Funny when away a few weeks ago a friend mentioned that I'm not a biker.
20 years ago someone else said the same thing. Of course no one would accuse me of not loving motorcycles and enjoying riding them over many years. But it seems that I'm not a biker..
This leads to the question of how we define ourselves and how others define us. This question has been has also been highlighted in the last few months for me as ?I have started Life modelling at the grand old age of 40 ..
Apart from meeting lots of really lovely people and getting rid of a lot of body hang ups, when I meet the artists for the first time I'm laid bare in front of them. Yes some clues to my identity are there, but not as many as you would expect. Only by the nature of the work and the interaction between myself and the artists they get some clues. The change comes when at the end of the session as the visual clues of identity go back on, Often when they see me dressed in my motorcycle gear a very different identity with its associated values becomes attached again. Which of course leads back to the comment of not being a biker... but a motorcycle rider..
Ok, I had better come clean on this one..
In many ways I have always been said that biker culture is a contraindication in terms..
The image of a biker is something that I have never wanted or aimed for, some aspects of it yes do work.
Leather jackets make a lot of sense, but do they always have to be black ?
Black leather jackets, especially those with a worn look that can only come from years of use and abuse are cool, the sign of the rebel, the outcast since the early 50's. But when faced with a as new blue leather jacket for £20 why not ? what is more important I wonder image or comfort ?
Is the associated set of values such a big part of ones identity that it would not allow oneself to step outside of those values ?
Bikers still even now have an image which is off counter culture and rebellion. But when living in a post-modern world, where it has been said that we live in a world of empty symbolism, with meanings place upon meanings until the original meanings become lost. So we choose the symbols of those things that we seek for the values to be associated with us.
For me the values associated with being a biker have never worked, it has never been about looking or acting in a certain way, more being out on the bike. Loving riding for the sake of it.
My defining moment of motorcycling was as a fourteen year old watching a guy riding an old z1000 in jeans and jacket, hunched over the handle bars in the sunshine, riding with the sheer pleasure of being alive and riding a big old bike on an empty Cornish road.
No one to look, no one to judge, just the pleasure of being fully present in a moment of magic.
This had the effect on a passive watcher of defining what motor cycles are all about, everything else is just extras.
Even when naked in front of a group of strangers I'm still defined by what is carried in my heart and the values that come from there.
So what did you choose to define you ?
