Hint

Yesterday, as we were chatting with friends from South Africa in our hotel room and our two daughters played in the bathroom (and the hall, and the strips of space between beds...), we suddenly heard the faint click of the mirrored closet door. And Cleo, suddenly was gone.

"Why," asked her playmate, "are you in the closet?" And Cleo, in turn: "I'm hiding while I change into my clothes because that's what ballet dancers do."

That's what they do: sure enough, dancers often work as hard offstage as they do on, and the magic of any performance of The Nutcracker (which Cleo recently saw, twice) depends as much on the costumes and the changing room as on the arabesques and swelling music in the performance hall. That which is shown is the result of that which is concealed.

Thus the Christmas hint, above, for one of this blog's most faithful readers. Let her who has eyes see. And to the rest of you, a happy Christmas, full of lovely manifestations of that which has been concealed, to all!

Tell me a story

So far, so good, I'd say: our holiday weekend thus far has been both active (Exhibit A: a 6 a.m. turn in a hotel whirlpool this morning) and silly (Exhibit B: Mr. Potato Head ridiculousness contest). Sure, there was some sclerotic holiday traffic, and, sure, travel can make a gal a bit homesick (Exhibit C: Cleo, this morning, declared that " I miss my adorable little desk and chair," where she eats her granola each day). But if the hardest thing about a trip is that is makes you appreciate home a little more, then all's more or less well.

That said, L. and I have been facing one other challenge that's arisen consistently over the past few weeks, regardless of where we are. Ultimately, it too is almost risibly modest, and perhaps even lovable: it consists of nothing more than Cleo saying, 10 or 12 times a day, that she wants us to tell her a story. And what, you ask, is so wrong with that? Nothing - aside from the impoverished state of our imaginations. Because Cleo's not asking us to read a story, or, generally, even to recite a familiar tale. She wants a new story, cut from clean cloth. Sometimes she'll offer a couple of prompts; this morning, for instance, she asked for a story that involved a wolf and a monster. Just as often, though, you're given nothing in the way of guidance. Just tell a story.

It's true, of course, that 3-year-olds are pretty undemanding, as far as audiences go. But, still, you want your story to hang together. After all, you're competing with the polished, published tales on which she's been raised; your listener expects the tight narrative of a Mother Goose story, and the pleasant cohesiveness of one of Curious George's experiences. And, too, you need to shape your vocabulary thoughtfully on the fly: your wordings should accommodate your little listener. Then there's the fact, as well, that Cleo's not your only audience; often, your spouse is a few feet away, casually wondering how, exactly, you'll resolve the tension between wolf and monster.

So we try our best. And yet, even as we do, we feel acutely aware of our own shortcomings as storytellers. I  fall back too often, for example, on coy inversions of expectation (the monster turns out to be nice) and on silly props (a piece of pie featured prominently in this morning's third tale). Obviously, we're thrilled with the idea that our little girl loves stories - but frustrated by the fact that we can't accommodate that love more artfully, or more easily. In that sense, I sometimes feel like the generic court musicians who are ordered, in medieval epics, to play for the king. What, they must have wondered, should I play? And must I really play all night, while the intemperate Darab wine-bibs or until Beowulf's men down the last of the mead? Does the king even like this raga? Doesn't he realize that my hands ache, and that Ahmed, on the tabla, needs a rest?

Well, increasingly, Cleo must realize that even the most enthusiastic storytellers can grow tired, for we've told her as much, and asked her to step in and play a role, as well. And so, over the past few days, a new game has evolved, in which we take turns contributing to an unfolding narrative. Each speaker offers a sentence or two, and then pauses, and lets the next player embroider. Due to the simple fact of collaboration, and to Cleo's apparent taste for sudden and spectacular new variables, it's less clear than ever where the narrative might be headed. But that's part of the appeal, of course, along with the fact that such an approach lessens the pressure on the storyteller; now we're all accountable, in a sense, for the story's arc.

