Sunday, October 10, 2010

david byrne's bicycle diary - speaks!

on this - the triple ten of days - i'm really pleased to share something that has a little bit of that
cooler than cool quality we all crave.

david byrne has been one of those iconic figures in my life who have lived louder than i dare.



his work with talking heads and then as a solo artist and especially the seminal work "my life in the bush of ghosts" which he co-created with brian eno, drove me to think beyond my thinking at that time, to see the world as something completely different and richer than i had previously known.

that david is a cyclist came as something of a revelation when i came across some mentions in his online journal that got me to thinking about how a guy who is a slightly off-centre personage, could fit cycling
into his persona and lifestyle.

it brought me to think about my own relationship with my bicycles and especially my own rationale for being a cyclist. which brings me to my own reading of david's book "the bicycle diaries". i read the book a little bit at a time last year, sort of like eating a bento box of sushi - the experience being a lot about unpacking small spaces and letting the unpacking extend into the bigger spaces of your experiencing.

i enjoyed the book from the perspective of reading words written by david because even though i haven't ever met him, he has a place in my life - a good place actually. i enjoyed the book because it's about an intelligent creative person talking about swimming ever so slightly upstream - riding a bike brings with it a very slender coolness quotient and regardless of how many other people are doing it, you really are on your own, carving your niche, making the space within which you wish to move from point a to point b and survive and thrive
and especially to love the experience for ever after.

if you're not a reader but you are a listener then you may be delighted to have the opportunity to hear the first audiobook i know of that features a guy talking essentially about cycling in an urban context.

an intelligent, hip, cool, insightful, streetsmart, artsy, wish he was my friend sort of guy.

curious at all?
good, then you belong here and you should give this a listen.

like it?
wanna spend some of last weeks pay cheque on more of it?
then go here for the book or you can go here for the chapter by chapter audiobook.


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