But what, exactly?

There's a basic human tendency - isn't there? - to categorize, and to label. You could see it at work, for instance, in the entertaining (but also rather vicious) conversation between two New York Times music critics in Saturday's paper. Pondering the phenomenon that is the violinist Lindsey Stirling, they expressed puzzlement over her popularity - and then tried to stuff her into a convenient box. "My guess," said Jon Caramanica, "is that pop wants little to do with her. Is she a bold warrior for classical crossover? Is she the new New Age, making music for healing and uplift?" And then Zachary Woolfe, in turn: "So, then, Ms. Stirling makes competent but unoriginal dance music. But is this classical music in any meaningful sense?" Ultimately, the two music critics settled on a rather unflattering parallel: Stirling, they decided, is something like a contemporary Yanni (although, in a final dig, they suggest that posterity will be even less kind to her).

Cleo, I think, is not very much like either Yanni or Lindsey Stirling. But, all around her, people are classifying her. When I stopped by school at the end of the day today, the director pulled me aside for a moment, and said, "She is so... self-possessed. I mean, she plays with the other kids, but she's also fine by herself." Yesterday, on the other hand, it was the father of one of her friends. We were hiking in the woods, and Cleo trotted off into the middle distance, toward a bend in the trail. "You might have a runner, or an athlete, in the family," offered the well-meaning dad, with a smile.

Perhaps. Or perhaps we really don't know - for, after all, L. and I have seen her baldly refuse to walk at times, and break down at others. Of course, we all want to understand, and categorizing is a means of doing so. But it's also a way of forgetting that genres and labels are coarse tools. New New Age? Classical crossover? The terms sound awkward; they point to the rudimentary aspect of our mental machinery. And they thus serve as a reminder that sometimes, perhaps, we need to simply let the new unfold, on its own terms.