For The Record- 22. June. 2024

I just know that something good is going to happen.

Welcome to another edition of For The Record, the weekly newsletter that brings the world of music news straight to your inbox. Part essay, part good old-fashioned link drop, For The Record is a benefit for paid supporters of On Repeat.

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Thanks!

KA~

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Note: I had a whole-ass rant about the damage AI in music is causing queued up in my brain, and then something pretty cool happened at work that derailed that plan. The universe is always trying to tell me something, and once in awhile, I decide to listen.

KA—

When I was a kid, my dad traveled often for business. He’d come home with the usual souvenirs he probably grabbed at the airport (my dresser was full of “Visit New Hampshire” type shirts) and would tell us about the cool places he had visited between appointments.

If we were lucky, there’d be a trip to the Fotomat, and in a few days, we could look at some grainy pictures of wherever he’d been. But no matter where he went, when pressed for a favorite part of the trip, he’d always give the same answer: the flight.

It was the one place no one could reach him. It gave him time to read, think, whatever. Sometimes, he’d spend the entire flight looking out the window and daydreaming, with only his thoughts and imagination keeping him company. It’s one of the few legacies he passed on to me.

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We like being distracted. Since the earliest days of aviation, airlines have been happy to help us with that. Food, playing cards, In-Flight Entertainment, the list goes on.

If you’re of a certain (ahem) age, you may remember the introduction of the Airphone on airplanes. They were bulky, cost a fortune, and were mainly used to tell people… that you were calling them from an airplane. Movies were played on monitors that dropped down from the ceiling.

Today, there are screens at every seat and hundreds of hours of content to pass the time. The advancement in technology is nothing short of amazing, really. Airphones are long gone, but who needs that when you can iMessage everyone?

Put another way; you can spend an entire trip not ever thinking about the miracle of flight or having to notice the view unfolding 30,000 ft. below you. You can be as busy in the air as you are on the ground. Or not.

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At a certain point, I got tired of trying to explain what I do.

Do you wave those little orange sticks around? (Sometimes),

Can you get me free tickets? (no)

Why was my flight on (another airline) late? (Really?)

So I would see how much snark I could get away with. I’d say things like, “I facilitate life events,” which, if you squint long enough, is kind of true. Or something pithy, like I pick things up and put them down.

Later on, I moved into an Operations role. To be clear, if someone is genuinely interested, I’m happy to go as far inside the park as they’ll let me—and since I'm terrible at reading the room, I usually just keep going. But if it’s just cocktail party conversation or someone trying to suss out where I might be on the class hierarchy relative to them, I just saw “I watch TV,” which, given that I have 6 monitors, is also kind of true.

An airport is an easy place to get cynical. People are rushed, out of their element, and sometimes just don't want to be there. There’s also the section of society that has decided that condescension is a birthright. I have no time for them.

But I also have a front-row view of some pretty incredible stuff. Watching a family awash with excitement (and relief) as a soldier comes down the escalator never gets old. Ditto people setting off on what’s clearly the trip of a lifetime. You’ve been waiting 40 years to take this journey? I’m your biggest cheerleader.

Watching kids' eyes get wide when they realize they’re going to Disney, Grandma’s, or wherever is infectious. There’s also an inverse correlation between how tired a parent is at 4:30 AM and how wired their kid is. I’m sure a law of physics (or two) is involved. I’m sure Newton talked about it at one point.

That brings me to my point:

I ran into a (very) tired mom and her (very not) tired son at baggage claim. I asked if they needed help. Before the mom could answer, the boy burst forth with a wild-eyed tale of adventure…which, for you and I, was a red-eye flight from Anchorage to the Midwest and then on to Madison, but no way was I gonna be the one to tell him that. Nor was I about to stop him, either. Instead, I let him go as far as he wanted and got to hear all about how he stayed up all night and “didn’t even use my iPad!”

“That’s pretty rad. So what’d you do all night?” I asked.

“I looked out the window.”

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Links to some great stories you might’ve missed this week below the jump: