Page 65 - Effable Encounters

Lost and Found

the nurturing world, the culture of specific memes or basic units of
comprehension and aesthetic logic. This is one end of the bell curve,
a period Ransom calls ‘finding it’. The articulations of a child, in
words or plastic media, are notable for their powerful and
unpredictable associations of conventional variables. Bright blotches
of color, non sequiturs, flashes of profound insight—all have caught
the attention of adults throughout the ages, who laugh or marvel at
naiveté or precocity. But that period of literal incunabula is also seen
as, and is expected to be, a learning phase through which a
developing mind must pass.”
“In this sense, Demi, I believe most infants are indistinguishable.
And probably their parents, as well, finding such juvenilia cute or
clever—and reading them as indicators of their offspring’s position
on the accepted path of development.”
“That’s right, Percy. A lot of ink has been spilled by psychologists
on this topic over the past century. Indeed, those same parents would
not be pleased if a child did not progress beyond ‘finding it’. Such
youngsters often wind up in mental hospitals rather than universities.
The majority of people next enter the large central section of the bell
curve: adult life, during which they make use of their acquired
creative skill within their given levels of ability, opportunity and
motivation. If your life is monotonous and you are not otherwise
impelled to use your mind, further intellectual growth will be
minimal. We all know the stereotype of the couch potato who
doesn’t read or travel or engage in any challenging hobby. Although
that is a mass manifestation of modern adulthood, even the most
imaginative person will settle into a pattern of socially-acceptable
variation within a theme. Some great geniuses fight that self-
repetition, often risking failure and the loss of recognition—but they
are the exception.”
“And, as you relate, Demi, such people, the enfants terribles of the
literary and artistic worlds, Picasso and Pound, intentionally try to
return to the state of grace endowed by childhood—and in so doing,
always risk disapprobation or incarceration. As you aptly put it, an
adult could not get away with both seeing and saying that the
emperor’s new clothes were a birthday suit.”
“Yes, Percy, the sociological enforcement of norms and the ego-
filtering it conditions have a profound effect on adult creativity as

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