At kindergarten, Martin was a bit different from the other 4-year-olds. When they counted to 100, he stopped at 4.
After he began painting the Union Jack while humming ‘Rule Britannia’ the Director reminded me that young children need free expression. I assured her that this was his free expression.
A few days later he was found alone, sitting on a chair while everyone else was outside playing in the sand. The concerned teacher asked what he was thinking about and was surprised to be told: ‘I was thinking that four fours are sixteen.’
We don’t create in a vacuum. Even a small child can set up a virtual space filled with familiar symbolic material; it is then a symbolic space. That is where we play.
Thinking is play and it also takes place in a virtual space. Martin needed to explore the meaning of number. He was not satisfied with the accumulative ‘and’ of counting. He needed to move beyond ‘1 and then another makes 2’ to the purpose of learning their names.
To play with his idea, he set up a space rich in symbolic material that he had already mastered. He obviously understood the way 4 can be manipulated because he was drawn to the visual tension between the three superimposed crosses of the Union flag. He instinctively chose repetitive humming of a (linked) theme with subtle 4-measure phrasing.
This is how we think. It could have been the play of thought in anyone of any age:
Martin reproduced existing symbolic spaces by painting and humming.
By rigorously co-opting these tangible representations from the social imagining, he held his space intact against the distractions around him.
Within that space he could observe anomalies, conceptualize his idea, then test its validity.