Bicycle Diaries

by David Byrne

  A few days later I reach Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta, another isolated rock formation in the middle of nowhere. These are both on Aboriginal lands, and the Aborigines co-run the park.

  We, the traditional landowners of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, are direct descendants of the beings who created our lands during the Tjukurpa (Creation Time). We have always been here. We call ourselves Anangu, and would like you to use that term for us.

  The Anangu also prefer that people not climb the rock, as it’s a sacred place for their culture, but their wishes are clearly not being honored in this case: there is a rope and other things fastened onto one of the more gentle slopes of the rock, so quite a few are making the climb. I decide to jog around the rock instead, as it’s early morning and still cool out. It’s about three to four kilometers around. There are numerous caves and sheltered recesses along the base of the rock, filled with Anangu paintings and drawings.

  The paintings and drawings in the caves are a palimpsest: each generation seems to have had complete disregard for the work of their predecessors. They paint and draw right on top of the earlier work, not bothering to clear an area or find a clean stone surface. It makes me think that the drawings and paintings themselves possibly aren’t what is valued in this case, but that the act of placing them and creating them is where the importance lies. The drawings are simply the residue of that act.

  Just over the horizon from Uluru lies its twin impossibility, Kata Tjuta. This outcropping looks like humongous blobs of dough that have been left to rise and then begin to lean and sag this way and that of their own weight. This one is politically okay to hike into, though visually it’s a bit like heading into a giant butt crack.

  Back at the bunkerlike motel evening is approaching and I walk around the desert again. Now I can see small signs of life. Here is a shot of an ant mound, ringed with eucalyptus leaves that the colony has gathered.

  For some reason, examining the ant mound, I break down and begin crying, inexplicably. I suspect that the desolate landscape and weird geography I’ve been passing through might have triggered something deeply personal—but I don’t know what. In the end the tears are cathartic, though I don’t know why, or what exactly might have been sorted out. I’d love to think I’ve just gone through some cosmic existential rite of passage, triggered by an ant mound, but I suspect the explanation might be more mundane. It would be flattering to think that the dome full of stars out here and the little critters scurrying around on the ground have put me, the human ant, in my place, and I’m having an epiphany about my holy insignificance. But being that I’m mere yards from a crappy concrete-block motel room and a humming minifridge I doubt it.

  London

  London is a city not on a grid plan, which can be both good and bad for getting around by bike. If one knows the streets well, one can, by taking a zigzag path, avoid the large, busy thoroughfares that snake through the maze of smaller streets and, by following those smaller arteries, travel more or less as the crow flies. However, not being a native, I have to consult a map fairly often, as the winding streets here can lead one astray—without realizing it, for example, I could be headed northwest rather than west, and gradually go miles out of my way.

  London sprawls for an old city. Most European capitals are pretty compact, but London, being an amalgamation of former villages, has many centers, and activities can take place miles apart from one another. As a result there can be some long and strenuous pedals. These don’t necessarily result in making a trip longer than it would be on the tube, but I sometimes arrive a little shiny.

  I’ve learned after many years not to fill my travel days exclusively with work, but to give myself some free time, some breathing space, so I can manage to retain my sanity despite the feeling of dislocation that comes with the traveling. Random wandering clears the head of the worries and the concerns that might be lurking, and sometimes it’s even inspiring. I lean toward contemporary art shows, as that’s an area I’m involved in, but medical museums, industrial museums, and the National Museum of Roller Skating in Lincoln, Nebraska, were all equally exciting and served as destinations—though often what I passed along the way was even more interesting.

  The Policeman Inside

  In the morning I bike east from the hotel in Shepherd’s Bush across town to the Whitechapel Gallery, where I have a meeting with Iwona Blazwick, the director, about a possible talk later in the fall. That takes me more or less in a straight line across London, west to east, staying on the north side of the Thames. I could have taken a large multilane road that runs that way (Westway to Marylebone Road to Pentonville Road—all the same road, really), but I prefer navigating by landmarks. Hen riette Mortensen, who works with Gehl Architects, a Danish urban planning and advisory group, mentioned to me recently that this is a common urban instinct. She said that in parts of New York there are surprisingly few such landmarks, and therefore people sometimes lose their bearings. Not that they get hopelessly lost—though tourists might—but that our somewhat limited instinctual sense of location desires more markers in some areas.

  In many cities these landmarks are famous buildings, bridges, and monuments. A triumphal arch, an old train station, or a plaza with a tower or church on it are common markers. In many towns these were all made during one prosperous era, which leads me to wonder if the steel and glass towers that are springing up everywhere now—some of them in wacky shapes like pickles and sharp-edged triangles—ever will be looked at by some future generation as the charming markers that give a city its identity. Will some funny-shaped steel and mirror-glass monolith function, in the future, in the same way the Eiffel Tower, the Zocalo, or Marble Arch do?

