With all the track problems this year I understand why it’s called a rat-race. Every day we scurry to the station and onto ever-more decrepit trains. We struggle to contain our growing frustration as the delays spiral. Month after month, with no end in sight. I remember when the line first opened, the fastest in the network. Now it’s just one more sorry ship we cannot flee.

If I understand Darwin right, a species survives when its members find enough food to persist and reproduce, and then mutate over generations to better fit with their environment.

The universe is a Darwinian symphony. It began with a full spectrum blast, before resolving into a standing chord perfectly fitted to its cradle. As the universe cools, new notes emerge and maybe even persist for a time. All notes are contrapuntal, but only a few form the chords and discords needed to transform the ever-evolving concert.

Ideas too are polyphonous. We focus on the melody but accompanying it is a chorus we mostly feel. Some ideas persist and maybe even reverberate through our minds. The most beautiful harmonise with our soulsongs. And very occasionally, something will emerge with the depth and dissonance to corale entire communities and transform the song of all humanity. For a time.

The last European adherents of the former world religion Manichaeism believed that, with persistent cultivation, anyone could achieve three levels of initiation: perfect, believer, and listener.

Last week on the train, stalled yet again, I heard someone on their phone.

“That sounds about right.”

What did they hear? Was it just their own song played back? Was it another 7th in an ever diminishing chord to help us rats quietly into that good night? Or maybe, just maybe, it was an exclusive preview of the odd tone we’re all desperately waiting to move us all anew.

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Audio: Led Zeppelin (1971), ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in Led Zeppelin IV. Sourced from the Internet Archive.

Image: 12th Century fresco of Serbian Bogomil priests. Sourced from Mart Atanassov.

Audio: Claude Debussy (1894), Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Sourced from the Internet Archive.