Posted by Mike W. on January 10, 2009, 2:07 pm
Why I Might Seem Like I'm Not Listening To You
A documentary came out in 1971 called "On Any Sunday". Some say it was
about motorcycling. I think it was about the passion of people who ride
motorcycles... the way the experience hits some of them... at least the
lucky ones. OAS probably influenced me more than any other creative or
academic experience in my life. It showed me a passion that was already
forming up on its own as I caught glimpses of motorcycles carrying big
smiles into and out of the woods. It gave me the single biggest thing I've
spent the years between age 14 and 51 thinking about. Riding.
The week OAS hit the theaters back in 1971, my dad "had" to take me to see
it 9 times. NINE times in 7 days. He'd have never done that for anything
else, but my guess is he picked up on some signal my eyes were giving off
and made it happen. If it was anything like the look on my daughter's face
during the epic opening of the Lion King when she was a little girl, I'm
figuring he was watching me during that movie... not the movie itself. Dads
will understand what I'm talking about.
After it left the theaters, every possible waking moment was spent thinking
about riding motorcycles in the way I saw them through Bruce Brown's
(director) eyes. When I saw them before, it was for just a fleeting moment,
and then they were gone. Thanks to Bruce, I saw much more, including some
moments that I can only consider as heroic as any other moment in the
history film... like Malcolm continuing at full speed past the riders in
the mud hole by darting through the opening in the fence nobody else saw,
or crossing Lake Chapala hours ahead of the world. If you have this passion
I'm talking about, these moments display all the heroism you might find in
say... Doc Graham stepping off The Field to help the little girl that was
choking.
I got my first bike on Christmas morning, 1971. At about 1030am... a cold,
sunny, snowless day. It was loaded off the back of a dark colored pickup
truck and I could not even begin to contain my joy. Ever. It's still pegged
at 11 as I write this in 2009. I've had other bikes along the way... dirt,
street, police motorcycles, and even a trials bike. I still have that
Christmas present too... the best one I ever got.
But I don't think I sat down to write about the movie, but instead, the
sequence of events that movie began for me. As I said, I thought about
riding constantly, and it was in Bruce Brown's terms and style and feel.. a
cinematic, heroic, stylish point of view about motorcycling. Of the passion
that surrounds it. This ultimately lead me to start extending these
thoughts into new places... untrained, and awkwardly stumbling through
these creative moments in my head. Enjoying.. but also trying to make it as
good as Bruce did without knowing how. He used music, and slow motion, and
*perfect* points of view, and narrative to capture the feeling.. not just
the action. Music became part of how I thought and felt about motorcycling,
as well as other things that became passions too. When I remember rides, I
don't remember the noise or the "violence" of working through obstacles. I
remember it in terms that is about the perfection of every inch and every
moment of the ride. How devout people think of Heaven. Music goes with
both.
About a year after OAS came out, the song "I Can See Clearly" by Johnny
Nash came out and it PERFECTLY captured the feeling of a little segment
that I had been thinking about over and over and over, and over still
more.. for months... moving toward, I thought, my own little 8mm movie
about riding. They weren't called videos then. I can remember sitting in
Algebra... and English.. and Biology... and History... and Trig...
and................. working out little bits of how it should look in the
margins of my spiral notebooks. I had worked out a notation method to
"time" the action to the music. I didn't know story boards existed, but I
drew little story boards in the margins of the notebooks to show how it
should look from moment to moment. I can remember Mr. Granado telling me
several times to pay attention in whatever class he was teaching me...
Calculus I think.. as I focused on an "inspiration" I had about a part of
this little movie. This mania lasted into college... into my first job at
DEC. The snowy night my daughter was born, I remember looking at it and
thinking about it when I came home to get some rest before going back to
the hospital. I remember working on it on a plane back in 1992... seat 27C
on a United 727... had the row to my self.. it was night time... and the
flight attendant asked me what that was I was drawing in my Day Runner. I
know I've worked on it an infinity of times and in an infinity of places
since then... planes and hotels and airport lounges and my study. About 30
min ago, I happened upon, and added to, a pile of electronic notes about
this. It sure is different than it was back in '71... and also exactly the
same, in that I have to add to it when I have "figured something out".
I've been working on my little 2 min and 44 second expression of
motorcycling passion for 34 years. Perfecting it... extending it.. spending
hours... and years... on the camera placement, and speed transitions, and
the feelings just in that little bridge in the middle of the song where
tempo picks up. Doing my own private imitation of Richard Dreyfus' mania
with the mud on the dining room table, since before that movie was made.
