“For some time now I have been convinced
that it is out of this din that the life is being born which will come after us
and spell our gradual destruction, just as we have been gradually destroying
what was there long before us.“ W.G Seabold
Throughout time, societies have recounted spells and incantations to
assist travelers from this world and into the next.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
is a collection of 200 magic spells and incantations that were believed to
protect the dead from evil and to guide them on their travels through a kingdom
of the dead to their final destination. In Greek mythology, spells were
recorded to assist travelers get to Elysium (paradise). Each spell was intended for use in a specific
situation that the traveler might encounter on the tortuous transit to eternal
bliss. Before reaching Elysium the guardian gods would interrogate them in the
hall of judgement. The travelers would protest their innocence by reciting
spell 125: “I have done no falsehood, I have not robbed, I have not stolen, I
have not killed men, and I have not told lies”. The modern traveller also
encounters similar interrogation in the departures hall: “Have you packed your
bags yourself?”, “Are you carrying anything sharp?”, “Are you a dickhead who is
likely to get drunk and try to take over the plane?”
As an eight year old I was a
bit of Egyptologist. I was an expert bedroom traveler, thanks to my Red View
Master. These toys were released in 1939,
presented a stereoscopic image to the viewer of places and things of interest. In 1976, mine took me to the Pyramids, the Olympics
and the Acropolis in Athens .
Thanks to my parents, by 1976
my travels expanded beyond my bedroom and gave me a taste of mainstream modern
day travel abroad. We turned up at the new local space port with our suitcases
that were carried. My Dad would smoke his way through a packet of cigarettes,
while my Mum knitted, before we strolled casually on to the tarmac where the aircraft
waited. Once on board the Captain would talk over the tannoy to explain what
was going on. Belts fastened, drinks in hand
the plane would then rocket off down the
runway and into the sky at usually an unfeasibly acute angle, before arriving at
our sunny destination where everybody smiled. Holiday paradise.
Thirty
four years later, on the morning of a flight I will wake to the sound of my own
despairing screams. My childhood
enthusiasm for air travel has been destroyed as I now have to enter a faceless
living organism, Transfixed. I will be funnelled down tunnels that drain and feed me into a
monsters throat with my fellow travelers. We will all pass unnoticed and un-mourned through a system of cubes, to tube,
and back to a cube. My vortex of boredom starts with the anxiety of getting to the airport in the first place. I usually travel cattle and get the experience the whole gambit of life. While I wait under a florescence lights, in climate controlled, two storey building with multiple bathrooms.
The experience is enhanced by dystopian security, dysfunctional furniture and dreary cups of coffee in this weird airline sanctioned bazaar. I can move from queue; to seat; seat to security; security to seat and seat to queue with no place of sanctuary, amidst the ordered chaos of my transit .I usually have the half on, half off look. Eyes dead, ears plugged in. my humanity seeping away as a darkness descends.
All airports now contains this fabulous dullness reducing people to primitive simpletons. Like the dead Egyptians, my heart is weighed on the scales of judgment, balancing the good against the bad I have done. This act is the penultimate in The Book of the Dead, the ultimate travel guide.
Paralyse yourself with my new paintings about travel boredom.
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