Going Emo at Altitude: Stratospheric Eye Vomit

August 2012. Chicago to London. Through my tiny Virgin Atlantic window, I watched the Perseid Meteor Shower consume the night sky like a sublime rock concert of incandescent comet poo, soaring towards Earth at the Speed of Dumb. Accompanying my viewing was some audio in the form of Beach House. As the glowing meteors whipped down the night sky, so hot, heavy, fast-flowing salt-water tears carved streaks down my 35,000 feet high cheeks, dropping haplessly off the most southern point of my face...

Now, I am a human. But 99% of the time I try and keep any open face leakage to myself. I don't cry over weddings or puppies. And in general I'd say my eye sweat is seen in public about as much as a golden ticket to the chocolate factory or an Indus River Dolphin at a music festival. Why? Maybe I don't like that kind of attention. Maybe it's primeval (Bears: They Smell The Sad!)
But watching this spectacular natural show, while the whole plane slept like zombies, could I stop the hot swathe of salty precipitation down my face? Even if I'd bitten my seat buckle so hard I induced a hernia or ground my teeth to pure dust - it's doubtful. My jaw ached, my temples burst and my cheeks barbecued themselves as in a state of exhaustion, I watched each zip of stars skit past my eyes. Another case in point was en route from Hong Kong to Heathrow. All Bill Murray had to say was 'enjoy my jacket. Which you stole,' for me to become no parts human and all parts puddle.

So, stratospheric melancholy. I want to know why are we so much more affected by any small emotive prod on a plane? I genuinely thought lack of oxygen may be to blame. But were not that lacking in oxygen on our commercial jets, or I'm sure plenty of lawyers would have something to say/argue/win/ban. Even so, Virgin Atlantic have issued 'weep warnings' alongside certain films after a poll found that 55% of air passengers (of BOTH gender, please thank you) revealed they get disproportionately emotional while travelling. So there must be some common cause to this altitude emo-sinkhole so many of us trip unwillingly into. But if you're looking for science, it's thin on the ground.

So, from me to you, here are a bunch of hypothesis as to why you just may fall off the edge on a Boeing, even though in real life you're normal, and the film you are watching is a hammy clutch of unrelatable characters, so full of plot holes, you could use it to sieve your pasta.*

1. You're in a tube in the sky and you have no control over it. Someone you don't know is wearing a fancy hat, and driving you through space in a souped up cartridge pen. On a subconscious level that's got to hit.

2. Apparently when your body is intensely stimulated in stress or excitement (take off/landing/a tiger mob), tears won't come, as primitively they're of no use at that point (misty vision = death.) That moment where we switch from sensory overload to calm can often result in unwanted wet-eye.

3. You're alone. Your phone doesn't work. You can't deal with your own brain chat/existence. Or you CAN deal with your own brain chat/existence, and isn't it and this thing called flying amazing?! Ether way, perfect time for an existential crisis. (Please refer to Louis CK on cell phones and flying, and my previous blog post about how bonkers this shit is here: Fly Me To The Fear.)

4. Free in-flight alcohol deliverance. Tap that complimentary Bombay Sapphire at your own peril.

5. Circumstance. You're leaving something to start something new. Or your leaving something new to return to something old. Or you're simply leaving behind some tremendous humans. Preparing to leave somewhere is fraught with practicalities. When they're done, and your alone in 29C with just a bunch of documentaries or a porthole into the abyss, what then?

6. Just generally - what the fuck are we all doing here?


*I like to think an astro-miracle is a little different. But hey, bawling is bawling. If it's good enough for Tom Waits...

Around the World in 80 Friends

[*]

Ok, I've wanted to do this for a while.

The plan: wherever you go, please send me - if you can - a photo of the plane you travel on. Also where you are going and maybe a piece of really trivial stuff pertaining to that day. Can be anything at all from the banal to the super-weird. E.g. it was raining! You'd had a dream about talking frog in shoes! You burned your toast! You woke up and blinked an eye bogie more rather than less into your left eye!

Anything like that. Also only if you want to. Consider this a friendly moot, rather than a demand. My goal is to collect and put here 80 pictures of 80 fabulous planes, which will document my awesome friends' travels around the worldy-globe.

Whats the point? There isn't one! Much like life. Let's just revel in the true oddity of our existence. And not forget that flying is totally weird and also totally amazing and we constantly forget that.

Yums.

* Dublin looking handsome from Aerlingus

Home

Secrets and Lies

Often you're told stuff about flying that sounds insane. Other things sound more plausible. What's consistent is the inconsistency. You don't need to know this stuff, right? You're only a civilised, educated human who's probably worked it all out anyway...

Well, regardless, here's a short myth busting guide as to what the hell is going on in the sky. From me to you, Kind Passenger.

What's Up?
My pilot is unnecessary and will read his own palm and listen to jazz as the plane flies itself.

What's Really, Truly Up?
Take off is manual. And so are loads of landings. The pilot tells the computer who tells the plane what to do. Without the pilot, Otto-pilot would be inert. And the plane wouldn't go anywhere.