This could not be more opposite from the exceedingly decisive way I am in
my work life (i.e. my life). It's a safe bet now that after three and a
half decades this is never going to end up on film or video... I'd say
that's ok, because I guess when I have the choice, I'm a journey guy... not
a destination guy. This must be how "creating" works when it's happening
for the right reasons. I wrote this in about 15 minutes.
--
Mike W.
96 XR400
70 CT70
71 KG 100 (Hodaka-powered)
99 KZ1000P (training)
99 KZ1000P (rider)
00 Beta Rev-3
Posted by john on January 10, 2009, 7:11 pm
thanks mike,
similar yet different for me.
i get more pleasure out of watching my kids "get it" or invent a new way to
bring terror & fear into my heart <grin>
did i mention a kid bought my girl jewelry for Christmas.. i am so much
toast... anyhow motorcycles for me were always forbidden fruit, the things
my parents abhorred, i did take my Nana for a ride on the back of a 76
yz250, she was a sport, infact she just hiked up her skirt and climbed on
the back.. mom & dad still to this day tolerate my riding habit but really
don't understand the whole risk to reward ratio... i didn't see the OAS
movie until last year.. the kids especially enjoyed the kill climb part when
the bikes would chase the rider back down the hill, i think they inherited
my sense of humor, poor kids <grin>
john
if you were to build a riffle from scratch which caliber would you make?
> Why I Might Seem Like I'm Not Listening To You
> A documentary came out in 1971 called "On Any Sunday". Some say it was
> about motorcycling. I think it was about the passion of people who ride
> motorcycles... the way the experience hits some of them... at least the
> lucky ones. OAS probably influenced me more than any other creative or
> academic experience in my life. It showed me a passion that was already
> forming up on its own as I caught glimpses of motorcycles carrying big
> smiles into and out of the woods. It gave me the single biggest thing I've
> spent the years between age 14 and 51 thinking about. Riding.
> The week OAS hit the theaters back in 1971, my dad "had" to take me to see
> it 9 times. NINE times in 7 days. He'd have never done that for anything
> else, but my guess is he picked up on some signal my eyes were giving off
> and made it happen. If it was anything like the look on my daughter's face
> during the epic opening of the Lion King when she was a little girl, I'm
> figuring he was watching me during that movie... not the movie itself.
> Dads
> will understand what I'm talking about.
> After it left the theaters, every possible waking moment was spent
> thinking
> about riding motorcycles in the way I saw them through Bruce Brown's
> (director) eyes. When I saw them before, it was for just a fleeting
> moment,
> and then they were gone. Thanks to Bruce, I saw much more, including some
> moments that I can only consider as heroic as any other moment in the
> history film... like Malcolm continuing at full speed past the riders in
> the mud hole by darting through the opening in the fence nobody else saw,
> or crossing Lake Chapala hours ahead of the world. If you have this
> passion
> I'm talking about, these moments display all the heroism you might find in
> say... Doc Graham stepping off The Field to help the little girl that was
> choking.
> I got my first bike on Christmas morning, 1971. At about 1030am... a cold,
> sunny, snowless day. It was loaded off the back of a dark colored pickup
> truck and I could not even begin to contain my joy. Ever. It's still
> pegged
> at 11 as I write this in 2009. I've had other bikes along the way... dirt,
> street, police motorcycles, and even a trials bike. I still have that
> Christmas present too... the best one I ever got.
> But I don't think I sat down to write about the movie, but instead, the
> sequence of events that movie began for me. As I said, I thought about
> riding constantly, and it was in Bruce Brown's terms and style and feel..
> a
> cinematic, heroic, stylish point of view about motorcycling. Of the
> passion
> that surrounds it. This ultimately lead me to start extending these
> thoughts into new places... untrained, and awkwardly stumbling through
> these creative moments in my head. Enjoying.. but also trying to make it
> as
> good as Bruce did without knowing how. He used music, and slow motion, and
> *perfect* points of view, and narrative to capture the feeling.. not just
> the action. Music became part of how I thought and felt about
> motorcycling,
> as well as other things that became passions too. When I remember rides, I
> don't remember the noise or the "violence" of working through obstacles. I
> remember it in terms that is about the perfection of every inch and every
> moment of the ride. How devout people think of Heaven. Music goes with
> both.
