Liftoff and the Freedom of Flight
Lyonel Feininger’s Sailboats, painted in 1929. Feininger abstracts the air and water as similar to the silhouettes of sailboats, with angular, diagonal lines. This abstraction symbolizes the link between the sailboats and their surroundings, and attempts to represent the connection between the sailor and the air.
When I was a boy, my father was a competitive sailor. I have fond memories of my family going to regattas on one of two local lakes to watch him compete, and the experience has stuck with me. One moment in particular comes to mind whenever I’m researching flight and the human need to escape the Earth’s surface. I was asking him questions about his love for sailing, and he described the experience of casting off as akin to leaving the world behind, as if he was escaping from the stress and concerns of his life back on land.
The freedom my father was describing taps into a deeper human need. On land, there are mountains, trees, valleys, and myriad other obstacles to impede movement. On the open water, none of these obstacles exist, and the boat is free to move in any direction. There is also a direct connection to the atmosphere and the sky, which provide wind, waves, and rain. As such, the act of sailing is intimately linked to the movements of air, and in many ways a sailor is beholden to the sky to achieve the freedom he was describing. This link between a human and the sky also relates closely to the act of flying, and I believe his description of casting off from the shore is akin to lifting off from the surface.
Flight has captivated humanity since pre-history. The space above our heads represents freedom, and flying through it represents an escape from our surface-based lives. To fly is to break free of the shackles of a surface-based existence and achieve a higher level of being.[1] We have dreams about flight, and our folk tales and myths are filled with human-like characters who have the power of flight. Angels, seraphs, cherubs, fairies, witches and magic carpets are a few examples of fictional creatures with the power of flight. Most of these creatures use wings to fly, much like birds do.
Jacob Peter Gowy's The Flight of Icarus, painted in 1635–1637. The painting depicts Icarus falling after he flies too close to the sun, melting the wax in his wings. Image source.
Birds are creatures that our ancestors saw up in the sky, and for us they represent freedom and a release from the earth.[2] We seek to fly like birds do, and many of our most primitive ideas for flight included wing-like contraptions. One ancient example of this is the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. As the story goes, Daedalus was a skilled craftsman, and he had designed a labyrinth for King Minos to trap a Minotaur. Once the Labyrinth was complete, the King imprisoned Daedalus and his son Icarus to prevent him from sharing knowledge of the labyrinth. Daedalus then built two sets of wings from wax and feathers in order for them to escape. He explained to his son that he must not fly too high or too low. If he flew too high, the sun would melt the wax of his wings. If he flew too low, the moisture from the sea would weigh him down. After lifting off and escaping the Labyrinth, the joy of flight proved too much for Icarus, who flew upwards toward the sky, ignoring his fathers instructions. The wax of his wings melted, and he fell to the sea and drowned. Daedalus completed his flight and successfully escaped, but the fate of Icarus has stuck deeper in the minds of those who know the tale.
The Lament for Icarus, painted by Herbert James Draper in 1898. Icarus can be seen with his massive wings after drowning in the sea. Height represents both safety and danger, and the danger got the best of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. Image source.
Icarus represents the human need to escape the surface of the earth. His excitement and joy stemming from his newfound ability to fly led him to continue ascending until it killed him. After lifting off, he was finally free from his confinement to the surface, and he was blinded to the dangers that accompany the ability to fly. This ties into a primal need that humans have for verticality, and the duality of height that we all deal with throughout our lives. Height represents both safety and danger. It can save you, much like it saved Daedalus, or it can kill you, like Icarus.
The freedom that my father spoke of when casting off in a sailboat is the same as the freedom of lifting off the surface to take flight. Each act is a response to an innate need to escape the surface of the Earth. In addition, each act carries with it an element of danger, since there are larger forces at play when humans are dealing with the atmosphere. If you sail too far or fly too high, bad things can happen, but the joy and excitement that accompanies a cast-off or a liftoff are too primal to ignore.
Check out more examples of verticality in the arts.
[1]: Cooper, J. C. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978.
[2]: Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Anchor Books, 1988. 23; Chevalier, Jean, and Alain Gheerbrant. The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Translated by John Buchanan-Brown. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1996. 88; Henderson, Joseph L. "Ancient Myths and Modern Man." In Man and His Symbols, 95-156. New York, NY: Dell Publishing, 1968. 156; Kern, Stephen. "Direction." In The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918, 241-58. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983. 242.