Listen by Michel Faber

Author:Michel Faber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd

The unrestricted public part of Heathrow no longer has piped music, nor does Gatwick. I’m not sure why. Maybe too many customers complained. Maybe the airports noticed that the customers who wanted music were listening to it on private earbuds connected to their smart-phones. Maybe the costs of reimbursing Sony and UMG for broadcasts of their product were considered prohibitive. Whatever: the sections of the airport where the people without laminated cards congregate are no longer serviced with tunes.

But my lounge is. And very dignified music it is, too. Tasteful. It’s punctuated every now and then by one of the handmaidens clanking a metal lid to deposit more samosas, but mostly it plays with little sonic competition, as my fellow lounge-dwellers are absorbed in their phones and our insulated bunker admits only a muted susurrus from the terminal beyond.

What I’m hearing is pointedly unlike Eno’s Music For Airports. It’s solo acoustic guitar, similar in style and sonority to the works of William Ackerman or Michael Hedges on the Windham Hill label – high-quality wallpaper for people who don’t want their muzak tarnished with cheesy synths or New Age tintinnabulations. Good honest acoustic etudes played by earnest men with earnest faces. I fantasise that this particular man is called Brad,8 and I picture him wearing an unbuttoned workman’s shirt over a Jack Daniels T-shirt, blue jeans so pale they’re almost grey, chunky boots that look old and a bit beat-up but are actually quite new and very expensive.

Outside this little sanctuary, the less privileged mill about in their musicless cattle yard. Would they enjoy Brad’s tasteful finger-picking if they had a chance to hear it? Maybe they would.

But if the airport had decided that there must be music out there amongst the masses, there probably wouldn’t be any in here, amongst the private banking beneficiaries. In that case, a judgement would probably have been made that travellers of my calibre don’t want or need music while they’re waiting for their flight to Krakow.

That’s how class works. Its soundtrack can be switched on or off, as required.

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