> About a year after OAS came out, the song "I Can See Clearly" by Johnny
> Nash came out and it PERFECTLY captured the feeling of a little segment
> that I had been thinking about over and over and over, and over still
> more.. for months... moving toward, I thought, my own little 8mm movie
> about riding. They weren't called videos then. I can remember sitting in
> Algebra... and English.. and Biology... and History... and Trig...
> and................. working out little bits of how it should look in the
> margins of my spiral notebooks. I had worked out a notation method to
> "time" the action to the music. I didn't know story boards existed, but I
> drew little story boards in the margins of the notebooks to show how it
> should look from moment to moment. I can remember Mr. Granado telling me
> several times to pay attention in whatever class he was teaching me...
> Calculus I think.. as I focused on an "inspiration" I had about a part of
> this little movie. This mania lasted into college... into my first job at
> DEC. The snowy night my daughter was born, I remember looking at it and
> thinking about it when I came home to get some rest before going back to
> the hospital. I remember working on it on a plane back in 1992... seat 27C
> on a United 727... had the row to my self.. it was night time... and the
> flight attendant asked me what that was I was drawing in my Day Runner. I
> know I've worked on it an infinity of times and in an infinity of places
> since then... planes and hotels and airport lounges and my study. About 30
> min ago, I happened upon, and added to, a pile of electronic notes about
> this. It sure is different than it was back in '71... and also exactly the
> same, in that I have to add to it when I have "figured something out".
> I've been working on my little 2 min and 44 second expression of
> motorcycling passion for 34 years. Perfecting it... extending it..
> spending
> hours... and years... on the camera placement, and speed transitions, and
> the feelings just in that little bridge in the middle of the song where
> tempo picks up. Doing my own private imitation of Richard Dreyfus' mania
> with the mud on the dining room table, since before that movie was made.
> This could not be more opposite from the exceedingly decisive way I am in
> my work life (i.e. my life). It's a safe bet now that after three and a
> half decades this is never going to end up on film or video... I'd say
> that's ok, because I guess when I have the choice, I'm a journey guy...
> not
> a destination guy. This must be how "creating" works when it's happening
> for the right reasons. I wrote this in about 15 minutes.
> --
> Mike W.
> 96 XR400
> 70 CT70
> 71 KG 100 (Hodaka-powered)
> 99 KZ1000P (training)
> 99 KZ1000P (rider)
> 00 Beta Rev-3
Posted by Mike W. on January 25, 2009, 3:26 am
>thanks mike,
>similar yet different for me.
>i get more pleasure out of watching my kids "get it" or invent a new way to
>bring terror & fear into my heart <grin>
>did i mention a kid bought my girl jewelry for Christmas.. i am so much
>toast... anyhow motorcycles for me were always forbidden fruit, the things
>my parents abhorred, i did take my Nana for a ride on the back of a 76
>yz250, she was a sport, infact she just hiked up her skirt and climbed on
>the back.. mom & dad still to this day tolerate my riding habit but really
>don't understand the whole risk to reward ratio... i didn't see the OAS
>movie until last year.. the kids especially enjoyed the kill climb part when
>the bikes would chase the rider back down the hill, i think they inherited
>my sense of humor, poor kids <grin>
Next time you come out this way, bring the girls... I have a joke I want to
tell them:)
>john
> if you were to build a riffle from scratch which caliber would you make?
I'd defer to Keith or Wes on these matters. I do enjoy shooting my .22
single shot I got when I was 10 more than anything else.
Mike
--
Mike W.
96 XR400
70 CT70
71 KG 100 (Hodaka-powered)
99 KZ1000P (training)
99 KZ1000P (rider)
00 Beta Rev-3
Posted by HardWorkingDog on January 11, 2009, 2:33 am
> A documentary came out in 1971 called "On Any Sunday". Some say it was
> about motorcycling. I think it was about the passion of people who ride
> motorcycles... the way the experience hits some of them... at least the
> lucky ones. OAS probably influenced me more than any other creative or
> academic experience in my life. It showed me a passion that was already
> forming up on its own as I caught glimpses of motorcycles carrying big
> smiles into and out of the woods. It gave me the single biggest thing I've
> spent the years between age 14 and 51 thinking about. Riding.
Yes.
I think I was already bitten by this bug, I know I already had a
motorcycle by the time OAS came out. I remember going countless times
to the Montrose Theater to watch it, hiding in the bathroom between
showings so I could sit through it again without buying another
ticket...
