Deconstruction: The Waiting Colleague

Friendship Airport in 1964 (source)

In the mid 1960s, the old terminal of Baltimore Friendship Airport had an observation deck on top We see someone waiting up there. A man wearing a tie and a black overcoat is at the railing looking out over the tarmac, and smoking a cigarette.  The day is overcast, as if the world is readying for late autumn.

We see him looking an aircraft---Derrida's aircraft---while it is taxiing slowly towards the terminal off the runway.  At some point (important) we see the control tower in back of the aircraft as it is movie horizontally.

Seeing the plane and noticing its colors, he looks at his watch, taps it gently five times rhythmically as if in thought. Then he springs into motion, flicking away his cigarette as if to give himself momentum and he turns and heads back to the door of the deck.


Now is a quickening of pace. We him do down flights of stairs in a mild but gentle hurry, moving around several people on the stairs who are going in both directions. We hear the conversations of people in the stairwell but we do not see their faces.

Who is he, this man? Evidently he's a colleague of Derrida, waiting for his Derrida's arrival on the plane. Which colleague?

For that we will need to dive into the history of the conference itself.