I like that idea of Shambles of inviting people over from one thread to another one. Thread emigration. Sort of the opposite of thread drift. I heven't seen it done like that before, and it strikes me as a handy piece of of social invention.

Of course it is wide open to accusations if splittism. It's a bit like a crowded session which is getting overwhelmed by people who are playing stuff you don't feel like playing - you might grab a couple of cronies and head off to another room.

And that seems a very sensible thing to do. It means there are two sessions on, for a start, and bioth with people enjoying playing in them. The tricky bit comes if you found yourself wanting to say "you're in the wrong session - try nextdoor."

But there are times that'd be just the right thing to say. The puzzle is working out when it is, and when it's definitely not.

Well if anyone's going to Sidmouth (and if you are, I hope we meet there), here's an example in point - The Anchor is a pub in the middle of it; and at the height of activities you'll find the Middle Bar, where there is a well established song session (already mentioned in tghis thread I think), and up the stairs nextdoor there's a bar where there's a well established tune session, mostly Irish and Scottish and that. And out in the garden there's a dance band playing with a caller , and people dancing. And out in front of the pub there's another floating session, where all kinds of mixtures of music are playing.

And I could go on and on, reminding myself of all the different venues which have developed over the years with different conventions of what fits there and doesn't. And if anyone wandered into one of them with an appetite to play music that didn't fit in there, you could always advise where it probably would. (The bluegrass tuba - I'd suggest playing it in front of the Anchor, and seeing who joined in.)

The thing is different musics can play alongside each other, and sometimes play with each other. But in order for that to happen they have to have an identity of their own which is distinct from that of the other musics.Just as when instruments to play together it's better if they have different voices.

Going apart is a necessary precondition to being able to come back into the common with a special gift to share with other people.

My house is full of books all jumbled together, and the words in my head from the different books may get mixed up - but in then books they are all there distinctnand separate, a different world between each set of covers. My records are more organised by catergories - largely because its easy to run my eyes along a varied bunch of books on a shelf and pick out the one I'm after. Can't do that with records, or even with CDs. But most of the records I've got were probably picked up by browsing through heaps of secondhand ones in boot fairs and jumble sales and so forth.

So I pick out things from a confused muddle, and that mkaes me a splitter, and then I take them home and put them on the shelves in a confused muddle, and that makes me a lumper. They aren't really opposed attitudes, any more than the different sections of a tune or a dance are opposed to each other. And if some people are more splitters than lumpers, it's the other way round form other people - and that's how dances work.