What's Up?
My airline food tastes of salt and nonsense.

What's Really, Truly Up?
In the cabin your nose dries out and numbs a third of your taste buds. So they will add anything: zombie dust, punk moves, crunchy kerb juice* just to make you aware the thing in your mouth is food and not the inflight magazine or the steward's tie.

What's Up?
Water on planes will make you barf.

What's Really, Truly Up?
If you're unlucky, yes. Some tanks have bacteria in them. Solve this by drinking gin. Or another less ubiquitous alcohol genre of your choosing.

What's Up?
You will get smashed faster on less booze, and therefore will be served less in case you start drooling aggression.

What's Really, Truly Up?
BS. Blood alcohol level doesn't increase in the air. It's the general lack of oxygen flying around making your mind wonk, not the Bloody Mary in front of you, so drink up.

What's Up?
The brace position breaks your neck on impact, making death quicker and less crappy.

What's Really, Truly Up?
Numerous tests have proven it protects your head from flying objects (including other passengers who haven't adopted it). It also stops your arms from flailing and fingers from breaking and gives you a better chance of surviving and being a talking head on the news later that day.

What's Up?
There's a hole in the plane. Ugh, everyone is about to get sucked out.

What's Really, Truly Up?
This is the fault of cinema and films. Unless you are right on top of it, it or you stick your face in it like a gin-soaked lunatic, you wont get sucked out. Sit tight, and do the brace - you're probably in for a crash landing.

* Not exactly.

Ghost Planes

Oh my heart.

The Boneyard Project, Arizona. Art on abandoned planes. The marrying of two things I totally love. I really don't think there's any greater thing. Little ghost planes being given a new purpose. I think there's a breeze near my eyes or something...














I can't tell you how much I'd like to acquire one of these to paint. The epic scale and scope of what you could do. It's the ultimate blank canvas. But, hey ...

... with a little drive,  surely anything's possible.

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/01/the-boneyard-project-art-on-abandoned.html

Wake Turbulence

Remember this?

Ah, JC. And the other one.

Who used to be orange.

Secrets and Dreams

At some point in my hazy life-memory, Secret Cinema founder, curator and general wizard Fabien Riggall might have suggested the possibility of Secret Airlines. He said this: 'maybe, one day, Secret airlines...' 

'Maybe, one day, Secret airlines...' 

'Maybe, one day, Secret airlines...' 

...

He cannot use the word maybe in this context. Because, this whole concept is music to my ears. I feel certain I also read, sometime ago, that he had vague plans to do a whole foreign flight-travel-mystery thing under the Secret Cinema banner, which would involve blindly boarding a plane and being sent...somewhere.

The whole thing fuels my lovephobia of flying; my weird enjoy-hatred of being 35,000 up and all that comes with it, physically, mentally, historically, aesthetically and everything in between. The bells and whistles of the jet stream, stuff I can't even begin to articulate in text, plus a world of make believe. And doesn't flying feel like make believe at the best of times. Secret Cinema and aviation would be very comfortable bed fellows. A cinematic, ozone-sphere fiction-scape which would give someone like me Christmas, birthdays, best days and high times all wrapped up in a strange, real time, parcel.

If this conceptualisation became reality and I did it in any capacity, I'm not sure what could happen. Maybe my head would pop. Maybe my blood pressure would drop like a stone off a high dive. Maybe, I'd have to crouch down and have a little happy eye-spill. But it would quite literally be The Best.

For the most part I have complicated and exhausting dreams. The only good one lately was that I was in a Secret Cinema scenario, my subconscious curating each 'scene,' running, racing, hiding and trying to make sense of shit. A montage of sounds, people, things to hide from, things to get away with, and things never seen before to relish. I could have stayed there. Which is why illusions as close to that in real life, are almost as exquisite. But the secret flying idea I'm pretty sure I couldn't have dreamt that up. To be on a plane, to look out the window and not know of the glistening cities below or where their roads lead - oh man. To be given a character with clear parameters but no clear destination. Brilliance! To have a plane interior specifically made and moulded for this particular mystery spree? YES! Imagine the safety cards, the in-flight magazine, even the SICK bags would be fictional and fanciful. Maybe even your motion sickness would be themed. Perhaps you'd spew the 1940s? All Spam, rations, hope and utility clothes regulations ...

To get your passport and simply trust would be amazing. Why not? What else is going to happen?

The only better step would be full immersion. 'Emergency exits are here, here and ... in the back of your mind.' (Realistically I can't fly the plane unfortunately, despite studying the relevant chapter in the Worst Case Scenario handbook). 

If the real world is too tiring, why not grab as much make believe in as many areas as possible? With each well of unreal to tumble into, the time spent dealing with constraints of reality would just get less and less, until you could hop from fiction to fiction like stepping stones. 

Just as long as air traffic control know what's going on, then we're GOOD to go...

*enpundit.com, Rafael Guerrero.