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K08 Sequel: 'Galactic Eyes'
Author: Simon Sellars • Nov 18th, 2008 •Category: Australia, Barcelona, CCTV, Lead Story, architecture, features, flying
ABOVE: El Prat Airport, Barcelona. Photo: Simon Sellars.
A man shrugs off the clucking of his family and makes his way to International Departures. With the ticketing formalities over, he slumps at the bar and orders drinks.
He sits and waits.
To escape.
A wicked love gone horribly, horribly wrong. Sour times polyfill the cracks, forcing him to seek joy in sepia-youth: he remembers Mum and Dad so beaming and proud and pictures the first time he was here. The first time, all those years ago…
He was all of ten years old then, sitting in the Airport Bar, and there was a big crowd because it was Sunday and the place was always packed on Sundays. Not just travellers — it was the only pub open in Melbourne on our Day of Rest. The bar was decked out like a sleazy suburban beer-and-brawl-barn: purple skylights meshed with brown and yellow carpet, fake-wood panelling. God knows what new arrivals thought. But it was exciting for him because he was just a kid and they were at the airport and those people all around were drunk and everyone seemed to be forging an incredible bond with each other, animatedly discussing the cricket and Packer’s Revolution.
‘Wow, a revolution,’ the boy marvelled. ‘Here in Melbourne!’
And where were those planes going? They were all going somewhere and he was just a kid, just ten years old, imagining the Moon or Mars, the stars their destination.
His father impatiently looked at his watch. Mother wiped the boy’s face with a spit-worn hankie. They were waiting for some long-forgotten cousin to arrive from the UK, another straggler from their far-flung clan. Father had a Scotch on the rocks, Mother a shandy. The boy sucked on raspberry lemonade. Australia — their Australia — had a freckly innocence, an immature nation finding its feet.
A bloke at the next table introduced himself as ‘Thommo’: he gave the boy a wink and sang the South Melbourne footy club’s theme song. Behind Thommo’s back, his mate — ‘Bazza’ — flashed the wanker sign at Thommo, eyes rolling for the youngster’s benefit. The boy giggled shyly.
Thommo and Bazza sported handle-bar moustaches and feather-cut hairdos. Their women drank from ‘ladies’ glasses’ and kept quiet; everyone knew their place. It was a strange time but the boy savoured the moment, relishing the cartoon caricatures around him. His cousin and Mother and Father faded into nothing because he knew that soon, all this would be his. Life seemed impossibly easy, so neat. That’s the myth of mateship, of male pride.
It’s now. Today.
Years later.
He’s old. Smells the crackle of neon. The ugly ockers of his childhood have vanished, replaced by Aussie gold Olympians: Cuthbert, Landy, Ford. A gallery of sporting heroes adorning the walls of the bar, spirit of the ‘56 Olympics, touched up and sprinkled with star-dust and Photoshop magic. Can technology proselytise the past? Can it invest those clapped-out icons with a metallic sheen, to cover their dried rot?
ABOVE: Tullamarine Airport, Melbourne. Photo: Simon Sellars.
A wide-bodied jet rumbles into view. He stares in awe. The windows of the bar are massive and he can see that the jet is a beautiful machine, a work of art.
He trusts it to deliver him to safety.
His mind races. He feels the lattice of power, underpinnings, strings that pull the puppets: Melbourne Airport’s secret industry. What dramas are played out behind those white walls? Reinforced concrete, strong and able, houses the sub-structure through which electronics peep. Luggage chutes reach for the skies, inclined upward to who knows where. And how many lives have been saved by last-gasp quarantine dumps? Suspended between Touchdown and Customs, old norms and new; last chance to ditch your contraband, all to be forgotten, as the flowers turn rotten and the plastic is old and grey.
Who speaks their own body language well enough to play the game?
Sweaty palms, shaky-legs… versus complex surveillance systems that count the hairs on your mole.
galactic eyes
sharper than a poison claw
see into the beyond
Easy prey, the jet-lagged walk the gleaming chrome, resolving to greet the future head-on.
A flat, synthetic boarding call and he remembers his trip: ‘Last call for Silverwing 501. Please make your way to Gate 23.’
Just enough time for a slash. He makes for the toilet.
The international pictogram for ‘man’ is suspended over the toilet door: straight-backed, featureless, brain-pan wiped clean. His ‘partner’, not ten metres away, is identical except for two half-triangles on either side of her legs. Some distinction! Merged seamlessly with tomorrow, poor Bazza and Thommo never had a chance to evolve. No time. How humiliating for them to witness their wives sprouting careers, orgasms…
Even robots need love.
On his way to Check-In he passes a glass cabinet marked QUARANTINE SEIZURES, prohibited goods snatched from hapless voyagers:
:: snake wine from Hong Kong
:: .22 calibre ‘purse-guns’ from Freedom, Wyoming
:: used opium pipes from Marrakesh
:: ’Harrods Dog Treats’ from the Mother Country
Next to this, an overlit ad sells Southbank Apartments — ‘opposite Casino’.