And, finally, there's the simple fact that it's wonderful to listen as a young girl's imagination takes an audible form. Cleo is no king, but she can be, like any 3-year-old, a demanding and willful presence. How beautiful is it, then, when a king steps down from his dais, picks up a lute, joins the quartet, and simply joins in, now nothing more than one of the cohort of music-makers?

Symphonies

A couple of days ago, laying the groundwork for an upcoming trip with Cleo, I stopped by MICA's video library and asked for some recommendations for DVDs that might appeal to a certain 3-and-a-half-year-old. I already had my sights set on Snow White, since Cleo's given the thumbs-up to princesses,in general, and to Disney, via Dumbo. But I was happily surprised to hear the girl working the desk recommend Disney's Silly Symphonies, a compilation of shorts, primarily, from the 1930s, that marry musical passages to animation. "I loved them when I was a kid," she told me. And do you remember anything of them, today? Sure, she said - and told me about one episode in which the instruments in a symphony orchestra are given personalities, and in which a member of the brass can then falls in love, problematically, with a stringed instrument. Romeo and Juliet for trombones and cellos! I took that one home, too.

We haven't watched Silly Symphonies yet, but Cleo did ask for a more or less immediate screening of Snow White. Given that it's over an hour long, and that parts of it - evil queen; plotted murder; poisoned apple - are pretty intense, we spent some time chatting about it on the way home from school, and then watched it in parts. On the whole, I'd say it went well: after reaching the end of the movie, Cleo spent a block of time yesterday asking us to retell the story, before expressing a desire this morning to watch the beginning once more. She's digesting it; making it hers. And I can see why such a process appeals, for there are some stretches that are truly unsettling. Indeed, Roy Disney recalls, in the DVD's liner notes, watching the film as a boy and being terrified by the claw-like branches that cling to Snow White's skirts as she flees into the forest. Sure enough, that seems to have been the scene that affected Cleo the most. This morning, when I sat down next to her after making her warm milk, Snow White was just about to repeat her flight through the woods - and Cleo's body was turned at an awkward 60-degree angle away from the screen. "If you were not here," she told me, "I would close my eyes."

But of course once you've seen a scary stretch of film once, it often ceases to be as scary, the second time. Cleo now knew that the apparently monstrous eyes in the forest belonged to benign deer and rabbits; she had gathered, too, that the snarling crocodiles were merely the figments of a frightened Snow White's imagination. And I, too, initially struck by the vibrant quality of the animation in Disney's first feature length film (it came out in 1937), could now pay attention to other elements, as well - such as the music (which comprised the first commercially issued film soundtrack). Thus, as Snow White turned and shrieked and fell, I listened to the crescendo of strings and to the rapid rhythm that intensified the disorienting aspect of the scene.

And you know what? Once you start to listen, you can hear symphonic aspects in a number of surprising places. Yesterday afternoon, Cleo and I went to Port Discovery, a children's activity center (excuse me - children's 'museum') that we've visited repeatedly over the last three years. She's always found something to keep her busy there, but yesterday was an absolute delight, as she threw herself into each option at hand - gathering groceries in a mock store; washing windows; drawing sea monsters - with simple enthusiasm. I followed along, playing by her rules on the mock soccer field and squirting water pistols alongside her - and as I did, it occurred to me that our 3 hours there were something like a symphony. Multiple parts, conducted towards a common end of fun and exploration.

In the end, then, the only little cottage we found was a miniaturized Trojan Horse, in which kids could hide. But we did learn, all over again, the appeal of separate lines that work together towards the creation of something substantial, and varied. Tuba and violin, father and daughter, girl and princess: arbitrary divisions that fade and dissolve in the light of art.

