Plain Perspective

Today, I dragged ManLosch to the ICA today (Institute of Contemporary Art) in downtown Boston. I heart this place.

So anyway, the exhibits are pretty much mostly on the 4th floor, where you see those lights in the window in the picture above. And if you stand there and look out the window, you can see Charlestown and Logan Int'l Airport. Why is this important? Well because I'll admit now: While I have a ton of mixed emotions about flying, I LOVE watching planes take off and land. Maybe it's the rhythmic orchestration of it all. Maybe I see it as an art form itself.

I like to play this game too when I watch planes take off. I like to guess what a random person in a random seat is doing while taking off, or while in the air. So as I was leaving one exhibit, I stopped to watch a plane take off. ManLosch asked me why I was stopping and I pointed. So I said, "17C...the women is dying for a cigarette and since she's an addict, she's chewing Nicorette and nervously picking at her cuticles. The man next to her is reading a newspaper and wondering why she's picking her cuticles but won't ask her. Your turn." He says, "All of that, but there's a baby in the back of the plane crying. Because there's always a crying baby on a plane." I said, "That's not very imaginative. C'mon be original. You aren't fascinated that when you look out and see a plane taking off, it looks smaller than what it is, but it's got 150-200 people on it all doing different things?" He says, "Not really. I'm more fascinated with how they get that thing in the air."

So now I've come to the point of my entry tonight. Perspective. We're looking at the same exact thing, but we see two completely different things. Because ManLosch is for all intents and purposes, an architect, he sees things structurally and he sees things that need to have an equation for them to make sense. I see a bunch of random shit in random colors and make up random stories about most of what I see. It's just amazing when you have those moments when you realize just how different you are from others. And all it took was an airplane.

What about you? What do you think about/see when you see a plane taking off?