Predictability

Cleo's now 8 months and a day old and, if you think about it, the world's more or less only been getting colder since she was born. We're supposed to get a foot or more of snow tonight, which will put us well over 40 inches for the season -and while I'm sure that there are many well-adjusted babies in, say, Winnipeg (average annual snowfall: 40 inches) or King Salmon, Alaska (46 inches), I do wonder about Cleo. I mean, does she know, on some level, that the sun will eventually grow strong again?

Such a question is really, though, just another way of acknowledging that it takes an immense amount of courage to be a baby. Or is it simply raw, naive faith? The way in which Cleo opens her mouth as wide as she can, when hungry, to eat a spoonful of whatever we happen to have chosen is simply heartmelting: she can't imagine, it seems, that we'd choose something harmful to her. And, similarly, when I watch her learning to support herself on two feet, by gripping a nearby toy, I'm struck by how fully she assumes that someone will be there to catch her, or to cushion her inevitable fall.

Of course, we usually are (boy, I'd like to write always, but, well, you know). And that must at least begin to explain why babies usually begin to cry less and less as they grow older, and as they grow used to their surroundings. After three or four months, they've learned more or less what, and whom, they can depend on. The shock of novelty wears off, and the baby sees that the world will support her. So why not simply roll off that sofa?

But does a predictable, safe environment thus breed a willingness to experiment? It would seem so. And yet, this past week, I received, from a loyal reader, a book review of a new collections of writings on music by the Marxist critic Theodor Adorno. Adorno's especially well known for his argument that pop music - by which he meant, essentially, jazz in the 1930s - cynically attempts to appeal to the consumer by offering slight variations on known, predictable formulas. This boy band, that boy band: for Adorno, they'd all be members of the same tired species.

I don't want to argue with Adorno; certainly the music industry can tends towards conformity and monotony. But maybe babies offer a happy corrective to the otherwise grim conclusions of the Frankfurt School. Sure, mere variations on an established theme can grow old. But if you roll enough, and keep rolling, eventually you figure out how to sit up. And if you keep watching the snow gather outside your window, then soon enough, it's March, and Opening Day is around the corner.