But therein lays the very value of art and music in any transport system.

As a transport system is not the walls and the trains and the steel rails, but the flow of human consciousness, aided by technology, it is the later part than changes, but the former has always been the same. If working and living in London is so stressful that the tube is the only personal and reflective time some get, it is no wonder that they try to tune out the other humans sharing those moments with them, and find any intrusion, including busking, to be an offence to that sanctity.

But the solution is not to switch off and become a ghost, and let your consciousness drift from their bodies so that it may travel to the plot of a book or the imagined experiences in their mind, to retreat from your stresses this way. The solution is to lose yourself in the beat of life, to realise that yes, you are a mere ripple in the tide of human traffic, you are not an executive, receptionist, artist or builder, you are something much more, you are the essence of life, and not confined within one singular consciousness but part of a moving living flow of consciousness travelling through the veins of a living city organism. The walls, the trains, and buildings, are all but the furniture of a city, and the city is us. This is what the musicians of the underground show us, they see the flow of traffic, the infinite number of faces passing by, many of whom will never pass by again, an infinite number of life stories, but they don’t see it as dehumanising and futile, that we are but numbers, they are liberated from themselves by knowing the proliferation of self! and they just keep playing…

Callum is a Designer. Find out more about him from his website: www.iamcallum.com.