You have to thank the great beyond if your child delights in birdsong, especially a chorus of it a dizzy crowd of birds singing— warbles, chits, and caws ringing through the sanctuary of the woods. Although I heard the birds myself, it was the little one who pointed her finger to the budding trees and pronounced the word she has for music, composed of a pair of syllables both beginning vaguely with Y, with emphasis rightly on the first. It happens also to be the word she has for donkey and the plural of donkey. And it’s also the word she says regarding the photograph of an old-time banjo player she sees at suppertime. She sees the sound of a silent instrument, and that’s the true Gospel of Music. In the beginning was the word, and the word was music and birds and donkeys, and God was a serious banjo-player with an inscrutable face, who said to everything alive, I made the world for singing. Now, you sing.