"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.
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