Taking it all in

Vincent Scully, the architectural historian, once argued that a viewer looking at the 8-columned facade of a Greek temple simply cannot see all eight of the columns as individual parts. Where, in looking at a 6-columned facade, we might feel that we can perceive each of the supports at once, rows of 8 columns force us to see and to think in groups, and they thus introduce a further level of complexity.

I feel the same way about large portions of Beethoven's String Quartet no. 13 (opus 130), which we listened to last night. At points, I can simultaneously perceive each of the four instruments, but inevitably within a few seconds I've lost the thread of one, or two, or even three, and find myself listening to a single element, or grouping the sounds into a cumulative effect.

And, at the risk of over-reaching, might that be what parenthood is like, as well? Sure, we might want to observe or to study each pattern in a child's life - and perhaps for the first few months, it's possible (seven poops; slept for 3 hours straight). In time, though, any life will outgrow the perceptive abilities of any observer, and we end up unable to see, at any moment, all of the forces that make one an individual . Instead, we discern a temple, or a cumulative melody.