Set on ‘shuffle,’ my iPod plays ‘Se Acabo La Choricera’, a campesino song recorded in Havana around 1912, a period when field-hands were moving to the city in droves bringing with them the music that would, in a handful of years, become the roots of salsa. With a sudden jump, it is playing the Métaux section of Iannis Xenakis’ Pleïades, a piece for metal percussion that sounds like it has been beamed in from another age. Shuffle mode on the iPod suggests two orders of democracy: democracy of access, the achievement of the nineteenth century struggle for the public library, and the ideal of a democratised art, here underlined by the chance encounter with a composition which shares with Schönberg the idea that all notes are equal.

The Salvation Army Thrift Store is a five-storey red brick building located on Notre-Dame Street in Montreal. Gigantic picture windows resplendently display a variety of wares to catch the eye of passers-by. Some routinely visit this particular Sally Anne, the largest in Quebec, to hunt for hidden treasures to add to their collections. Some shoppers, on their way to frequent the very expensive and very chic antique shops that now line the street, walk through its doors on the off-chance that some object of inestimable value lies in waiting. For some, a trek to the thrift shop is not an outing. It is not an adventure. It is not an investment. It is a necessity.