Ten Months Old and Already Undone by Music

The mother starts to sing—that’s all it takes. Her 10-month-old sits there processing something, face cycling through confusion and then recognition and then full collapse: eyes welling up, lip going, the whole theatrical disaster of a tiny person discovering for the first time that sound can reach inside you without asking permission. I watched it and felt something catch in my chest, which surprised me, because I have essentially no tolerance for baby videos. Almost universally boring dressed up as cute.

But this one gets at something real. The idea that emotional response to music might be the most human reflex there is—present before language, before context, before you have any framework for what you’re feeling or why. That baby has no concept of loss or grief or nostalgia. And yet there it is, arriving at ten months old.