This airport is hyper-life, sniff-dogs pissed in the gene pool turn rabid on command. Robo-shotguns blast unattended luggage, a suspected bomb; hidden eyes spy digital ghosts, spool-and-replay eternal. There is a lack of overt ‘heat’ — where are the uniforms and sunglassed meat? They melt into light. Take one last look: flesh-and-blood for the dear, dying, departed. It’s a system built on deception and shadow-play, set up to tame its own kind.
He doesn’t know where this is going, anymore. Do you? Write to him, often…
Write him.
Silverwing five-oh-one holding short of runway. I request start-up clearance. My initial route is Barcelona two-eight, via Singapore and London. Wind two-six-oh at one-two. Eight-oh knots. Vee-one.
Rotate.
Silverwing five-oh-one now climbing to six thousand feet. Change to one-one-nine point three.
Autopilot engaged.
ABOVE: El Prat Airport, Barcelona. Photo: Simon Sellars.
…:: Previously on Ballardian:
+ Kosmopolis 08: Landing Gear
+ Kosmopolis 08: Switching Stations
Author:
Simon Sellars
Find all posts by
Simon Sellars
Newer: 'Strangest Living Atrocities': Guy Peellaert, 1934-2008 »
Wow Simon, great stuff!
You should get serious about this writing lark.
Hmmmm, not sure about that, Mike. Actually, I was really pleased with how the Polaroids turned out!
The polaroids are awesome!
Thank you, Mr Lee-Nova. Polaroids are like time travel for me, given that my childhood has always appeared to me in over-saturated colour.
This site is unparalleled in its discourse on all matters Ballardian – respect is due. However, if it becomes a site for trite ramblings, or pseudo-Ballardian growlings of a bunch of self-obsessed imitators I am off. Surely the whole point of Ballard is his reference points are so easy; his angle obscure and individual. I don’t write prose, I am just a humble teacher, but I know Ballard. This appalling imitation is unnecessary. We have all we need from JGB. And if we don’t, we can make our own frigging minds up.
Anthony,
It’s not meant to be an imitation of Ballard. Who could possibly do that? It’s just my post-impressions of my recent trip to Barcelona, as a follow on to the coverage of the recent exhibiton I attended, and the strange headspace coming home put me in.
You know, I recognise this tone of criticism and it’s been levelled at the site before. Maybe you were even part of the last wave that swamped us.
What really gets me is that none of these critics, including you, are offering up any viable alternatives. I’ve been criticised for being ‘arrogant’ and ’supercilious’ before, through my writing on this site, and now you are sugesting I am in some way trying to ‘appallingly imitate’ Ballard. I don’t believe that was my intention, but perhaps that is beside the point.
What I would like to restate is: you’ve offered up your own credentials as a teacher ‘who knows Ballard’, so if you think you can do better, then please, as I said to the previous critics, submit your own work to the site and try to make it a better resource. I have always said I welcome submissions.
If you are not willing to do that, or to start up your own site, or to offer any kind of useful solution or collaboration to what you perceive the problem is, then I am really not sure what the point is of your comment.
As you said, you can ‘make your own frigging mind up’. I’m not trying to force any reader to see my point of view, as you seem to imply.
I am not claiming any merit to this post that has attracted such ire, save that is a *personal* impression only. If it’s true that ‘we have all we need from Ballard’, then why read any criticism of Ballard or of any other writer? What indeed is the point?
Also, as a final reminder, the site is called ‘Ballardian’, not ‘J.G. Ballard’. From the blurb under the ‘About’ page:
“Perhaps the site’s twin aims are best defined by the dual definitions applied to the word ‘Ballardian’, according to the Collins English Dictionary:
BALLARDIAN: (adj) 1. of James Graham Ballard (J.G. Ballard; born 1930), the British novelist, or his works. (2) resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels & stories, esp. dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes & the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.
That is to say, we explore the Ballardosphere (definition 2) as much as we do Ballard (definition 1). Or to say it another way, we use the term ‘Ballardian’ to identify a particular phase in late capitalism that is yet to play itself out, and which is best articulated by the writer J.G. Ballard. This site therefore attempts to formulate a world view refracted through the writings of an author who has continually and accurately predicted the bewildering pace of change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.”
I can’t make it any plainer than that, Anthony, and I say this to you with all due respect.
All the best,
Simon
“…if it becomes a site for trite ramblings, or pseudo-Ballardian growlings of a bunch of self-obsessed imitators I am off.”
Yeah me too Anthony. Likewise if it gets taken over by a whining pedagogue who admits he can’t write!
One of the great strengths of Ballardian is its very diversity, taking on as it does the wide range of responses that Ballard’s work and ideas spark off in us. It panders neither to the academic pedant nor the rabid fan, but welcomes all flavours of opinion without being itself diluted.
