We walked around the Notting Hill Carnival this morning, with Richard and Katie. The shops were boarded up behind graffiti’d plywood, their names juxtaposed with tags, making them seem to participate in the festivities just as they withdrew from them. The grill smoke was punctuated here and there by sweet, little clouds of marijuana. Dancehall blared, one sound system competing with the next. As you walked past the cacophony would phase and shift, the rhythms setting and then canceling each other out. But there was always someone right there who knew how to dance.