The Moving Theatre


In my quest to combine feeling, thought and reflection into one activity, and thereby save time to watch more sports on TV, I have cycled back to cycling.

You see, cycling and making imaginary movies in the theatre of my own skull have somehow merged into the same activity.  I am not the first one to attempt this fusion of self-propelled movement and visual storytelling. Years ago, the girl on rollerskates in Knopfler's Skateaway gracefully moved in and out of London gridlock, Walkman-fed music in her ears, the effect being a different sort of motion picture: a thrilling, dangerous self-produced "I see" version, which is what "video" literally means. But instead of just seeing, she is also the director and the camera and the writer and she does her own stunts, and she does it all without the safety of or need for an editor. Indeed,
She's making movies on location/
She don't know what it means. 
On my Making Movies-red bike, I get the same feeling, as houses and light posts and steeples and treetops go by. I see in wide shots and mediums and tights. If a newspaper blows by, it's an insert shot.  I can focus on a blade of grass or a petal on a flower or the font on a sewer grate. And then on the horizon. In the mountains all those years ago, we made epic movies, and felt heroic. Now, I glide by the open garage doors in west Edmonton and see in the frames quick scenes in the homeowners' lives. My legs still put the scenery in motion.

They are silent movies, for the most part. Or maybe they're the first talkies, because every sound from bird or tire through puddle or car horn or goose honk or bus brake whoosh is everything.

Cycling to work in the October morning is noir. Coming home it's the light of adventure.

It's making movies on film spools of wheels.




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