Youth at Toronto airport 2009

Three fellows at Toronto airport, 3.12.2009 @hf

When sending this image to Allys Palladino-Craiq, Director of the Museum at Florida State University in Tallahassee, she responded wisely:

“For the young men at the airport, the spirit of conviviality and experimentation is very strong. They are not yet tied to specifics of life (material culture, marriage, career, locales). If they can keep that charming openness as they develop attachments – as they ‘become famous’ or, indeed, ‘become’ anything – that’s the key. I look at these three faces and would be happy to know any of them: the smiles, the exuberance, the sense that an international air terminal is a safe haven. With the world getting smaller every second, here’s to making 2010 and all points of the compass cooperative and stable.”

At that time late 2009, while returning from the conference "Europe performing" at Toronto university, and preparing the Kids' Guernica exhibition at the Museum in Tallahassee, many thoughts can be added:

If there could be a truer call of life than the three fellows, then I would like to know.

We met while having a snack at the counter in the airport terminal of Toronto, and this prior to take off with me heading back to Europe.

After an exchange of friendly looks, they suddenly asked me what I do?

I replied: "I am a writer."

“Oh”, they responded with surprise. Then, after thinking a bit, they followed up their first question with a curious reasoning:

“If I would write about us, then we would become famous, that is if we become a part of your story and this becomes a famous novel. Naturally it can also be the case that I would get famous and at least they would have met me once."

Their reasoning showed things can work just as well the other way around!

So look at their faces! They are travellers in their own world, open minded at that, and when you speak with them, you feel that they understand intuitively what you are trying to say to them.

Trust is of utmost importance.

More than the traffic lights outside friendly smiles give you confidence as part of the orientation you need in this global world.

Or what else would regulate human beings travelling all the time?

With security measures piling up due to threats of terrorism, such rare exceptions are needed to restore human normality.

To test everyone in the crowd is not advised. Better is to start with those sitting next to you.

As if the danger is to be singled out, then to lose that trust which can open up to warm conversations.

When Obama as President spoke during his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, he said that in the world there exists ‘evil’, but then he talked as if this was former President Bush speaking and not Obama himself, the one who had wanted to change the world.

This world needs friendly words of good fellow travellers who hold out an olive branch of utopia despite a peaceful life described as if it was not supposed to exist, and therefore appears like a magic mountain out of reach.

But when it comes to appeal to common human sense, humen openess is needed.

So lets not forget being just friendly gets you still anywhere, anytime, and for sure, my fellow friends, where ever you might be right now, in case you see your image on this website, let it be said I enjoyed meeting you for that brief moment and good luck to you!

In friendship

hatto fischer

Athens 1.1.2010

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Youth at Toronto airport 2009