

So this is how I come to make absurdities. The Thneeds. I knit these little darlings on the round knitting looms with pegs. I still can't figure out knitting, but these looms are just my speed. They keep count of the stitches and everything is simple and obvious. I google around on using multiple looms on one piece, but find nothing.

 

So, does this stop me? Of course not. After several tries I discover that I can plop a round loom down on any knitted area, pull a circle of threads up into the inside of the loom, and start an appendage growing out of it! What fun! The Thneeds begin to ooze out of the little looms like crazy toothpaste.

 

Do you need a thneed? They are wonderful and awful and crazy and beautiful and I love them!

The Thneeds remind me very much of the Dr Seuss style, leggy and colorfully absurd. And totally useless! Like art. (Kidding.) Like so many of the extrusions of this consumer thing-obsessed society. More on knitting "Thneeds"

Along other lines of inspiration, the construction process shows the string, tube, and spherical nature of objects in the world, even in the forming of all things physical in the universe. String theory! The art and math of creation! It is as if I have cracked the divine code and now I can knit anything! I wonder what the next Thneed will look like....