Child Geniuses

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
-Pablo Picasso

I thought about this quote a few times while in seminar this week as we explored ways to portray events using our body or other household items. The activities that we have been doing, especially the rainstorm, have reminded me that it doesn’t take a doctorate in music to “get it.” I feel like this past week has taken us back to our roots as little children who simply enjoy making music with nothing more complicated than pots and pans. I think that is a good reminder every once in a while that it doesn’t take any musical training to enjoy music. This is sort of a tangent, but I am going into it anyway. I was reading an article this weekend and evidently researchers have discovered that newborns can identify people regarded as “beautiful” by society. From the time we are just a few months old, we know what beauty is. That simply blows my mind that babies can identify a beautiful person before they themselves can walk. We always think of “beauty” as a label that has developed within society and that is molded as we live our lives, but apparently that is not necessarily the case. We have this preconceived notion of beauty. Perhaps we also have a preconceived notion of what music should sound like too. I think that would be an interesting idea to explore. I wonder how much of our idea of what is “good” music was determined as infants or possibly before we are even born.