In terms of simplicity, the bicycle is hard to beat. Its modest form is not entirely unlike the human form, with its handlebars, frame, and two wheels. The head of the bike is the head of its rider, and so here we have some kind of union of forms, almost one might say an erotic coupling, where the erotic refers to the passion out of which beauty and creativity flow. The bicycle and the bicyclist meld together in such a profound way as to reveal to any cyclist given over to actually cycling and not racing one of the deeper existential truths: that we are always travelling with, that we are never truly on our own. The frequencies and the energies that a cyclist encounters, together with the synergies he enables through his own bodying forth, reveal this insight in such a matter of fact way that most people do not even give it a second thought. But this is the beauty of cycling: its simplicity. And simplicity is a lot more complex than it appears at first sight.
To be sure, nowadays, the market has taken this simple form and accessorized it as the capitalist machine is wont to do, making it more finnicky, more cumbersome, more pricy, and more attractive to all those capitalistically brainwashed minds who believe that identity is not what you take off but what you put on.
Of course, the truth of identity is where we are going by riding the bicycle. The truth of synergetic enterprise, of travelling with, of spontaneous and inter-dependent co-arising. Its amazing how open the cyclist is to these forces as opposed to say the hermetically sealed car driver, or passenger.
In a recent talk during National Bike Week, Clive Cazeaux, Professor of Aesthetics at Cardiff School of Art and Design, noted that:
‘Cycling’ in actual fact encompasses an extremely large number of ways of life and forms of being. This in itself is philosophically interesting, suggesting that if cycling is any one thing, it is perhaps first and foremost a set of questions that asks us to reflect on identity and the commitments we make in life.
This reflection on identity is what makes the bicycle so great, what makes the human bodymind so great. A car can never give us this opportunity. Indeed, any technology that usurps our own hyper-organic energy whilst limitting the quality of our world, does exactly the opposite: it imposes identity upon us, some fractious and fatuous identity that is at complete odds with the reality of our being not just in the world but of our being connected with everything else in it.
Simple! But, since the whole remit of our economic model (not to mention our over-reliance on scientism) appears to be to complicate matters beyond their essence, this simplicity is concealed behind a whole swathe of nonsense. It's only by getting on your bike religiously that you will come to reconnect with this simplicity and declutter the self from any falseness in the process.
Moreover, as someone who believes not just in the bicycle and the body to reveal those deeper truths (that we have chosen to bury beneath our eagerness for convenience and ease) but in language, it is perhaps necessary to look at the word 'simple' itself for some clues into its essence.
simple (adj.)
"characterized by a single part," 1590s, from Latin simplex "single, simple, plain, unmixed, uncompounded," literally "onefold," from Proto-Indo-European compound of *sem- (1) "one, as one, together with" (cognates: Latin semper "always," literally "once for all;" Sanskrit sam "together;" see 'same').
Here, we can see the parallels between 'simple' and 'same': Same as a 'once for all'; same as an immanant withness. I mean how much more profound do you need to get?
Gradually, through a lifetime of cycling, this revelation embodies itself within you, to encompass and elaborate a compassionate response to all those other creatures and energies that are not separate from you but an integral part of you. It is only by cycling (in other words, bodying forth under your own steam outwith the remit of a man-world that seeks to steal that energy from you) that one can come closer to this fundamental understanding of who you are, and what you are actually doing here.
Simplicity is the key to identity. Nakedness (as unadornedness) the key to being with.
- [When they built the Reid Building for the Glasgow School of Art, spending some 30 million pounds doing so, they (Steven Holl, the architect), typically, forgot to put in a bicycle rack. Consequently, and in spite of signs advising students not to, bicycles are parked on the neighbouring building's railings. You try doing that with a car].
'The Art of Parking'
