Ondaatje writes, "A literary work is a communal act.

Schubert's choral pieces are communal acts quite at a distance from the lonely sentiments of the songs and piano sonatas.

Rare are the sports photobooks that can personalize the deeply communal (some might say tribal) act of attending live sporting events, but this is certainly one.

Tolerance, in that attending a performance is a communal act, and the artistic excitement of such an event, operatic or otherwise, gains when it is shared.

But to partake of this springtime frenzy in the most Japanese way requires a visit to a park where the blossom viewing is a communal act.

That might explain the frenetic literary crosshatchings, the scramble that is not, after all, about the isolated act of writing, but about the wildly different, communal acts of friendship and fame.

"The communal act of repeating events over and over, year after year, that develops into traditions, has always been the main attraction in whatever I seem to photograph," she said.

It is through the communal act of performance that the music's secrets can best be sensed.

Opera is the communal act of listening to this silent voice from inside: it is not surprising that so many people are hungry for the experience it awakens.

Giving what almost amounts to free subway rides away is a communal act of love.