For reasons I can’t fully explain, my favorite bicycle is the simplest one I own. (I live in Colorado, bike all the time, have several bikes, yada yada.) My favorite bike isn’t my mountain bike with 24 gears, hydraulic disc brakes and oil-dampened suspension in the front and back—it’s my old-school steel, single-speed road bike.
I’m not exactly sure why it is, but that simple bike is the one I keep coming back to more than any other. It’s way more than the sum of its parts, which are dated as far as bike technology goes.
The bike just feels pure to me—a perfect expression of The Bicycle. And when I look at it, I understand it. I know how all the parts work. I can take them apart and see. They’re not a mystery to me like the brakes or suspension on my mountain bike.
In his article, CNN film critic A.S. Hamrah explains the attraction of The Artist to us in the same way. The movie is tangible, it makes sense to us. Like my single-speed to me. But Hamrah also brings up another point I think is vital here.
“More and more, we put ourselves in the strange position of using technology to get away from technology,” he writes. “When we travel, smartphones connect us with places to find quiet and solitude…”
He’s right. And, more than that, technology is reminding us of our nature by way of contrast. I don’t think it’s taking us away from ourselves, at least not the way technophobes say.
It’s the yin and the yang. Without rain, we can’t see the true nature of sun. Without my mountain bike, I can’t see the purity of my single speed. Without Avatar, we can’t see The Artist.
