Cycling is a sort of dancing. Indeed, any form of auto-mobility is a form of dance. The cyclist, like the walker, by virtue of his openness to his environment is attuned to the sounds of where he is, whether it be open country, high plateau or busy city. I find it somewhat alarming the amount of people these days who choose to barricade their senses from their surroundings via headphones and those infernal mobile devices. It is perhaps an indictment not so much of their appreciation of music but their lack of appreciation of where they are, or, perhaps, as the case may be for those city workers (heads down, ears plugged in) heading off to for another day in the office-coffin, a precise understanding of where they are. There is no apparent dance in these crowds of commuters, only hustle and bustle. They have been removed from their larger selves, and forced to sell their days for gold.
When I lived in Warsaw, I initially took the underground the few stops to work every day. When, eventually, I had my bicycle sent over, I began cycling to work, and quickly realised in a series of marvellous epiphanies how much quicker it was, how healthier it was not being squeezed up against some flu-bearing commuter sneezing all over you, how much cheaper it was (although in Warsaw, public transport was remarkably reasonable in price), and how much fresher I was arriving at work having energised my bodymind in that idyllic 20 minute cycle through parks into the city centre. From that day on, I never looked back, and always looked at those passing crowded trams with a smile from then on in. Not only that, but I was privy to great flocks of jackdaws every so often lighting up the night sky. I always wandered why at the age of 37 it had taken me so long to start doing this. Now, at 45, I thank myself for having done it when I did. Now, I cycle everywhere. Even in a supposedly wet environment like Strathclyde which of course is not as wet as people like to make out.
In becoming attuned to the environment, the cyclist soon becomes attuned to the weather, the prevailing winds, the various species of rain, the greys and the movement of clouds, not to mention the dance of the seasonal cycles themselves. A car driver needn’t bother with such ‘trivial’ things. Indeed, now, with the onset of modernity, man has not just sealed his self behind screens and speed, but emphatically behind ‘proofs’ (water, wind, sun, cold…) whose sole purpose is to deliberately prevent the environment from ‘getting in’. If ever there were an indictment then on man’s estrangement from his greater self, from not so much the environment but the domain of entanglement in which he is inextricably involved, it is his eagerness to clothe himself (often at great expense) and ‘create himself’ through the fashioning of a cloth identity, a fatuous and obviously false identity (more like a brand) that is removed from the greater context that allows it.
Admittedly, cycling has suffered too from this crass clothing boom, seeking to doll up cyclists in the latest proofs and sealskin gear. But this is not what I am about. To be sure, a good pair of padded shorts goes a long way, but if I have learned anything about cycling it is that you can cycle in just about anything. The eagerness to doll yourself up is simply another part of the capitalist machine at work, that seeks to convince you that you need, that with this product you will be a better person. Capitalism gets its claws into everything, even (and especially now) into Poetry.
The polka-dot cycling population are victims then of low self-esteem, and gullibility. Victims of the industry that cycling has become the world over. But it is not the industrial that I am interested in, it is the incantational… and the capacity of cycling to enchant and, by virtue of this, to cause to dance…
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