In the unlikeliest situations the mind can tear off enthusiastically in unaccountable directions. In the bath, or in the watches of the night, or when almost too exhausted to stand, ideas can suddenly start coming at us, fast and furious. It can happen listening to music, too, as I found out last week.
We were at the Wigmore Hall in London, listening to the Swedish pianist Bengt Forsberg play Bach, Schumann and Fauré with artistry and intelligence, when I found myself staring at the wheels of the big black grand piano. And slowly I realised how ball-bearings work. It took me the whole of Schumann’s Romance in F sharp major Op. 28 No. 2, but the engineering discovery was a revelation — and a reproach, too, for never having thought about it before. Ball bearings are desperately important to modern machinery, as in this unbidden burst of reflection I realised.
But why there? Why then? I doubt I’m alone in experiencing inexplicable boosts to my modest powers of thought, in circumstances that might suit a different mental state.
Over the years I’ve learned what circumstances often prompt these states. One is long-distance running. In the days when I trained seriously it was common for some of the sharpest thoughts and arguments to occur while pounding the streets. You’d begin to feel you could almost fly.
Enoch Powell’s fellow undergraduates at Cambridge used to laugh at him because instead of choosing for his exercise runs the many pretty country paths available, he ran repetitively to the railway station and back: a dull and urban beat along a long and dreary road. Powell’s response — that to the station and back was exactly the distance he required — was thought rather grim.
But any serious long-distance runner will know exactly what Powell meant.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in