Dies irae

Suddenly, it seems, I am surrounded by intimations of death. While Cleo learns Greek myths, L. produces mounds of Christmas cards, and the calendar moves inexorably towards a celebrated birth, I keep coming up against accounts of our basic mortality. There was the shooting in Newtown, of course - but then, two days later, a 91-year-old neighbor died, and a day after that a good friend wrote to say that his father had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. I sit down to watch a episode of Breaking Bad, and mourn as Jesse's vibrant girlfriend dies of an overdose; I pick up the latest issue of Source, only to find that it's a collection of short essays in memory of the recently deceased Leo Steinberg, once my favorite living art historian. Consequently, it only felt appropriate when, as I read the Shahnama (a famous medieval Persian epic) at One World today, I came across this account of the gory aftermath of a battle: "No surgeon came to the pillow of the wounded. All was occasion for sorrow and blood-stained tears."

What to do in such circumstances? How to respond, exactly? Perhaps, perhaps we could think of a work such as Brahms's "A German Requiem," which was apparently initially conceived in response to the death of Brahms's close friend Robert Schumann, and then actually written after the 1865 death of the composer's mother. Unlike many requiems, its lyrics seem largely concerned with the living, rather than the dead: in fact, the first sung line can be translated as "Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted." As a result, the conductor Manfred Honeck, who recently led the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in a performance of the piece, noted that "There are hopeful elements in it; always a positive feeling."

So you can play your Brahms. Or you can simply devote yourself with renewed enthusiasm to that 5-to-8 slot, when Cleo's home from daycare and simply wants to romp, and innovate, and read, and shriek. Over the past few days, with classes ended and grades in, I've had both time and energy, and we've had a blast. Last night, we built an elaborate 4-foot ramp of sloped books, along which Cleo could run a wooden car towards barricades of various materials; tonight, she wanted to hide under a tent-like blanket with L. while I sniffed and snuffled and circled, an inept monster confused by the trembling fabric. The activity, wonderfully, varies by the minute, but we are, at least for now, all fully invested in the play, and the result is sheer fun.

Which makes me think, in turn, of a different passage from the Shahnama. The author, Ferdowsi, is often intrigued by the workings of history, and the possibility of destiny, and at one point he seems to realize that sadness and happiness are simply bound to alternate. "That is the habit," he writes, "of the skies and fate; sometimes they are laden with pain and grief and sometimes they are full of gladness."

For now, we recognize the need for grief and try to make the most of gladness.

Practice makes pictures

She is such a person now. She has the quirky habits of a longtime roommate - she likes to eat, for instance, yogurt and honey on the coffee table, facing north - and she prefers Motown to metal. If you happen to give her your phone while you're driving, she can turn it on, open a fishing simulation game and catch a virtual catfish - or may take a photo, like the one above. When she wakes up (at about 5:30, of late), she turns on her bedroom light, and plays quietly with her doctor's kit and her dolls or experiments with her wardrobe. At 6 (and she knows it's 6 now; she can read digital clocks with some accuracy), she pads down the hall and wakes you up. Or, should you happen to get up before then, you might open the door to her room to find her smiling. In fact, the first words she said to me on Friday morning, after she'd gone to bed with a mild cold, were "Feeling better!"

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses a study done by K. Anders Ericsson and two colleagues at the Berlin Academy of Music. Working with the school's violinists, whom they grouped in three broad categories according to skill level (world-class; good; proficient), the researchers asked the musicians how many hours, roughly, they had practiced since first picking up the instrument. Most of the violinists, they found, had begun playing at around 5 years of age. But by the age of 20, the world-class violinists had typically practiced an average of around 10,000 hours, in total, while the merely proficient had logged an average of 4,000 hours.

Even 4,000 sounds like a lot, right? Until you realize that Cleo, as an ordinary 3-and-a-half year-old, has already logged more than 36,000 hours of, well, of practice at simply being human. Speaking, running, taking pictures: it adds up, even for those of us who aren't outliers. And the results of such constant, steady practice are lovely.

England's greatness

Sometimes a thing is most notable for what it does not feature, or include. Sherlock Holmes once solved a case by noticing that a dog had not barked at a particular moment; John Shearman once offered a novel and pleasing reading of an installation by Verrocchio by suggesting that the absence of most of the apostles implied that the Florentines who coursed through the city streets beneath the niche could think of themselves as those apostles.

