Flâneuring by bike: David Byrne

I've always thought of David Byrne as the leader of Talking Heads, so as a musician. 

However, Byrne, born in 1952 in Scotland, raised in a small Baltimore suburb, matured artistically in New York, is actually also a writer and photographer and has been involved in visual art and filmmaking. 

Regarding the subject of my studies in this unit, in 2009, he published a book which is the reference point of the flaneur on two wheels. Byrne never gave up using his bicycle to make short anti-tourist visits to the cities of the world that were the destination of the musical events of the Talking Heads. 

"Bicycle Diaries" is a book dedicated to these cycling tours of the cities, made without a precise itinerary but guided by intuition and sensations, like a two-wheeled flaneur. 

Byrne talks about a: 

"... sense of liberation ..... as I pedaled around many of the world's principal cities. I felt more connected to the life on the streets than I would have inside a car or in some form of public transport: I could stop whenever I wanted to; it was often (very often) faster than a car or taxi for getting from point A to point B; and I didn't have to follow any set route. "

(Byrne, David. Bicycle Diaries (p.2). Faber & Faber, London, Kindle Ed, 2010). 

This means of locomotion and Byrne's attitude to seek the secondary, or even hidden, side of urban space, the population, and the intangible content of houses, palaces, museums, and shops, are the tools for a version of flaneur that I feel familiar, and that Benjamin called "asphalt botanist".

(Byrne, David. Bicycle Diaries (p.19). Faber & Faber, London, Kindle Ed, 2010).

"This point of view — faster than a walk, slower than a train, often slightly higher than a person — became my panoramic window on much of the world over the last thirty years — 

and it still is."

(Byrne, David. Bicycle Diaries (p.2). Faber & Faber, London, Kindle Ed, 2010). 

A question arises spontaneously: why travel around cities by bicycle and not open spaces, countryside, or natural areas? 

According to Byrne, cities are a sign of our being social animals. As such, cities are the historical synthesis and manifestation of beliefs, ideas, behaviors, and choices of a social group that has identified itself, over the years, in those places. 

The Byrne / flaneur observes people and their signs from a position that he considers comfortable and privileged as it is out of the scheme. 

The method, which, more or less consciously, he uses, recalls two central concepts of Roland Barthes' thought. The "studium", the social reality, manifests itself to the Byrne / cyclist as he travels through the city's streets: it is made up of civil and industrial buildings, artefacts, clothes, people's behavior, roads, shops and other commercial activities,  The "punctum", that is the one that involves Byrne/cyclist/flaneur, arousing emotions and, as in the case of home town Baltimore, feelings through childhood memories.

Byrne, in his own way, is a "witness". He is not the Baudelaire/witness of the before and after Haussmann. He is involved in the "new" and the resonances of the "old", denoted by a change that Byrne has never experienced.

(Byrne, David. Bicycle Diaries (p.27). Faber & Faber, London, Kindle Ed, 2010).

"They say, in their unique visual language, “This is what we think matters, this is how we live and how we play.” Riding a bike through all this is like navigating the collective neural pathways of some vast global mind. It really is a trip inside the collective psyche of a compacted group of people."

(Byrne, David. Bicycle Diaries (p.3). Faber & Faber, London, Kindle Ed, 2010).

Bicycle Diaries is the summary of a visual and emotional experience, therefore absolutely personal and intimate. 

According to Byrne, it is a "self-examination" of the protagonist/writer who identifies with the city, or rather, he mirrors himself and writes about his reactions. 

I believe the themes of the mirror, self-analysis and the personal drive to wander are common to most authors/flaneurs of any era. Whether wandering is triggered and nourished by memory, the search for emotions, differences and similarities, or driven by self-identification, it is an essentially personal experience and, for this reason, unique, of which we are set apart.

"Needless to say, riding a bike along the shoulder of an expressway is no fun. There’s nothing romantic about it either—you’re not a cool outlaw, you’re simply somewhere you don’t belong."

(Byrne, David. Bicycle Diaries (p.11). Faber & Faber, London, Kindle Ed, 2010)

However, Situationist thought departs from this panorama of interdisciplinary works that are guided by an essentially endogenous philosophy, with its political act of exogenous antithesis to the status quo.

