Back-story: I have recently come to purchase a motorbike. Just now, while sitting at my desk, I got back to asking myself the same old question of: "but what EXACTLY do I like about riding a bike?" I had a few reasons pinned down, but I knew there was one more, lurking, that I couldn't quite grasp. Somewhere, deep in my unconscious, I had a nebulous form of how I felt about style, but it's in articulating that idea that it can become solid. And only until just now, have I been able to find the words to solidify and articulate that last reason.
So... why do I like bikes?
The obvious/already well-formed ideas:
-> It's life-affirming - being fully aware that your life hangs in the balance every time you're on the road forces you to re-evaluate how you value your life, and really makes you appreciate what you have.
-> It's more of a sensory overload than any other means of transport: speed - The wind is buffeting you as you speed along the motorway, you can feel every bump and jolt of the road as you go over it, your balance tells you how you're tracking the corner. It all adds to the sense of speed and motion in a way that you can't even comprehend in a car.
-> It's more of a sensory overload than any other means of transport: connection to your surroundings - As you travel through London you can smell everything better around you, you're hit by the smell of jerk chicken from the food markets as you travel through Brixton, the smell of weed from someone's window as you pass the hubbub of people enjoying their life. You feel a lot more connected to the immediate world around you, a world which, conversely, cars shield you from - for better or for worse.
-> The idea of holding your life in your hands - Every time I get on my bike, I'm relying my skills as a rider, literally putting my life in my own hands. Yes, a lot of the time it's another person in a car that doesn't see you which leads to an accident on a motorbike, but any measure of skill acts as a mitigating factor. Either way, that's not even the point. I enjoy the metaphorical implications in that it's my own skill that's keeping me on track.
->
It gives you a sense of present-time awareness - Because, for as long as your on that bike, nothing else exists. All other thoughts and concerns melt away and it's just you and the bike.
The newly developed idea:
-> Style
Until now, I had associated style with a purely cosmetic and shallow perception of life. I imagine the kind of people who don't study the function of why things are the way they are, but the shallower question of how they are they way they are. You don't study an engine based on it's style & image, but based on how the parts come together to form a working body based on strict mechanical principles. But style is a lot more than that. Perhaps this lesson took me so long to learn, because, as an introvert, I tend towards soaking up information and trying to make sense of it internally, not feeling any pressure or need to let other people know what I'm doing or what I think. But that's exactly what style is: a way of communicating to the world how you see it.
Style is a form of communicating to the world about your ideals. It's a visual representation of everything you'd like to tell people about yourself. It's associated with outlooks and mentality, how you feel about the world, what you think things mean to you and how you'd like to live your life.
The style of someone who rides a sports bike: live life fast.
The style of someone who rides a classic bike like me: I respect heritage, and for me it's more of the feeling & lifestyle of biking rather than pure speed.
But then style can be generalised to a much larger level than bikes and fashion. As I'm writing this, I'm reminded of a study that was able to associate people's music taste with various personality traits, like self-esteem and creativity. Of course, now we're getting into territories of cause and effect: do people choose music to communicate to the world how they perceive themselves, or are they drawn towards the music that's most suited to them? ...How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7598549.stm
