Airport Time.

(Written in Cleveland Hopkins. Published from Philadelphia, where college students—or at least those appearing as such—can have free wireless.)

I’m flying today from Cleveland to Philadelphia, for a few hours of fun in the Philly airport. Then, Philly to SFO.

Today the sounds of the airport are grating on my nerves. Going through security, behind me was an overbearing, nervous mother telling her two sons — one teenager, one tween of sorts — every. single. thing. to do. The older son knew to take off his shoes, to wait in line, to have his boarding pass out. But she kept talking and talking, saying nothing.

Now I am listening to an old woman complain about ordinances she read about in the paper, about trying to submit an obit to the Chronicle, about nothing. For whatever reason, I have no patience right now. It’s not just the content of what she is saying; the sound of her voice itself grates on my nerves.

I like the sound of airplanes landing much better: they rumble and fill up my head and drown the sound of nearby conversations for just a moment. But the beeps can cut through. The cell phones ringing, the boarding equipment, I guess that’s it. And then the airline employee makes an unnecessarily loud announcement that is almost Oz-like in its total takeover of the space. I wonder if she knows how incredibly loud her speakers are.

If I couldn’t hear what these people were saying, if there were enough of them to create a wall of sound, it would all be better. The texture and buzz of many people talking isn’t bad at all. My friend Chris is going to apply for a Watson fellowship for a project involving listening as an act of composition. In places like airports, when you have no choice but to be surrounded by sounds (except if you are listening to your iPod, I suppose), listening to their interactions and allowing your focus to shift between the dominant, moving, changing sounds, maybe something interesting could happen.

Right now I hear: the shitty pop background music, the gentleman to my right chatting on his Bluetooth, the annoying older woman talking, a few businessmen doing business, two different announcer voices (both female), someone cleaning down the hall, a screaming child, ripping paper, the gentleman to my right turning the pages of his magazine, airline employees talking without horrid amplification, the fingers tapping these keys, the printer behind the gate desk, the man next to me rubbing his bald head, pages turning (books, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets).

There will surely be more sounds (there was a zippered bag being opened!) and hopefully I can stop the (Velcro!) shitty background pop music from taking over the texture (plane landing, filling up my head with rumbles) (Velcro!) and even without written record of the sounds I perceive (sneeze), they will remain interesting and less grating.