The morning sky could be from a Poussin landscape. Blue, pink, orange: gradations of energy. In the line of sight to the window is a man who is a regular on the 5:59. He is sketching an architectural plan on lined paper in pencil. Four passengers are familiar this morning. By the end of the train journey the man seems to have finished imagining the house. He has written a lot of text around the drawing. He was wholly absorbed by his work. The train is pulling into the station. The architect is in conversation with another regular, who is immaculately dressed, wears very narrow rimless glasses and carries a wood-handled umbrella. They’re talking about a heritage site in the Lake District. The man with the wood-handled umbrella is giving the architect a history lesson. The architect is silent, looks up at the other man, doesn’t have a rejoinder or a contribution to make. He seems uncomfortable next to his fully dressed neighbour who speaks with Received Pronunciation.”Worth another visit then” says the architect. The architect’s …

A big ear with a pinkish tint around the edge; short hair indistinctly parted; grey suit, stiff white shirt with cufflinks. An umbrella is lapel-pinned to his jacket; its canopy is coloured red, green, yellow, green. The wide-cut black tie features an arrangement of dark blue umbrellas. He wears rounded rimless glasses. A sip of coffee. Shiny black shoes; he is absorbed by his tablet. Yellow and orange sunlight is creeping up into the dark blue morning sky. Grades of blue: from the yellow-blue green to shades of fish-belly white-blueness. A long cloud hangs in the sky like a blue whale. A colourful umbrella at the end of the tie matches the umbrella on the pin. The tie and the lapel-pin are a pair. One day follows the next, the wheel keeps turning. Does it leave any tracks? Does it matter? Across the aisle: a man in new-looking, light brown suede shoes, a silver ring on his ring finger, a razor cut around the middle of the jaw bone. Head forward, 90 degree angle between …

Alan Turing showed that a machine can do arithmetic without understanding what it is doing. Most competence does not depend on comprehension. Consciousness as a user-illusion, as an app. A decision is an illusion too. The yes/no dichotomy masks the conscious and subconscious thoughts that precipitate into action when a decision is made. The timing of a decision is more telling than the decision itself. Successful deal makers delay a decision until an optimal moment. They do not let events run them into a decision. It’s like Buffett famously says: investing is like baseball except I don’t have to take a swing unless I want to. You can wait for the pitch you want. The train is refreshingly empty. The temperature is perfect; a slight breeze. Across the aisle a man browses his Facebook feed taking time to investigate some of the pictures from the feed in detail. Feed is the right word, it looks like a drip-feed of inanities. The visions of David Foster Wallace are becoming true. The phone is our entertainment cartridge. …

Schumpeter saw capitalism as a “process of industrial mutation… that incessantly revolutionises the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” In Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital Carlota Perez writes that Schumpeter “remained attached to market equilibrium forces…”And why not? Everyone needs a reference point. If the premise is that everything is unstable, how would you be able to define terms and think clearly? This carriage in the 365506 smells of washing detergent. Two rows in front of me a man’s hair looks wet, his hair oozes with gel. Bunches of hair are stuck together. It looks like an experiment gone awry. The shiny black shoes belong to a man wearing a waistcoat. Small unrimmed glasses, his head resting on a stiff collar, sleeping. Very poor air quality. A sudden smell of food, someone’s lunchbox? It’s a nauseating ride this morning. A lot of coughing. Tempted to open the window, but I’d have to reach over. I’m sure some people find this moist, rotten atmosphere homely. Fresh air would disrupt …

Work is what you do for others, art is what you do for yourself. Sondheim finds a way of connecting Seurat’s approach to painting with the experience of a modern artist: Seurat paints point by point and the picture only comes together in the visual cortex (?) of the viewer, where the points merge into a greater whole. Similarly, the modern artist must pool followers and financial support drop by drop, but how does it come together in the end? Who has the patience to keep looking? Sunday in the Park with George, Stanwix Theatre Full moon, drifting dark clouds like ink in water. A perfect orb, itself flecked with dark marks, like smaller versions of the clouds that mask it from the viewer on earth. Lantern festival, 15 days into the new lunar month. Traditionally this was the one day in the year when young women could go out on a date without fear for their reputation. You can imagine the scenes: lanterns of all shapes and sizes, mechanical contraptions, the bustling street, throbbing …