Waiting at Gate 11 in JFK Airport

SOMETIMES you have to be in an airport to appreciate the things that you’ve decided not to appreciate. Fox News is on the overhead TV monitor, I refuse to look at it, mentally I’m spitting at it. But trapped here in Gate 11, there isn’t much that I wouldn’t look at. I sit here like a vacant bird upon a wire, my head just swiveling in the direction of anything that moves. The TV is barely audible – the subtitles are on, I am wondering what these clowns are saying, what Trump lie are they shamelessly touting? But I am afraid to even read what they say in case

I catch their affliction. Thankfully my attention is distracted by the piped music that is sailing through these empty corridors.

Clare feigns a tired response at the current unfamiliar pop song that is filling the air, one of those tracks where the singer takes a loud breath after the word instead of before, missing the whole point of breathing.

Then an old Joe Jackson song comes on, it’s a song that I had only half noticed before. It has a haunting piano riff, an exotic set of dense chords that wouldn’t sound wrong in a Tchaikovsky ballet, at least not from where I am sitting. I find myself surprised by its beauty, it transports me to a land beyond these inhuman times.

A friend of mine played with Joe, she brought him to a few of my gigs, we talked but never got anywhere. I listen to him now, and because he sounds haunting, I am sorry that I didn’t try harder, another affect of this predicament, regret for missed opportunities.

Then Rick Astley comes on singing that hit of his, never gonna this, that, and the other, and I’m thinking, shit, he’s got a really good voice! Yet I never gave him a second thought back then. He was just a Stock Aitken Waterman invention – they’re the fellas that produced Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan – he never said anything, or wore anything of note.

But Tom Jones was no earth shattering personality either, Rick sounds just as bloody good in Gate 11. The truth is, I wasn’t going to give him a chance back then. Once one decides to not let someone’s music in, we usually guard that prejudice like Peter Schmeichel.

I look out the sunny window and the in-flight catering has been elevated up to the bright green plane. Clare and I had been advised by a friend to not eat in case the food was contaminated with Covid 19, to only drink water. We are not sure now, eating really breaks up the monotony, even if it is gruel. The crew of workers unloading the food are all kitted out in boiler suits, face masks and viser glasses.

I turn to Clare. ‘ There’s the food getting loaded in now. What do you think?’ She raised her head from the Kindle and wearily apraised the masked men excercising caution in the sun.

‘How do you feel about eating it now?’

‘Not too bad’.

.That’s what I was thinking.’ There was eleven of us in Gate 11 – Clare asked the flight attandant how they could afford to fly? She said that there was only two on the flight over to New York. ‘Cargo,’ said she. ‘We have cargo.’

Funny time this, even the sun seems far away. Corny songs ring true in this corridor of numbness, it’s like we have stooped to their level.

But today I sat in my Wexford garden, and Mrs Blackbird sang a song from forever, to remind of that promise.

“Funny time this, even the sun seems far away. Corny songs ring true in this corridor of numbness, it’s like we have stooped to their level