MY LATEST INFATUATION: AIRPORTS
August 21st 2006 19:18
A few months ago I was watching a Channel 9 programme, Hello Goodbye. A series about people in airports, I was instantly sceptical, assuming like other reality TV shows, it would insult the public sensibility. “That’s the whole idea? People in airports? How depressing,” I said out loud. But to my surprise and slight disappointment, I had to withdraw that statement because I realised it was a fantastic idea for a series and wished I’d thought of it.
Airports are bizarre clusters of security, shopping, customs, travel, business, hotels, heightened emotions, banality, reuniting lovers, people on the run, anticipation, drug busts, distorted senses of time and place and being, sad goodbyes, missed flights, lost luggage...
The first airports exclusively serviced the elite but today anyone with a Visa can fly and the airport is an increasingly mass-market product. They form a surreal ever-expanding network straddling the globe and when you sit in a lounge waiting for your boarding call, looking out to landings and take-offs, there are millions of out-lookers in thousands of other lounge areas around the world, seeing the same scenes.
I spent my 21st birthday in Amsterdam and I fell in love with the flea markets where I bought loads of crazy get-up. I didn’t have anything to put it all in so I bought a ragged brown leather suitcase from an antique store with holes and frays in it, no handle and a broken rusted lock. I thought it was charming. I had to tie it up with a piece of brown string and carry it with both hands, but I was determined to get it home. At Schiphol airport the guy at the check-in counter started laughing at me when I plonked the sorry old thing on the baggage belt, and I started laughing too. Then I couldn’t stop, just like I hadn’t been able too for the whole weekend. (Funny how that city has that effect on you...)
Anyway, after too-many hours on a too-crowded flight I arrive at Narita, Tokyo in a state of delusion. Some airport staff find me at the luggage pick-up to tell me in Engrish; sorry, my luggage had not been on the flight and yes, they did not know where it is, sorry. They were so sweet and polite I didn’t want to make a fuss, and my own difficulties in being coherent were adding to our communication problems. I tried my best to describe that tired old suitcase to them, and then wondered around the terminal alone trying to find a way out into the real world.
That was when I noticed how fascinating the airport can be.
I love the random bleary-eyed conversations you have with strangers at 5am stopovers with 3 hours to kill. I love the arrival and departure screens with exotic city names like Manila, Mexico City, Miami, Moscow, Madrid, Mumbai, Montreal, Minneapolis, Minsk and Montgomery listed side by side. I love the cross-section of people; watching them and imagining what their stories could be.
Airports are designed for the flow of goods and people. They are not real places, and you cannot say you’ve “been to Germany” if you had a stopover in Frankfurt. They pretend to be like a real city with shops and restaurants but they can’t go so far as to have a swimming pool or cinema or live entertainment, because then people would miss their flights. Nobody lives there, nobody hangs out there for fun, everyone is working or departing or arriving or dropping-off or picking-up. It has to be one of the most tightly controlled and contrived environments possible.
And yet it is at the airport that I’ve experienced some of the most intense states of emotion. Sure I’ve been bored rigid but I’ve also cried inconsolably in some and felt the greatest jubilation in others. The word ecstasy (“ex-stasis”) tells us our highest moments come when we’re standing outside ourselves, when we are not stationary. And it’s impossible to be stationary at the airport.
Quote of the day:
“A man never goes so far as when he does not know where he is going”
Oliver Cromwell
Image taken from Wickipedia
Airports are bizarre clusters of security, shopping, customs, travel, business, hotels, heightened emotions, banality, reuniting lovers, people on the run, anticipation, drug busts, distorted senses of time and place and being, sad goodbyes, missed flights, lost luggage...
The first airports exclusively serviced the elite but today anyone with a Visa can fly and the airport is an increasingly mass-market product. They form a surreal ever-expanding network straddling the globe and when you sit in a lounge waiting for your boarding call, looking out to landings and take-offs, there are millions of out-lookers in thousands of other lounge areas around the world, seeing the same scenes.
I spent my 21st birthday in Amsterdam and I fell in love with the flea markets where I bought loads of crazy get-up. I didn’t have anything to put it all in so I bought a ragged brown leather suitcase from an antique store with holes and frays in it, no handle and a broken rusted lock. I thought it was charming. I had to tie it up with a piece of brown string and carry it with both hands, but I was determined to get it home. At Schiphol airport the guy at the check-in counter started laughing at me when I plonked the sorry old thing on the baggage belt, and I started laughing too. Then I couldn’t stop, just like I hadn’t been able too for the whole weekend. (Funny how that city has that effect on you...)
Anyway, after too-many hours on a too-crowded flight I arrive at Narita, Tokyo in a state of delusion. Some airport staff find me at the luggage pick-up to tell me in Engrish; sorry, my luggage had not been on the flight and yes, they did not know where it is, sorry. They were so sweet and polite I didn’t want to make a fuss, and my own difficulties in being coherent were adding to our communication problems. I tried my best to describe that tired old suitcase to them, and then wondered around the terminal alone trying to find a way out into the real world.
That was when I noticed how fascinating the airport can be.
I love the random bleary-eyed conversations you have with strangers at 5am stopovers with 3 hours to kill. I love the arrival and departure screens with exotic city names like Manila, Mexico City, Miami, Moscow, Madrid, Mumbai, Montreal, Minneapolis, Minsk and Montgomery listed side by side. I love the cross-section of people; watching them and imagining what their stories could be.
Airports are designed for the flow of goods and people. They are not real places, and you cannot say you’ve “been to Germany” if you had a stopover in Frankfurt. They pretend to be like a real city with shops and restaurants but they can’t go so far as to have a swimming pool or cinema or live entertainment, because then people would miss their flights. Nobody lives there, nobody hangs out there for fun, everyone is working or departing or arriving or dropping-off or picking-up. It has to be one of the most tightly controlled and contrived environments possible.
And yet it is at the airport that I’ve experienced some of the most intense states of emotion. Sure I’ve been bored rigid but I’ve also cried inconsolably in some and felt the greatest jubilation in others. The word ecstasy (“ex-stasis”) tells us our highest moments come when we’re standing outside ourselves, when we are not stationary. And it’s impossible to be stationary at the airport.
Quote of the day:
“A man never goes so far as when he does not know where he is going”
Oliver Cromwell
Image taken from Wickipedia
| 56 |
| Vote |
Comment by Anonymous