  My route takes me by Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Bucking-ham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, the theater district, and Spit alfields Market. Not the most direct route to Whitechapel, but hopscotching from one marker to another feels like participating in a giant board game—it is immensely satisfying. Each marker is almost within sight of the next one, so progress toward my objective proceeds via a series of giant steps.

  After I arrive we talk over tea and Iwona mentions that she was recently in Iran to visit some of the artists currently working there. She says most of them are regularly subjected to beatings by the government, and they incorporate that into their lives and dress, wearing six pairs of pants for their beating appointments.

  The talk turns from there, unsurprisingly, to male-dominated societies, and she volunteers that societies that separate the sexes sometimes do so in order to encourage violence and aggression: to be more warlike.

  At one point, as an example of her idea that oppressed people become oppressors, she mentions Israel’s dominance over the Palestinians, and the aggressive behavior of the Israelis, as if this were a well-known fact. I don’t altogether disagree, but I am surprised to hear it voiced so openly. In America, and especially in New York, there is a hidden level of not-so-subtle censorship of such statements. They are just never heard, or if they are, the speaker is often given a nasty look or accused of anti-Semitism.

  I wonder how many other aspects of North American thought might be self-censored. Quite a few, I would imagine. Every culture must have its no-speak/no-tell zones. The “policeman inside,” as William Burroughs called it. Though we might espouse free speech as an absolute virtue, some self-censorship might be excusable. There are plenty of times when we have nasty revenge fantasies about drivers who cut us off and what we would do to the people on the other end of rude phone conversations, but we don’t always voice those feelings. Well, not seriously. Likewise, salacious thoughts about strangers might be voiced by louts, but “refined” folks, though they too might be turned on by an attractive woman’s legs or a man’s crotch, keep those thoughts to themselves. It’s part of the social contract. It’s how we get along. Self-censorship is part of being a social animal, and in that sense it’s not always a bad thing.

  We refrain, most of the time, from insulting or attacking our frie
nds’ religious beliefs. In fact the very subject of what religious beliefs might be held by an individual is often considered out of bounds in polite conversation. Likewise, we don’t usually make fun of other people’s families in front of them—their parents, children, or siblings. Only they are allowed to do that. And most of us refrain from direct criticism of people’s personal appearance. We don’t inform people that they are overweight, broken out, or having a bad-hair day.

  But what Burroughs was referring to was more than that. He, I think rightly, realized that eventually we reach a point where the self-censorship of some ideas, not just what we might refer to as rude comments, can become internalized. At some point “bad,” inappropriate, politically incorrect, or unconventional thoughts may not even arise or occur to us. If they do they are suppressed so quickly, unconsciously, that it’s as though we’d never had them. Soon they appear to never arise at all. Freud noticed this and presumed that these forbidden thoughts accumulate and fester somewhere: the trash can never truly be emptied by intellectually or consciously throwing it out, according to him. For Burroughs this censorship is evidence of a kind of mind control—an instance of society limiting not just what we do and say, but what we allow ourselves to think. For him it is an example of the religious police or homeland security finally getting inside your head and installing their little cop in there. And that kind of censorship is perfect—once you self-censor certain ideas you don’t need an outside agency as a monitor.

  When that level of self-censorship kicks in you are unaware that it is happening. At that point, it seems to you that there is no censorship at all; it appears to you that your thoughts are actually unfettered and free. In all likelihood the outside instigator or legislator of your thoughts—the government, the media, your friends, your parents—have also convinced themselves that those thoughts are not even happening, that they don’t exist. Eventually there is no more outside-the-box thinking as far as some kinds of thoughts go. Everything, even the maker of the box, is inside the box.

  Country Life

  On my way back to the hotel, I ride through Hyde Park. The sun is shining brightly, rare for this town. Lots of people are out walking what I must assume are upper-class dogs. Only a few limited breeds are in evidence: blond Irish setters, Scotties (mostly white), and the occasional whippet. Almost no other member of the dog world is visible at all. Ditto the people—only a few rarified breeds seem to enjoy the park.

  I pass by what I assume is an upper-class matron and her kids. She is in full regalia—a green hunting jacket, beige trousers, and Wellington boots. Is she planning on off-roading it? Finding a particularly soft bit of ground here in Hyde Park and wallowing in her Wellies? Shooting a few of the local ducks or swans? (The colors she’s wearing will help her blend in perfectly.) Her kids are likewise dressed for “country life.” Miniature versions of Mum. Wonderful that though they’re in the middle of one of the world’s great cities they can pretend to themselves that they are in the Highlands. Well, not really—we know that here costume is, more than in most places, a signifier of what class you belong to.