Some of my spare moments of late have been occupied by a pleasant game available on IPhones, called SongPop Free. It's essentially a variant of Guess that Tune, in which players compete by trying to identify the singers or titles of five songs at a time, as quickly as possible. I can hold my own in Classic Rock or Nineties Alternative, but when it comes to Today's Hits, or Modern Rap -I haven't been allowed to unlock the more historical, or classical, categories yet - my limitations quickly surface. And so I find myself relying heavily on the processes of deduction and elimination. There are only four options for each tune. And so if a song is by a teen diva, well, I can rule out the options involving male singers. And if the snippet that I hear doesn't have any relation to the offered titles, that can prove helpful, as well. Let's go with Rihanna, or Ring the Alarm - and so on.

Cleo, apparently, plays the same game, or uses the same strategy, in perceiving the world around her. While driving home the other day, I decided to give her a little game-show format quiz, of sorts. Cleo Dahlia, I began, in my best and most syrupy Hollywood voice, welcome to the quiz game. And so we dove in: How do you get to the top of the mountain, in Cape Town? On the cable car, responded the little voice in the back. And what can you get at the top? Popsicle! Okay, then: can you name one thing that you remember about England? A pause, and then: No school!

Hmm. Well, she's right: when we were in Winchester this summer, she didn't have to go to school. Granted, L. and I were too busy enjoying the medieval cathedral, the walks along streams, and the inviting pubs to think too much about that. But, yes, come to think of it, there was no school in England.

Just one more reason to remember, fondly, what we'd already celebrated for other, more obvious reasons.

Laugh it up

You probably remember, if you've seen Milos Forman's Amadeus, Mozart's ridiculous cackle. It was a profane giggle that threw the inexplicable nature of his divine gift into higher relief, and that taunted a tortured Salieri, who saw it as something more than Mozart laughing - it was, Salieri claimed, God himself laughing at the mediocrity of his own effort. Of course, Forman was using the laugh as a narrative device (for a bright explication of how, exactly, check out Kristin Thompson's Storytelling in the New Hollywood), but it's a motif that does seem to have some historical truth to it. Even in his own day, Mozart was known for a bawdy sense of humor - and for registering his glee aloud.

But did his father laugh in a comparable way? Franz Hoffmann, in his 1873 book Mozart's Early Days, would have us think so. (And perhaps we should give his report some credence; after all, 1873 was closer to Mozart's time than to our own...). On page 6, he tries to reconstruct Leopold's happiness at learning that he was to become a father, and to have a son whom he could introduce into the world of music. "He rubbed," claims Hoffman, "his hands joyfully, he murmured unintelligible words to himself, he threw radiant glances towards the blue sky, which had become almost cloudless. Yes, he forgot himself so far that he gave way at times to a joyous laugh, a loud laugh on the open highway, such as no one had ever heard from the vice orchestra leader."

Well. We may wonder at the accuracy of such at account: the repetition of joy suggests a certain formulaic aspect to the account, and surely Hoffmann could not have known the state of the sky on a random day in 1755. And yet: boisterous laughs sometimes do pour forth, in expected ways. Matter of fact, Cleo's been developing a room-silencing laugh of her own, over the past ten days or so. And we've got proof: just have a look at the video, above.

We're not quite sure when, or why, this new laugh developed. And, to be honest, I'm also not sure how sincere, or unselfconscious, it typically is. (The example above, as you've likely gathered, is staged, but more or less acoustically typical). Sometimes, Cleo lets loose while watching Max and Ruby. But she also spent some of Monday at school asking her teachers to "talk about [my] new laugh." Having heard them remark on it, she apparently became interested in how it prompted certain reactions."

Which, presumably, may have been part of Mozart's project, as well. At least, Forman would have see it so: that is, laughter can be both naked celebration and open taunt; bald joy, and implicit provocation. We laugh with the world; we laugh at the world. And the world, in turn, stands at attention, reckoning the new sound.