Waiting to go through the gates. Two and a half hours to go.
Airports are luminal spaces, a place you occupy whilst you’re passing through from one place to another.
U2 wrote about them in their 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. One of the music videos and the Cover were filmed in Charles De Gaulle Airport. Elevation was on theme. U2’s long time producer Brian Eno also did a 1978 album Music for Airports.
Many international airports are a celebration of the size and space that planes fly through, with wondrous internal ceilings. Sydney airport’s check-in dining is not that. But it is a wonderful place to stop and think.
Alain De Botton has crafted a wonderful tome, The Art of Travel. In it he ponders the experiences and meaning of travel.
Alain paints a picture of airports as a space of refuge, a place between domestic and professional responsibilities, a neutral introspective space where you are free to reflect. That this gentle movement prompts thoughts that might otherwise stall in the static environment of home.
Alain explores the paintings of Edward Hopper, of American diners and train carriages in a kind of non-failing isolation. From these paintings he talks about a dignified loneliness.
I wonder about Alain’s travelling experience. As I sit in the airport there are multiple crying toddlers in close proximity. I am filled with thoughts about a teenager’s capability to be responsible for their stuff. I am very privileged to feel a contrast to the picture he is painting, one of noise and bustling family life and issues.
Sometimes it takes a moment for the writing to get flowing. I’m getting warmed up.