(Byrne, David. Bicycle Diaries (p.28). Faber & Faber, London, Kindle Ed, 2010)

Byrne, referring to his visit to the city of Berlin, cites "the ethos of the gardener" and, with it, the respect for nature. However, he often uses the term "manicured" to describe a place's aesthetic level based on order and cleanliness. 

But what does neat or clean mean? What is the term of comparison? 

This anthropocentric way of thinking, which keeps the human being central to the environment, is a guideline of the whole book. 

Byrne draws from the perception of the surrounding space the ideas to reflect on man, on peoples, on nations, on their history and their urban evolution, as in the chapter that concerns Berlin and its change after the fall of the Wall.  He bikes between the so-called gentrification, the repurposing of the old buildings in the east and the brick-by-brick repetitive cancellation of a painful and controversial nazi-communist past.  

A European cultivated field becomes, compared to an American one, a symbol of the mentality of this or that population and the potential impulses to dominate nature, therefore others.

"Maybe that’s why lots of North Americans feel that the whole world has to be tamed and brought under control while Europeans, having more or less achieved that control in their own lands, feel a duty to nurture and manage rather than simply subdue."

(Byrne, David. Bicycle Diaries (p.44). Faber & Faber, London, Kindle Ed, 2010)

In my opinion, the passages in the book where Byrne reflects on himself and others as human beings, are the ones that connote him as "flaneur of the world": they are also the most stimulating. 

I feel akin to this way of travelling the environment and broadening the scope of my reflection, without anchoring it to what I see and photograph. 

For this reason, I recognize them as "resonances" of the space that surrounds me, as if they were the means that the environment uses to send me a wave with which to put me in phase and perceive what cannot be seen, the intangible, the imaginable.

Bicycle Diaries is Byrne's travel diary in the outside world but also in the author's soul. 

As well as in "Journey around my room" by Xavier de Maistre (1795), every place is a cue, a stimulus to broader reasoning on history, peoples, and fundamental issues such as justice, property, poverty, domination, wealth, religion, sense of life. 

It is a continuous invitation to stop, meditate and contemplate, both as an insider and as an outsider. 

In "The Mindful Photographer" (2022, Thames & Hudson), Sophie Howarth, through the basic practice of meditation, invites us to stop and "...gently disengage..." from everyday thoughts, in order to look at the surroundings with a new and fresh awareness, as if we were in place for the first time. 

Byrne talks about travelling to new places: he manages to describe, at the same time, the awareness of those who have documented themselves and the freshness of those who "see" for the first time, in a continuous succession of impressions and reflections.

"Is this fair? Not exactly, but neither was the appropriation of the land years ago by the whites. Justice, some might say, was simply delayed. If I can steal from you, and you are powerless to reclaim your property or land, even for generations, does it then at some point legally and morally become mine? At some point does the passage of time itself transfer ownership? What point might that be? Ten years? A hundred? A thousand?"

(Byrne, David. Bicycle Diaries (p.70). Faber & Faber, London, Kindle Ed, 2010)

David Byrne's "The Bicycle Diaries" offers a unique perspective on urban exploration and the social dynamics that develop along bicycle routes.

The bicycle becomes a means of connecting with the urban fabric, allowing Byrne to discover hidden corners, lesser-known neighbourhoods and casual interactions with ordinary people. This intimate and slow perspective allows him to capture details and nuances that might otherwise be overlooked.

Furthermore, one of the central themes of Byrne's book is the importance of the bicycle as a sustainable means of transport and its positive impact on the environment. The author explores cities under this ecological lens, emphasizing the benefits of cycling to reduce pollution, improve health and create more livable communities. 

This political and critical stance towards the consequences of urbanization unites him with all the flaneurs who have preceded him.

Indeed, during his bicycle flaneuring, Byrne not only observes his surroundings but also offers profound reflections on social and political issues. Through his critical gaze of him, he analyzes urban inequalities, unbridled urbanization, transport policies and the impacts of consumerism on city life. These considerations add a social and political dimension to his cycling flaneurism.

The experience of cycling offers Byrne a direct connection to the urban landscape. Through the cyclical movement, he experiences physical sensations and perceptions, such as the wind on his face, the noise of the wheels on the roads and muscle fatigue. 

These sensations are intrinsic to his cycling flaneurism and contribute to his unique experience of urban exploration.