Confessions of a Cyclist - Leanne Bridgewater

Confessions of a Cyclist is utter inspiration from the film Night Mail, where the opening scene is John Grierson reading W. H. Auden’s ground-breaking poem. It is experimental journey-poetics, and may also have family resemblance to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and even Derek Jarman’s film Blue.

A cyclist lends its hands AND FEET to a great deal of intimacy but no connection, pedaling, which in turn, animates. A cyclist is passive, romancing the world through seducing scenes, without the commitment. Getting lost in time, but within the time-frame given for the daily commuter’s route. Mine: 40 minutes one way, and 40 minutes back.

A cycle is a repetition of a cycle. The scene never wholly changes but changes constantly. Confessions of a Cyclist takes a journalistic approach through poetics, over-hyping observations, dubbing people’s conversations, reporting on regular people seen, for instance, the man in the turban who feeds the pigeons every Saturday morning. In places, the work is biographical, in others, memoir, in others, freak-outs, and in some you can see repeated words become chants when cycling at certain speeds: NOW-AND-A-GAIN-MY-HEN-IT’S-A-NEW-GEN-ER-A-TION.