Homes Nowhere

I'm picking up some ideas from Rachael's and Alice's posts and comments. I was talking to my brother the other day about why I like airports. It's because their anonymity drains the personality out of you. As you go around that wierd little village of Sock Shops, W H Smiths, themed cafes, and miniature department stores of cigarettes, perfume and spirits, the place is full of people but without any character. What I like is the effect this has on me. I find that my sense of my own identity disappears; I feel 'whitened out'.

Why should I like that experience? Perhaps it's because personality and individuality can sometimes feel like a kind of burden. And then, of course, I think of Timeless and the imagery of wanting to shed a skin and return as someone else.

As for the other idea - about where you can find yourself home - I wanted to ask an even more provocative question. You may remember from June 2000 the terrible story of the 58 Chinese immigrants who tried to get themselves smuggled into the country in the back of a lorry and died of suffocation. It's not a tasteful question but it might be an important one for our project: did the back of the lorry become, at any point, a kind of home?

Dan Rebellato