Gloves. Are. Off.

Well, at least they should be.

I'm more than a little interested in Politics. Actually, I'm more interested in the idea of Politics. I think it was doing Modern Studies at school that gave me that reflective look - rather than being an active campaigner.

If we're brutally honest, there's much in life that we like the idea of more than the actual thing itself. A clean and tidy garden. Spending time with lots of people, all the time. Owning a pet.

Okay, so those are *bad* examples. What have you liked the idea of more than the reality of?

So, having voted in every election since I've had the right to do so, this time I've actually spoken with a candidate for my constituency. Just the one, mind. I'd asked Lis Bardell how she was going to let the people of the area get to know her. "by being on the street and saying 'hello'". Great, but you can't be everywhere, and it's not something that other people can join in with.

How about taking the conversation online? Nope. Can't do it. Don't know how. Risk of failure. People can say things that aren't what you'd like them to say.

Guess what - this is the new world order.

I'm not talking about Tweeting, or checking in on Foursquare. I'm talking about being present and interacting where your constituents interact. There 76,000 people in the constituency eligible to vote, from the numbers I could find online, there might be as many as 20% of these in the 18-35 age range. That's a heap of people who you'll find online. But lest we forget that the silver surfers, so that's another 20%. Oh, and there's just under 30% between 35 and 60.

So, dear candidates. Get yourselves online, connect with people and you might reach another 70% of the voting public that matter to you. At least the ones you say that matter to you.

Still, in all this, I've found out from Wikipedia the names of our candidates are... now to see if I can find out *who* they are!

Can you hold music?

Isn't it funny what listening to hold music does to us.

We can get impatient - the pace at which this happens depends on the reason we were put on hold. Having worked in the front line of a customer service department for 7 years, I've not got a problem with being put on hold. Far from it.

I found myself on hold, all in all for about 15 minutes last night. There was music playing while on hold. It was romantic-period classical music, I think. Nearing the end of this time on hold, I found my mind drifting to the episode of The West Wing where Josh is trying to call someone (I can't remember who, and not had a chance to watch episode 14 of season 2 to find out) and ends up in "some kind of hellish hold world of holding".

To me it's such a memorable portrayal of that character's exasperation - and our impatience. I was chuckling at my own trip into the stereotypical response - then suddenly I heard what the flute player was doing. I head the effort that had gone in to making the sounds I was listening to. I heard the breath that flute player was pushing into that piece of metal with such skill that the notes were dancing out.

At that moment, I really didn't mind being on hold. I was caught by what I was hearing.

How often is music (be it on hold or in person) limited to a nice, useful, background noise? There was so much effort put into developing the craft of playing the instruments as the passion of people's lives had been poured into it. And I could listen to it nonchelantly as though it was hardly even there. Perhaps it's because the atypical hold music is bland?

All of this reminded me of the clips in The Matrix where you see the *code* that sits behind the construct. That there's depth to our lives we can miss by not being fully present.

Sure we can't give attention to all that's going on around us, but I'm confident there's times where I can be giving my attention to far fewer things, and as a result paying more quality attention...