With five hours to wait in Frankfurt airport, I could only watch as people walked around me. Listening to music didn’t seem to help; it felt like the songs only dragged me backwards. When you listen to headphones daily, you invest each destination in the same, solitary beat. When leaving somewhere, and especially if waiting in terminals with machines that claim to fly, filling my ears with these sounds tugs me back too sharply amongst the places I have just left. Feet step in the rhythms of the route to work; my heart taps the pulse of the person I’m not supposed to be thinking of. Under headphones, you are too set in the problems which songs doctor in a day to day routine.
