The 8:15 to Modernist.

Travelling on the tube, it is Modernism morning rush hour and T.S.Eliot's words resonate like rhythmic word pictures in my cloudy early morning mind. The train is jam-packed, filled to the brim, and suits periodically dodge and duck the sliding doors. Silence is riding in my carriage too, like every morning, I can hear him hum the same old tune over the clacking of the track. There are faces facing faces but not a word between them, with freshly clean-shaven jaws clamped shut so no words can drop from their mouths and into Ipod plugged ears. Inaction to interaction means a greeting fails to slide off the commuters tongue and into the smile of a surprised city receptionist who's eyes are glued with printed ink to the world outside her own. We can nestle into each others arm pits through Holborn and stand-up spoon each other past Liverpool street all the way to work but a mental connection isn't a destination on our tube map. And so we travel mute, each to our own separate compartments until we alight at our destination as a hushed "excuse me" slips from our clenched lips and drops unnoticed to clank around our ankles on the dusty floor. Nothing more is ever said because talking to each other, interacting, connecting isn't the done thing now is it?

We simply can't have that.