I put on headphones: Nicolai Gedda prowls about the corners of my mind in the company of trumpets and violins. My eyes close. Red Argentine wine washes around my teeth: a warm familiar challenge. An airliner stands heavy on the tarmac like Baudelaire's Albatross on the ship's deck, a hapless earth-bound monster, fulled up and ready for release into its natural environment: air, thick with currents and lift.
The orchestra taxis us with measured restraint; Gedda, the "plane and me. At the head of the runway it"s already late and the world sleeps. Nicolai begins to rumble, slowly becoming more distinct from the orchestra, rising out of it, shining ever brighter and we begin the long trembling burn down the tarmac. The chorus teases the passengers with hints of the drama we've paid handsomely to be propelled into and we are tense with apprehension and anticipation.
A few bars here and there fall short of a full consummation, though the promise is rich and increasingly irresistible. The pace quickens. The runway is long. There is no going back. We thunder on into the night relentlessly, mercilessly, control given over to the night and our passionate rush into the blackness is guided only by the lights along the edge of the stage. The usherettes fall back and take their seats in readiness for the moment when Nicolai will lift us from the earth, heads spinning, stomachs contracting and relaxing in turn. We wait, wondering how much longer the wheels will have to spin before the momentum and the air and all that inexplicable talent and technology will lift us from the world; how much longer till we can look out and watch below us tangling rows of lights dropping away into the murky humdrum of trashy TV programmes and cups of insipid coffee. Speed multiplies. We feel ourselves pushed back into cushioned seats, especially those of us who have lost the habit of going to concerts, or who are flying for the first time. At last, just as Nicolai reaches that rich, pure note where sense and sound and movement merge, we lift resolutely from the earth.
Satisfaction rolls through our souls and we begin to ride on air, lifting, lifting. The Jumbo shoots ever onwards, gathering moisture as it penetrates the dark mystery we call clouds. No going back now, and full of a new and richer warmth Nicolai relaxes us into a gentle, reassured, glowing melody. We begin to notice the chorus and the orchestra again, which we later realise never went away. In time we sleep and in time we waken to a cold, invisible sun in the awkward company of the stranger beside us, sticky from the heat and action of the night. The cold ocean beneath us runs its course, a concert hall with only the memory of an audience and a band, and looking out we wonder how our souls have ever been raised this high and have ever been filled so full. We step stiffly out of the 'plane onto cold concrete called London.