  After lunch at the hotel I go off again, this time along the promenade that borders the north side of the river until I reach Tower Bridge, crawling with tourists, and then I head south across the bridge to a small side street and the Design Museum. Tom Heatherwick curated what is called the Conran Foundation Collection show, which was beautifully installed, hilarious, and moving. The exhibit consists of thirty thousand pounds’—the show’s financial budget—worth of his favorite oddball stuff, some of it examples of high design but most of it not. Interesting that this show has nothing to do with Conran’s, the store, except that Sir Conran is on the board of the museum and funds this particular design show. Of course far from being high design, many of the objects that Heatherwick has chosen are things we might easily have at home. By putting each thing in its own modular wooden vitrine, his installation allows you to consider the objects, whether high or low, one interesting item at a time: toothpaste dispensers, stylish high-tech design gadgets, plastic combs, and Cup Noodles packages.

  Once upon a time it was considered radical to even show mass-produced objects in the same place as fine art—in museums with flattering lighting and little labels. Now, by implication and extension, Cup Noodles containers presented next to more expensive design objects become equals. We’re being asked to see the elegance or at least innovation and cleverness in banal everyday crap that for the most part is never given a second look. Living with this kind of stuff every day, day after day, we often don’t even notice it anymore. We assume it just is—unremarkable, undistinguished—and we forget that it was at some point designed by someone and may in fact be elegant, efficiently made, and even beautiful.

  After viewing the show I have tea with the (now ex-) director of the Design Museum, Alice Rawsthorn, who can jump into a serious philosophical discussion faster than anyone I’ve ever met. She immediately asks if any of the journalists who’ve interviewed me lately were actually stimulating to talk to. I respond by mentioning a thought that had occurred to me regarding the perception of people who create things, especially performers like me. People tend to think that creative work is an expression of a preexisting desire or passion, a feeling made manifest, and in a way it is. As if an overwhelming anger, love, pain, or longing fills the artist or composer, as it might with any of us—the difference being that the creative artist then has no choice but to express those feelings through his or her given creative medium. I proposed that more often the work is a kind of tool that discovers and brings to light that emotional muck. Singers (and possibly listeners of music too) when they write or perform a song don’t so much bring to the work already formed emotions, ideas, and feelings as much as they use the act of singing as a device that reproduces and dredges them up. The song remakes the emotion—the emotion doesn’t produce the song. Well, the emotion has to have been there at some time in one’s life for there to be something from which to draw. But it seems to me that a creative device—if a work can be considered a device—evokes that passion, melancholy, loneliness, or euphoria but is not itself an expression, an example, a fruit of that passion. Creative work is more accurately a machine that digs down and finds stuff, emotional stuff that will someday be raw material that can be used to produce more stuff, stuff like itself—clay to be available for future use.

  Form Is Function

  I head back west, this time along the pedestrian promenade that extends along the South Bank, then north across Waterloo Bridge and inland until I reach the British Museum, where there is a show of curiosity cabinets called Enlightenment. To me the collecting of “curiosities” and an enlightened view of the world somehow seem mutually exclusive, or at least one doesn’t necessarily always lead and connect to the other, but here they have been shoved together, possibly because an activity and a worldview overlapped in time.

  The objects in the Wunderkammer—preserved creatures, odd books and treatises, antique carvings, sacred objects from foreign lands—were often grouped, by Sir John Soane and other collectors of that period, by whatever criteria seemed appropriate, be it shape, material, or color. There would be, for example, a mass of bulbous objects from various parts of the world and then some sharp, pointy ones grouped together. Many of these objects had nothing to do with one another except for having similar shapes. Hardly what one would think of as a rigorous, enlightened scientific method of categorization. But thinking back on it, I would suggest that, yes, in a truly enlightened world all green objects are in a way related somehow, more than by just being green, and maybe they are related in a way we don’t understand yet, just as all hexagonal objects might share a common trait as well. These crazy groupings might someday be seen as not completely arbitrary.

  Any kind of taxonomy might be as good or valid as any other, though we might not know for sure until some time in the future when a scientific paper “discovers” that hexagonal or bulbous shapes, or similar colors
or textures are functions that in some way determine content, in the way that the form of a DNA molecule defines and is its function. Form doesn’t follow function in that case—form is function. I wonder to myself if genetics might be on the verge of some such wider revelation, beyond our understanding of DNA, based on molecular structures that are common across life-forms and species. Temple Grandin, in her book Animals in Translation, proposes that all animals with a white patch of fur on their bodies are less likely to be shy than their cousins. On the surface such an idea might seem completely irrational. As if my hair color could be an indication or even a determinant of my personality. But if such ideas can be proven then we’re not that far from pointy things and bulbous things as legitimate classifications.

  It’s a bit like sympathetic magic in a way: the usual Western presumption that “primitive” rituals mimic what they desire to achieve—that phallic objects might be believed to increase male potency and playacting rainfall might somehow bring it about. I am suspicious of such obvious connections and I suspect that the connections among things, people, and processes can be equally irrational. I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe—but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn’t be surprised if poetry—poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs—is how the world works. The world isn’t logical, it’s a song.