gazelles walking knots oneness

getting off the tube @ finsbury park one is first presented with the stairs, many like me climb these stairs two at a time and i sometimes return to a thought i had about these people - likening them to gazelles, so often do i travel on the tube that i'm pretty organised about it and i'm often the first person to get to the stairs, allowing me to bound up them unimpeded, but sometimes i'm near the rear of the pack of "ahead of the crowd" stair climbers, and that is when they appear like gazelles to me...

i then turn left and then right, following the tunnel that is split down the middle into two opposite directions, it is primarily here, although sometimes also on the street, that i think about knots.

being a fast walker as i am, it's all about being unimpeded, overtaking other pedestrians only to see a knot ahead of me that takes up the entire walkway, vexes me. but i remind myself that it's not really an entity, it's a random collection of individual entities and if i am patient it will unravel of its own accord, often i will see a knot ahead and try and find ways to get round it, but by the time i reach the level of the knot it has ceased to be a knot, is in fact nothing...

this mental relaxing as i see knots reminds me of something E told me once that her dad had told her, something i tried to remind her of when i saw her in the very end of the year but of which she had no memory... she said (ten or so years ago) that while walking down a busy street you should somehow enter into a state of oneness with the street, and if you can do it you find that you don't bump into anyone... (what a groovy dad i thought)...

these days i think about it mainly when i'm having a please bump into me day and i'm clearly not meant to be out on the pavements, couldn't be less "at one with the street"

finished sonic boom by john alderman today, written in 2001 about the napster / mp3 / record industry world, a little frustrating to have been written then and not now, the 4 years that have passed since then, how have they affected it all? napster came back online last year - i guess in it's corporate friendly form - i wonder what that's like? a good book, some great stuff in there from some very interesting people, this from robert fripp:

"The RIAA represents the interests of the majors. The interests of the majors are contrary to the interests of artists. The RIAA does not represent the interests of artists, and to suggest this is fundamentally dishonest.

The RIAA does not have the aim of making music available to the listening community. Napster does make music available to the listening community. The RIAA does not represent artists. Napster does not represent artists either.

The good news: Napster demonstrates the importance which people attach to having music in their lives. This is legitimate: music is a need in our lives.

The bad news: the public at large is prepared to act illegitimately to serve this legitimate impulse.

The challenge: to legitimize, validate & redeem the clearly demonstrated want, wish, need & intent to share with others music which we value."

Robert Fripp's Diary
Wednesday 2nd. August, 2000

anyway, P coming over, hungry as ever, grace coming tomorrow...

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