HEAVIER THAN AIR

Either way, the toyness of the things McKendrick makes reminds us how exactly it could be that that things like this get made at all. The real things, that is - the things McKendrick models from.

All airplanes, McKendrick says, are flying bombs, all airplanes from any era are explosions waiting to happen, an assertion that September of last year proved conclusively. When Mohammed Atta arrived at his Florida flying school, and when he seated himself at the controls of his flight simulator, there will have been one part of him that dwelt with satisfaction upon the impending destruction of two buildings that stood, would fall, for America; an act, thoroughly and horrifyingly adult, of terror; but also at the controls there must have been an altogether younger Atta, a child ecstatic and at play. A twitch of the stick and the world turns. They're in the crosshairs, takatakatakataka.


This is something that McKendrick understands, whether his work concerns itself with ships, submarines or airplanes. The men who make and fly and fire were children once, and Tom was too, and what he makes is charged with a child's affection for the big, the big bang and the fantastically fiery crash; and with the adult's sorry knowledge that what sinks or shoots or crashes is no kind of toy at all. A child's eye and an adult's knowledge, or vice-versa. Smash! Bang!
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