Beginnings

How does she know just how to begin?

Yesterday I got to Cleo's school as she, and another girl, were beginning to paint. The watercolors were set out, and they'd both retrieved brushes. Clean sheets of white paper stared up at them.

No big deal, right? Kids paint. And yet, beginning a work is a big deal, and always has been. Think of Homer, invoking the muses, asking for inspiration so that he can undertake his heroic song. Or Dante, gathering his strength before embarking on a particularly difficult descriptive passage. How to begin? Often, artists have begun by remarking on how difficult beginning is.

The same basic point plays out in many ways. I remember a college suitemate of mine handing in an essay that was stapled shut, on all four corners. When the professor finally managed to get beyond the cover page, the first sentence that greeted him was "Openings are always difficult." And, about three years after that, the young rapper Nas - who just began a set at the Preakness track infield, up the hill, about an hour ago - discovered something similar. As the background beats played in the studio and the tapes rolled, Nas delivered two quick lines, and then paused, and lost confidence. "I don't know how to start this shit," he mumbled. As DJ Premier later remembered it, "I'm actually yelling, 'We're recording! and banging on the window. 'Come on, get ready!... and then everyone was like, 'Oh, my God,' 'cause it was so unexpected. He was not ready. So we used that first verse." Rather like Inferno, then, Illmatic - one of the most influential hip-hop albums ever recorded - begins with an open crisis of confidence: a wobbly moment that belies an underlying ability.

But on Friday I saw no such thing. Cleo dunked her brush in the water, stirred some paint, and deftly began to make a small circle. And then another, and another. I simply watched, and the painting soon became more and more complicated; eventually, it evolved into an image that she said was inspired by Dr. Seuss' The Lorax. At no point was there discernible doubt, or uncertainty. One mark followed another. And then it was over, declared done.

Perhaps appropriately, I don't know how to end this post. How do children act so unselfconsciously? Why do adults doubt their own abilities so acutely? The questions quickly become complicated. But for now, we'll keep it simple. One simply begins, I guess - and then ends.