Homo ludens

Let's think for a moment about how interesting, or how revealing, it is that we speak of "playing music." Not every language, it's worth remembering, speaks of musical performances in such terms. True, a Frenchman can jouer de la musique, but he can also, if he is operating a stereo, envoyer la musique: that is, he can send it forth. A Spanish guitarist will, I gather,  claim that she likes to tocar her instrument; in other words, she touches it, rather than plays it. Which is not so different, in turn, from a speaker of Swahili noting that he can piga combo cha muziki - that is, can strike or beat an instrument. English speakers may think of music as a subject of play, then, but that's a regional view, rather than a universal one.

That said, it's also a view that comes rather naturally to us as halfstep these days. In fact, for better or worse our days are largely comprised of what games: playful momentary role plays or scenarios, that is, that turn everyday interactions and passages into something a bit more rich, or dimensional - or simply silly. In fact, over the past few years Cleo has developed a sort of shorthand terminology with which she refers to, or requests, such games. 'Let's play,' she proposes, 'the leg game,' and clambers onto my crossed leg, for a brief and unsteady ride. Or perhaps she opts, instead, for the bully game, in which we pretend that we are travelers in a distant land and are forced to appropriate a car or house (which, inevitably, turns out to look a lot like our own). Then, too, there's the sleeping game, in which I pretend to slumber as she, a fairy or a mother, leaves small gifts on my rising and falling chest or attends to my perceived needs by preparing food. But don't get that confused with the sleep game, in which I while, driving, implore her to stay awake while she playfully and happily pretends to fall asleep. Correspondingly, there is also a talking game, a barber game - and, well, the list goes on, but the point is that Cleo knows from games.

Indeed, she's getting pretty good at devising, or playing along with, rather complex games. We often play hide and seek, and although the nooks and crannies in our house are limited, she has honestly stumped me a few times of late, forcing her tiny body into spaces that I don't even consider potential refuges. Yesterday, she beat me fair and square at Triominos, which is a relatively complicated game of numbered triangles, and she's always up for a raucous parody of a karate bout. Too, she can invent games, weaving lengthy princess narratives that inevitably involve anyone who happens to be in a 50-foot radius. And she can forge simple silliness: the other day, for instance, she wandered half-undressed into our bedroom in the morning, and jokingly taunted us by trying to wiggle her angelic little bottom in our direction, while making loopy sounds. L. and I both broke out laughing, as her small arms worked back and forth and her rear end somehow remained remarkably static. 6 in the morning, and play was already fully underway.

Was the sound of our laughter, or the rhythm of her mild taunts, music of a sort? I'll leave that for the philosophers of music. But I will point out, before they pick up the question, that our very language implies that it may have been. After all, Cleo wasn't touching her caboose, or beating it. She was, we would say, playing it.