nightingale

He laid out the "hard problem" of working out how and why any of the complex operations of brains give rise to conscious experience, such as our emotional response when we hear a nightingale sing.

Other newspapers’ nicknames for her — the California nightingale, the California skylark — were not just about her immense vocal range, but about the wonder and novelty that California, of all places, could claim such a woman.

Just as the familiar tune “In the Hall of the Mountain King” gradually builds speed “accelerando,” as the compositional notation is known, some birdsong does too, like that of the nightingale.

“The bird said...It doesn’t make a lot of sense. She said, ‘The nightingale makes them bleed, makes them pay.’

I wonder if even Janet Malcolm might have given a pass to this devoted biographer and his own bow to a nightingale.