Dilettante: I’m flying to America – but is it still there?

I used to have this ritual whenever I was flying somewhere; I’d step one foot inside the airport, then the next, then I’d put my headphones on and listen to Kanye West. I had a specific playlist for it, of all my favourite songs of his. There were dozens of them – I was, I guess, a real fan.

I’d walk through security or sometimes just stand there, for half an hour or an hour, waiting to reach the duty free shops, and it felt fine. Kanye always soothed me. The soundtrack became such a predictable part of my life that, after a while, I ended up having the song stuck in my head days before flying. Like a drooling dog waiting for dinnertime, my brain could tell what was about to happen, and it got itself ready.

Obviously, that had to change a few years ago. I just didn’t want my slow, happy journey towards the plane to be accompanied by the voice of a man who’d released swastika t-shirts. I just felt it tainted my mood somewhat.

For a while after that I switched to Claude François, the French singer from the 60s and 70s. There’s something so old-fashioned and silly and fun about his back catalogue. Ours isn’t an exclusive relationship, though, and I now let myself get guided by whatever happens to be playing at the back of my skull in the days before a trip.

I am, at time of writing, due to fly in just over 48 hours. The words that swirled around my mind as I went to bed last night were from Rufus Wainwright’s song, Going To A Town. If you don’t know it, it goes like this: “I’m going to a town that has already been burnt down / I’m going to a place that has already been disgraced / I’m gonna see some folks who have already been let down”.

It may all seem quite dramatic – apparently my subconscious remains quite teenage-like – but is probably easily explained by the line that follows and gets repeated throughout the song, namely: “I’m so tired of you, America”.

As you may know I spent one month then another in New York in 2024, and for reasons I’m sure you can guess, I assumed that would be that for the foreseeable. Life decided I just wasn’t done with the place though, as last year I acquired a partner whose flat unfortunately happens to be in Brooklyn. I went to visit him for a fortnight in November and, as you are reading this, am now here again for ten days.

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I am purposely making a point here of marking the difference between me writing this piece and you getting to it as we are taking some necessary precautions. Would the notoriously charmless people at the US border in JFK airport object to my tongue in cheek reference to Wainwright’s lyrics? I have no idea, and that’s the whole problem. It probably is best not to find out.

It is an odd feeling, though, knowing that this knot is at the bottom of my stomach when it didn’t used to exist. There’s also quite an odd paradox at play: New York is a big and intimidating place but I know it well now. On some level, I feel like I’m returning to a little home I’ve built for myself over the years. On another, I’m acutely, painfully aware of the fact that I’m about to step into alien and potentially hostile territory.

“They’re yet to arrest an accredited journalist at the border!”, I keep telling myself, and while that’s factually correct, the very existence of it as a mantra strikes me as bone-chilling. It’s so absurd I don’t want to think about it but it’s also the only thing I can think about, in the run-up to the trip. I once crossed the Atlantic without a care in the world and sure, it was an immense privilege even back then, but what an awful pain to find one’s sense of freedom being curtailed like this.

Of course, it doesn’t even stop with the US. A dear friend and I had long been hoping to go to Uzbekistan to ride horses across what was once the Silk Road, and had finally decided to do it this autumn. I now look at the situation in the Middle East, and the acquaintances currently on their third week in Thailand as their flights home keep getting cancelled, and I wonder if Central Asia may not be too ambitious for 2026.

Oh, and my mother and I had always dreamt of going to Tehran one day, together on some grand mother-daughter trip. We always knew the prospect was quite a remote one, but it now looks about as likely as my dream of spending a few weeks in Moscow and St Petersburg.

Our worlds are getting smaller and smaller, and the possibilities within them keep shrinking. I’m quite scared of flying to the US in a few days but I’ll do it anyway, because who knows if I’ll be able to in another year, or another month? I never thought carpe diem could ever feel this ominous but well – clearly these are the times we live in.