Maybe the biggest difference in my experience is that there was a
twenty year period, roughly, that I was completely unconscious to
riding. I can't explain what happened, but the part of me that was
made alive by riding was just, dead.
I can remember about 10 years ago I was driving the family to visit
relatives in the L.A. area. We were heading south on I-5 going through
the canyons around Castaic and a couple of motorcyclists passed us on
the left. For some reason, as they gently swept past my window I was
suddenly flooded with the memory of doing just what they were doing
and how...alive...it was to be riding. I had a motorcycle about 6
weeks later, and I still regret those lost 20 years. (sorry if some of
you have heard this too many times before)
I discovered sometime after that that OAS was available on VHS, and
ordered it from Monterey Video. It was a hugely moving experience,
providing a bridge from where I am now to where I started, back to
when my dad was alive and teaching me the basics of mechanics that
have been the most enjoyable stuff I've done in the last 10 years. I
watch OAS as therapy now, probably a dozen times a year, a chance to
get myself centered and to remember to not forget again.
Bruce has the enviable ability to understand what's really enjoyable
about being alive, and he stays focused on that. A good thing to
cultivate.
I don't mind if it seems like you're not paying attention.
Create away.
--
Charles
'99 YZ250
Posted by Mike W. on January 25, 2009, 3:26 am
>Yes.
>I think I was already bitten by this bug, I know I already had a
>motorcycle by the time OAS came out. I remember going countless times
>to the Montrose Theater to watch it, hiding in the bathroom between
>showings so I could sit through it again without buying another
>ticket...
>Maybe the biggest difference in my experience is that there was a
>twenty year period, roughly, that I was completely unconscious to
>riding. I can't explain what happened, but the part of me that was
>made alive by riding was just, dead.
No difference there. Junior year of college, hockey had really taken over
and I just parked my bike. Around 1996, something got me thinking about
dirtbikes and I went searching for info on JN Roberts and found an RMD
thread. I made a comment that Pete P. responded and invited me riding. As I
recall, that invitation hung in my thoughts pleasantly for a year...
causing me to think more, and still more about riding, ultimately caving
in. So you can blame Pete for "me". My Thanksgiving Death Ride with the
Plassmanns still accounts for about half of my most extreme night terrors.
>I can remember about 10 years ago I was driving the family to visit
>relatives in the L.A. area. We were heading south on I-5 going through
>the canyons around Castaic and a couple of motorcyclists passed us on
>the left. For some reason, as they gently swept past my window I was
>suddenly flooded with the memory of doing just what they were doing
>and how...alive...it was to be riding. I had a motorcycle about 6
>weeks later, and I still regret those lost 20 years. (sorry if some of
>you have heard this too many times before)
Cool:)
>I discovered sometime after that that OAS was available on VHS, and
>ordered it from Monterey Video. It was a hugely moving experience,
>providing a bridge from where I am now to where I started, back to
>when my dad was alive and teaching me the basics of mechanics that
>have been the most enjoyable stuff I've done in the last 10 years. I
>watch OAS as therapy now, probably a dozen times a year, a chance to
>get myself centered and to remember to not forget again.
At least a dozen here. It makes hotel rooms nice places to be.
>Bruce has the enviable ability to understand what's really enjoyable
>about being alive, and he stays focused on that. A good thing to
>cultivate.
>I don't mind if it seems like you're not paying attention.
Huh?
>Create away.
I wish.
Mike
--
Mike W.
96 XR400
70 CT70
71 KG 100 (Hodaka-powered)
99 KZ1000P (training)
99 KZ1000P (rider)
00 Beta Rev-3
XML Sitemap
> A documentary came out in 1971 called "On Any Sunday". Some say it was
> about motorcycling. I think it was about the passion of people who ride
> motorcycles... the way the experience hits some of them... at least the
> lucky ones. OAS probably influenced me more than any other creative or
> academic experience in my life. It showed me a passion that was already
> forming up on its own as I caught glimpses of motorcycles carrying big
> smiles into and out of the woods. It gave me the single biggest thing I've
> spent the years between age 14 and 51 thinking about. Riding.
> The week OAS hit the theaters back in 1971, my dad "had" to take me to see
> it 9 times. NINE times in 7 days. He'd have never done that for anything
> else, but my guess is he picked up on some signal my eyes were giving off
> and made it happen. If it was anything like the look on my daughter's face
> during the epic opening of the Lion King when she was a little girl, I'm
> figuring he was watching me during that movie... not the movie itself.
