"Future Proof" - About travels, passports and airports

 Those of you following this blog know how much I love to travel. I seem to have an itchy obsession with switching countries; I cannot stay standing, some say. 

Gatwick Airport, March 1st, travelling to Istanbul

© Melissa Chemam

Well, these do not understand the virtues of nomadism... Staying still is not always the best for health, or at least for one's mind. The world is out there, it's moving, it's changing, it's an appeal for understanding. The important is not the answer, it's the quest, it's the journey itself, metaphor of an explanatory path, of an evolution.

But - isn't there always a but? - I do not ignore that I'm able to satisfy my curiosity and my thirst for understanding precisely because... I hold a certain type of passport. It allows me to enter many countries without any visa, such as Turkey where I was recently, and Mexico where I was mesmerised by its beauty about two years ago. Or it guaranties me a easy-to-obtain visa.

And this is not the case for everyone. Actually for most people, crossing borders is a hassle. 

Every time I cross a border, EVERY TIME, at the Eurostar passport control in London, in Rome's Fiumicino airport, in Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta... I think of them. Every time, and especially when I come home at Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle, or through Heathrow, I have a look at people queueing for hours because they don't have the passport they wish for, because they're controlled and unwanted where they are trying to go. I also think of all the others who therefore chose to travel avoiding airport. I think of inequalities and our random birthplaces no individual has any control about... Everytime.

I love to travel but I hate security checks, metal scanners, emptying pockets, taking off shoes, putting bottle of liquids in small plastic bags... All small pointless tasks reminding us of all the terrorist attacks the world recently went through because it's meaningless, unfair, unequal, unbalanced, fearful and fear-inciting.  

Listening to new music online I wanted to put on my iTunes list, I came across this song, which indeed describes perfectly the mixed feeling coming with crossing airports and border-controls:

Massive Attack - 06 - Future Proof, live @ Sofia 05.6.2014

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"Future Proof"

Borderline cases
Reinforced glass 
Absent friends 
Passport photos
An elastic past 
Empty pocket 
They think it is all... 
They think it's soul
All wrapped up on a swollen lip
He draws the warm pipe. 

Chemicals 
Chemicals captured in winter's grip
Turn us on

Seperate the leper
Hungry ghosts 
Hungry ghosts 
Another imprint
In borrowed clothes 
We can be numb 
We can be numb 
Passing through

Blow blow blow blow

Borderline case 
Future proof 
Real thin air
Real thin air
Real thin air

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