If you don’t like it then do something better yourself!
‘I am just a humble teacher, but I know Ballard. This appalling imitation is unnecessary. We have all we need from JGB. And if we don’t, we can make our own frigging minds up.’
humble, yet you KNOW ballard. personally i hate most teachers, and i have a sneaking suspicion your students aren’t crazy about you. and please, don’t include me in your ‘we’.
You hate most teachers, Johnny? Who’s the next in your list? Lawyers? Doctors? Jews? Blacks? Tell us. Personally, I don’t hate anyone, but I don’t like people who thrive on stereotypes. As for my colleague Anthony the Humble Teacher, sorry mate but I can’t see the appalling imitation. I mean, if you want to criticize Simon for his literary talent, it’s one thing: I may like what he writes, you may dislike it, it’s a free web. But if you accuse him of appalling imitation, I’ll have to ask you “who is he imitating?” Just look at this, Tony:
“A man shrugs off the clucking of his family and makes his way to International Departures. With the ticketing formalities over, he slumps at the bar and orders drinks.”
Man, the story is in the present tense. Ballard NEVER wrote anything important in the present tense. Read all his novels. He sticks to the traditional simple past. He may write in the first person or the second person, but he never uses the present. So where’s the imitation? It’s like saying that someone playing a piano is imitating Jimi Hendrix.
Moreover, it’s definitely more Proust than Ballard… I guess Simon might turn it into a short story, with a bit more flesh. And if he wants to put some of his more creative writing on this website, why shouldn’t he? He’s already done a lot with all the excellent materials that his pataphysical newspaper has published so far.
quite a conclusion jump there umberto rossi: ‘jews, blacks’, sounds to me like you have a some kind of axe to grind. i hate most rock musicians, lawyers? there’s some good ones. notice i said MOST teachers. there are some wonderful teachers. why am i even replying to this.
‘Anthony’ was kind enough to leave his full name in the email field: ‘anthonypheath’, which I assume is ‘Anthony P Heath’.
I did a Google search and found this:
http://www.bangor.ac.uk/english/publicat/dissertation.php
“School of English, Bangor University”
“A [Anthony] P Heath, ‘J. G. Ballard and the Positive Apocalypse.’ MA in English (1996) 1996.”
I’m curious, now. Is this you, Anthony? If so, how can we get a copy of your MA? I’d love to read it. If you’re as knowledgeable as you say you are, it should be a cracking read.
Hi. I have emailed Dr Sellars privately to apologise for my intemperate display on this pretty wonderful website. I hope – if Dr Sellars will excuse my previous ejaculations – to post my MA somewhere about his site; again, if Simon thinks it is suited. I, personally, think it is rubbish – but I shall play with it and then send it in for consideration. Our raison d’etre for even looking here is that we are interested in Ballard and all things Ballardian. Dr Sellars – I believe it is pending – is someone I trust to criticise, and analyse, but perhaps who needs someone to temper his own prose? I hate it when I cause a fuss; I would rather roast a dog on my balcony. Anthony
Hi Anthony,
Aaaghh, stop with the ‘Dr Sellars’! My thesis is actually still under examination.
Thanks for the offer of posting your MA — I’d genuinely like to take a look at it.
Regarding my so-called ‘prose’, I don’t care about people criticising it — I said this to you in my email. What I objected to in your comment was the accusation that I was imitating Ballard, and that I was trying to force a perspective on my readers! Also, the intimation that this site was somehow going downhill, swamped in a morass of bad poetry, even though this post was maybe the fifth such personal reminiscence in over 500 posts.
Anyway, send me your MA. Looking forward to it.
Regards,
Not-a-doctor Sellars
I’m a keen reader of Ballard and a big fan of this site. Also I am a Melbourne local and alumni of the same university yet from very different, yet aligned fields of study .
I would have described Simon’s work above as more Gibson, Sterling or Shirley. Having said that, above all Simon is just sharing his experience of transit in a raw and vivid fashion.
BTW: I love these types of stoushes, I’m sure you’ll both end up best of friends.
anthony, you sound like a good joe after all, and maybe one of those rare teachers we all like. everyone has bad moments.
i still have a bone to pick with umberto rossi but rather than get into it with someone who may be lacking a sense of humor, or at least not one akin to my brand, i’ll leave it to someone else who was not afraid to use the word hate.
How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.”
William S. Burroughs
Jase, I hope you are right,as I genuinely believe Simon has a brain the size of an asteroid, or a network of contacts, like in Burroughs’ The Naked Lunch, in order to put all this disparate stuff together! I want in!
A propos of nothing, I live in the Middle East, which is possibly the most Ballardian environment imaginable if you want to ever see Crash lived for real. I could tell a few stories that would would make your hair curl. I am bald by the way.
Best.
Anthony
Hmm, it’s nice to see Ballardian in high-flame status again… Way to go Simon!