> Dads
> will understand what I'm talking about.
> After it left the theaters, every possible waking moment was spent
> thinking
> about riding motorcycles in the way I saw them through Bruce Brown's
> (director) eyes. When I saw them before, it was for just a fleeting
> moment,
> and then they were gone. Thanks to Bruce, I saw much more, including some
> moments that I can only consider as heroic as any other moment in the
> history film... like Malcolm continuing at full speed past the riders in
> the mud hole by darting through the opening in the fence nobody else saw,
> or crossing Lake Chapala hours ahead of the world. If you have this
> passion
> I'm talking about, these moments display all the heroism you might find in
> say... Doc Graham stepping off The Field to help the little girl that was
> choking.
> I got my first bike on Christmas morning, 1971. At about 1030am... a cold,
> sunny, snowless day. It was loaded off the back of a dark colored pickup
> truck and I could not even begin to contain my joy. Ever. It's still
> pegged
> at 11 as I write this in 2009. I've had other bikes along the way... dirt,
> street, police motorcycles, and even a trials bike. I still have that
> Christmas present too... the best one I ever got.
> But I don't think I sat down to write about the movie, but instead, the
> sequence of events that movie began for me. As I said, I thought about
> riding constantly, and it was in Bruce Brown's terms and style and feel..
> a
> cinematic, heroic, stylish point of view about motorcycling. Of the
> passion
> that surrounds it. This ultimately lead me to start extending these
> thoughts into new places... untrained, and awkwardly stumbling through
> these creative moments in my head. Enjoying.. but also trying to make it
> as
> good as Bruce did without knowing how. He used music, and slow motion, and
> *perfect* points of view, and narrative to capture the feeling.. not just
> the action. Music became part of how I thought and felt about
> motorcycling,
> as well as other things that became passions too. When I remember rides, I
> don't remember the noise or the "violence" of working through obstacles. I
> remember it in terms that is about the perfection of every inch and every
> moment of the ride. How devout people think of Heaven. Music goes with
> both.
> About a year after OAS came out, the song "I Can See Clearly" by Johnny
> Nash came out and it PERFECTLY captured the feeling of a little segment
> that I had been thinking about over and over and over, and over still
> more.. for months... moving toward, I thought, my own little 8mm movie
> about riding. They weren't called videos then. I can remember sitting in
> Algebra... and English.. and Biology... and History... and Trig...
> and................. working out little bits of how it should look in the
> margins of my spiral notebooks. I had worked out a notation method to
> "time" the action to the music. I didn't know story boards existed, but I
> drew little story boards in the margins of the notebooks to show how it
> should look from moment to moment. I can remember Mr. Granado telling me
> several times to pay attention in whatever class he was teaching me...
> Calculus I think.. as I focused on an "inspiration" I had about a part of
> this little movie. This mania lasted into college... into my first job at
> DEC. The snowy night my daughter was born, I remember looking at it and
> thinking about it when I came home to get some rest before going back to
> the hospital. I remember working on it on a plane back in 1992... seat 27C
> on a United 727... had the row to my self.. it was night time... and the
> flight attendant asked me what that was I was drawing in my Day Runner. I
> know I've worked on it an infinity of times and in an infinity of places
> since then... planes and hotels and airport lounges and my study. About 30
> min ago, I happened upon, and added to, a pile of electronic notes about
> this. It sure is different than it was back in '71... and also exactly the
> same, in that I have to add to it when I have "figured something out".
> I've been working on my little 2 min and 44 second expression of
> motorcycling passion for 34 years. Perfecting it... extending it..
> spending
> hours... and years... on the camera placement, and speed transitions, and
> the feelings just in that little bridge in the middle of the song where
> tempo picks up. Doing my own private imitation of Richard Dreyfus' mania
> with the mud on the dining room table, since before that movie was made.
> This could not be more opposite from the exceedingly decisive way I am in
> my work life (i.e. my life). It's a safe bet now that after three and a
> half decades this is never going to end up on film or video... I'd say
> that's ok, because I guess when I have the choice, I'm a journey guy...
> not
> a destination guy. This must be how "creating" works when it's happening
> for the right reasons. I wrote this in about 15 minutes.
> --
> Mike W.
> 96 XR400
> 70 CT70
> 71 KG 100 (Hodaka-powered)
> 99 KZ1000P (training)
> 99 KZ1000P (rider)
> 00 Beta Rev-3