Captain Stag, erotic communist's prick

[imomus]

Cars may be made by fewer and fewer -- and bigger and bigger -- companies worldwide, and those companies may be taking fewer and fewer risks with their design and naming strategies. But just about anyone can set up as a bicycle manufacturer, and make a zero emission vehicle with a zany name redolent of communism and sex. That's because bicycles are redolent of communism and sex. They're erotic as hell, and they're the future.



Bicycles come in all shapes and sizes and have the oddest names. Sure, I told you that I was driving a car called a Daihatsu Naked in Japan this summer, but as a bicycle rider I could have been having so much more fun riding a Captain Stag, an Erotic, a Communist or a Sprick. Like my new album 'Otto Spooky', or like the Shinto religion of Japan, bicycles have some earthy sexiness about them. They make everything they touch -- your body, the environment through which they pass -- better, healthier, greener. They're diverse, divergent, egalitarian, pluralistic, good for you, sexy.

On your bicycle you're rushing along at a comfortable yet exciting 25kph, and it feels like you're flying through the air. If you're in Tokyo or Berlin -- bicycle-friendly cities -- you're safe on the sidewalk or in a dedicated bicycle lane, and there are many other cyclists all around, a democratic mass. Two wheels good. As you pedal (and pedalling a bicycle, like walking and fucking but unlike driving a car, is a rhythmic activity, a pumping motion with a rising trot and its own systolic-diastolic interval) you're listening to your iPod. Track two of 'Otto Spooky' is coming up to the chorus:

Gaelic runes and harvest moons
Shinto dogs at the phallic symbol
Mustard seed and dandelion
A time to live, a time to die
Meet me in the waving leaves
The question mark in the scarecrow summer
Meet me out by the lemon trees
Pull me down, and pump me dry

'Ah,' you think, 'I must remember to pump up the tires soon! Gotta keep 'em hard...'

The green bicycle at the top right of my photo is a classic British Moulton (there is still a British bicycle industry, although British cars are for the most part a thing of the past) in the studio of graphic designer James Goggin, who is at this moment finishing two sleeves (the US and UK sleeves are quite different) for 'Otto Spooky'.

The photo below that is a glimpse of cultural commentator Reyner Banham pedalling his Moulton through the streets of London in the 1960s. I haven't shown you the whole photo -- which is superb, Banham with his full beard looks quite the groovy, cranky boffin as he pedals along -- because we're using this photo half-toned inside the CD sleeve, under the transparent panel behind the (crash hat hazard yellow) CD itself, and I want to keep it under wraps for the time being. But it's worth saying that Banham -- who wrote a great deal, in his book about Los Angeles, about cars at their most flamboyant, and yet remained, himself, flamboyantly bicycle-oriented to the end of his days -- has become, in a way, the personification, totem or mascot of Otto Spooky. It's 'Otto Spooky as played by Reyner Banham'. Reyner is right there on the sleeve. And 'the historian of the immediate future' is riding a Moulton.

Comments

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

Haven't read that one yet, though I can't say it's high on my list. I kind of lost interest round the time of Mona Lisa Overdrive. I'm reading David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" and enjoying it, though there's a bit too much English buggery in it for my tastes (wonder if that's what you need to write about to be Bookered).

Out, cheerio.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

One last thought on Alexander -- the reason alarm bells are ringing in my head the moment I read about his friendship with Prince Charles is that this combination of Essentialist philosophy with power is the worst of all possible worlds. An Essentialist remote from power is a crank who might stimulate interesting conversation. An Essentialist close to power (and let's assume for the moment that the British monarchy actually has some, because there's no constitution to protect us should they decide to exercise the ancient powers they do still, in theory, possess) begins to resemble Savonarola in league with King Charles VIII of France (http://www.imomus.com/thought011001.html). It's one thing to propose that a universal pattern of 'objective' good or beauty might exist; it's quite another to team up with a power which can persecute patterns which deviate from your view of nature's template.

[fibdemetics.livejournal.com]

An 'natural philosopher' close to power is at least preferable to a neo-Hegelian (http://right-web.org/ind/fukuyama/fukuyama.php).

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

That may be, however despite the excerpts youve chosen from Alexander I don:t think hes more complex than the Essentialist you paint him to be.

One of the reasons I am interested in Alexander is that it presents an interesting critique of 20th century architecture and urban design. The patterns are heuristics not meant to be taken as axioms or rules. As for his attempts to formlize his ideas in the more recent books, I think it is an interesting, and stimluting, system of thought, but like any system of though is limited and not to be taken overly seriously. For example, David Bohm:s theory of wholeness (which has roots in Goethe:s philosophy of science) figures importantly in Alexander:s theories.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

Another thing about Charles, is he really close to power in any sense? Not to defend him, one of the few shreds of my Celtic background that persists is a dislike of English aristocracy, but isn:t Charles a bit of a black sheep of his family? All that stuff about slow life, real food, etc... and his statement that much of contemporary urban design and architecture stinks is not far off the mark.