Sonic Postcard: Departures • Monstar Cao

Sonic Postcard: Departures

Monstar Cao (b. 1999)

A jet bridge stretches like an arm reaching out. A still airplane waits, grounded in black and white. This quiet photograph holds motion despite its stillness. For me, an international student who has spent over ten years crossing borders, it evokes more than just a moment: it brings back a thousand echoes of partings and reunions, witnessed and lived.

Airports are places of thresholds. I’ve said goodbye in silence and through tears; I’ve watched others embrace, wave, or walk away without looking back. Sometimes we part with joy, sometimes with anxiety. Sometimes we say, “see you soon” and mean it—sometimes, we hope we do.

Departures is a sonic postcard, composed like a short radio drama. Two fictional scenes unfold in the terminal: one between a mother and daughter—gentle, composed, but full of unspoken care; the other, a woman’s voice on the edge of long-distance love, trying to hold onto connection through repetitive questions and reassurances. Only the girl speaks—their counterparts remain silent, as absence becomes part of the dialogue. These voices, generated using AI voice models, reflect not specific individuals but emotional archetypes—echoes of conversations we’ve all overheard, imagined, or once spoken ourselves.

Then, the music enters without sentimentality. Instead of soaring melody, I used layered textures—synths that breathe, rhythms that flicker, fragments of ambient sound. Airport noises—boarding calls, rolling luggage, soft gate beeps—are woven into the fabric. Some come from copyright-free archives; others I recorded myself, parked outside the local airport, waiting and listening.

This piece is not just about sadness. It’s about how departures contain beginnings, too. It’s about the quiet resilience of people who leave and return, who hold onto hope across continents and time zones. It is a postcard not from a place, but from a feeling—a message sent in sound, waiting to be heard again.

Image: Meggan Gould and various unknown photographers, Untitled #1, 5, Images scanned from original negatives found in the CMP Technology Collection, UCR ARTS, Courtesy of the Artist