Hi SuperForest
When I come across the Saturday Times Magazine, I always take a look in the back page at Robert Crampton’s Beta Male column – it typically takes the form of anecdotes from Crampton’s life as an increasingly middle-aged father, husband, cyclist and Hull City fan (amongst other things), relayed with a sense of humour, self-deprecation – and no small element of truth. In this Saturday’s column I was struck in particular by this observation:
I was on a train into Euston, it started to fill up with Chelsea fans, men a few years younger than me, going to the game. Knee-to-knee as we were, it would have been rude not to ask who they were playing. And besides, making such tiny conversational connections with one’s fellow man forms the filaments that bind society together. I don’t believe civilisation hangs by a single thread, but I do believe it hangs by millions of threads, which each of us can choose to spin, or not spin. I think it’s better to choose to spin. That’s another realisation that comes with age.
(pictures of Tomas Saraceno’s work)
This feels to me like it says something true. If individuals are isolated, each of us in our own silent bubble (or insulated by our ipod’s personal soundtrack), how do we build community? Words often express an existing connection between people – but sometimes the fact of words between strangers, whichever words, can form the substance of the connection – a weak nuclear force perhaps, but still a force.
When we choose to speak to each other we create delicate threads of mutual acknowledgment between us – becoming people to each other, rather than just another face, another suit, another check-out worker or another slow-walker on the escalator. And perhaps, by multitudes on multitudes of such fleeting interactions, this can create a web of connections without which we easily roam unmoored from the streets we see every day, from the people we pass - but which could tether us to the reality that we walk in, to our environment? Crampton, as ever, was more elegant and concise!
Love, spinning Monday thoughts
P
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