When we say that something is startling, we mean that it surprises us a very great deal. When we say that something is a starling, we mean that it is a type of migratory bird. Bird is a word we use quite often, which is why it’s such an easy word to say. Most of the words we use often, like house and car and tree, are easy to say. Migratory is a word we don’t use nearly so much, and saying it can sometimes make you feel as if your teeth are stuck together with toffee. If birds were called “migratories” rather than “birds,” we probably wouldn’t talk about them nearly so much. We’d all say, “Look, there’s a dog!” or “There’s a cat!” but if a migratory went by, we’d probably just say, “Is it teatime yet?” and not even mention it, however nifty it looked.

But migratory doesn’t mean that something is stuck together with toffee, however much it sounds like it. It means that something spends part of the year in one country and part of it in another.

Brandenburg 5

Whatever new extremities of discovery or understanding we reach, we always seem to find the footsteps of Bach there already. When we see images of the strange mathematical beasts lurking at the heart of the natural world—fractal landscapes, the infinitely unfolding paisley whorls of the Mandel-brot Set, the Fibonacci series, which describes the pattern of leaves growing on the stem of a plant, the Strange Attractors that beat at the heart of chaos—it is always the dizzying, complex spirals of Bach that come to mind.

Some people say that the mathematical complexity of Bach renders it unemotional. I think the opposite is true. As I listen to the interplay of parts in a piece of Bach polyphony, each individual strand of music gathers hold of a different feeling in my mind, and takes them on simultaneous interweaving rollercoasters of emotion. One part may be quietly singing to itself, another on an exhilarating rampage, another is sobbing in the corner, another dancing. Arguments break out, laughter, rage. Peace is restored. The parts can be utterly different, yet all belong indivisibly together. It’s as emotionally complex as a family.

And now, as we discover that each individual mind is a family of different parts, all working separately but together to create the fleeting shimmers we call consciousness, it seems that, once again, Bach was there before us.