Humans love to imitate. We notice how very young children learn by imitating their siblings and peers and parents. Making marks is the urge to imitate. Some marks become symbols. Some symbols become pictures or sculpture; some become writing. I suspect image making came first because it was a one-to-one sort of imitation as when a bulge in the rock wall could seem to imitate the body of an animal with just a few more scratches. Or when a random line can be modified to "be something" (to imitate). But a language and writing requires a full range of symbols that interact in ways that are exponentially novel and symbolic. When children begin to experience the world as a related series of events, they become narrative and when they are narrative, language is the speedier mode of symbolism. Most children decrease their drawing when they begin to think in narrative ways, when they begin reading. "Slower" kids keep on drawing and their symbolism can grow up to be a very complex amalgam of pictures, sounds, and words. Show me a kid who loves to draw at age 7, 8,9, and that's a kid who could become a writer, a scientist, a musician, in short, a creator -- if he or she is not reduced to passive imbecility by toys and gadgets that drain imagination and the natural drive to imitate and make. WC
--- On Fri, 11/14/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: The birthplace of civilization > To: [email protected] > Date: Friday, November 14, 2008, 8:48 PM > Chauvet,30,000 years. > http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/23/080623fa_fact_thurman > Kate Sullivan > > > ************** > Get the Moviefone Toolbar. Showtimes, theaters, > movie news & > more!(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212774565x1200812037/aol?redir=http://toolbar.aol.com/moviefone/download.html?ncid=emlcntusdown0000 > 0001)
