I think there's often a politics behnd the politics, and it can be even more important in some ways.

I camn think of people with whom I would agree on a lot of big issues, and I know the longer I talked with them the more I'd want to disagree with them, becuase we just aren't on the same wavelength. And the other way round, people you disagre with, but the longer you spend in each other's company, the more you'd like to find soem common ground.

Most of the people around the Mudcat would fall into the latter category, I feel. It's partly the music, but not just that, because there are reasons why we feel drawn to some types of music that aren't purely musical.

There's something Martin Carthy wrote: "If you listen to folk muisc from around the world, you are listening to a distillation over thousands of years involving large numbers of people who from nothing have arrived at some quite astonishing conclusions and these make up an important part of a society's culture. Folk music is...people thinking deeply and emotionally and being able to articulate what they feel in music and dance."

And if someone couldn't understand that, no matter what their politics, I'm on the other side of a wall from them. And if someone can understand that, again no matter what their politics, I'm on the same side of a wall with them.

I was thinking this morning - if you had a bunch of people singing the same song, from the same sheet, but in different keys, the sound that came out would be absolutely horrible. But if they were singing different songs, in the same key, there could be quite a chance that, at least some of the time, the sound would be a bit weird, but it might actually be pretty good.

Perhaps we could try that some time at a Mudgathering. (And remember, I only said "at least some of the time"...)