David Byrne is best known as the former frontman of Talking Heads, the article-free art band that emerged from New York’s punk and new wave scene in the mid- and late 1970s. Byrne’s repressed, wry lyrics, his throat-tight vocals, and the band’s nervous, eclectic rhythms quickly established Talking Heads as one of the most interesting and smartest groups around. The title of their flawless second album, 1978’s “More Songs About Buildings and Food,” pokes fun at Byrne’s obsessions and frequent subject matter. He’s a distinctive songwriter, with a sense of humor that is ironic but rarely sarcastic and never condescending.
Byrne (pictured left) is also a visual artist, filmmaker and author, and his new book, “Bicycle Diaries,” is an insightful travelogue and rumination about a life “hooked on cycling.” Some 30 years ago, Byrne began riding a bicycle to get around New York City and he eventually started carrying one with him on tour and trips to explore the various American and world cities and towns he was visiting. He is not “a racer or sports cyclist”; he’s simply someone who enjoys the view from his bike, and the casual pace of his pedaling has given him plenty of time over the years to think about the way cities are built and function. As he writes at the beginning of “Bicycle Diaries”: “Most U.S. cities are not very bike-friendly. They’re not very pedestrian-friendly either. They’re car-friendly — or at least they try very hard to be. In most of these cities one could say that the machines have won. Lives, city planning, budgets, and time are all focused around the automobile. It’s long-term unsustainable and short-term lousy living. How did it get this way?”
Early in “Bicycle Diaries” Byrne visits Sweetwater, a town about 40 miles west of my hometown of Abilene that’s best known in its part of Texas for its annual rattlesnake roundup (though the sprouting of hundreds of wind turbines around Sweetwater in the past few years may soon bring it recognition beyond venomous vipers). Sweetwater’s “frontier Puritan fundamentalism” fascinates Byrne:
“Between the early — for a New Yorker — dinner hours and the many dry counties around here I know we’re not in New York anymore. I enjoy not being in New York. I am under no illusion that my world is in any way better than this world, but still I wonder at how some of these Puritanical restrictions have lingered — the encouragement to go to bed early and the injunction against enjoying a drink with one’s meal. I suspect that drinking, even a glass of wine or two with dinner is, like drug use, probably considered a sign of moral weakness. The assumption is that there lurks within us a secret desire for pure, sensuous, all-hell-breaking-loose pleasure, which is something to be nipped in the bud, for pragmatic reasons. In a sense maybe loosening up was, for the early settlers, not something to be encouraged. … If life is hard, if you’re just getting by, then slipping off that straight and narrow path could have serious consequences.
“I ride around the older part of town. A motel that was once on the main highway reiterates the moral message: if Jesus never fails, then by implication the problem must be with you.”
Byrne’s take on Sweetwater — with its “beautifully Spartan and purely functional” architecture, if you can call buildings made of cinder block and prefabricated metal siding architecture — reminded me of his underappreciated 1986 film, “True Stories,” which was set in the fictional Texas town of Virgil. Released during Texas’ sesquicentennial year, “True Stories” is narrated by Byrne and begins with a short, funny look at the state’s history, from dinosaurs to microchips. Like “Bicycle Diaries,” “True Stories” is a travelogue, too, but one that surrounds a touching story about one man’s search for a wife. John Goodman plays the lonely bachelor to a tender T.
Byrne’s perspective in “True Stories” is that of the outsider looking in. He’s a visitor passing through a strange land. He often adopts the same persona in “Bicycle Diaries.” As sometimes happens, visitors see things that are hidden in plain sight to a city’s longtime residents. Some outsiders misread what they see, sure; others, like Byrne, are often spot-on.
Cities have their geographic and physical attributes, but Byrne wonders whether cities also have psychological ones — unique sensibilities shaped by their infrastructure. “Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live?” he writes. “Yes, I think so. How does this happen? Do they seep in surreptitiously through peer pressure and casual conversations? Is it the water, the light, the weather? Is there a Detroit sensibility? Memphis? New Orleans? (No doubt.) Austin? (Certainly.) Nashville? London? Berlin?”
Byrne will be exploring some of these questions when he moderates a panel discussion and audience Q&A Sunday evening at the Paramount Theatre, 713 Congress Ave. Annick Beaudet, bicycle project manager for the City of Austin, architect and urban designer Jana McCann, and Rob D’Amico, president of the League of Bicycling Voters, will be joining Byrne for this event, which is titled “Where We’re Going and Where We’ve Been: Bicycles, Cities and Transportation in Austin.” It starts at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6 p.m.) and is free, but organizers require that you RSVP at www.austintheatre.org. Visit www.austinlibrary.org for more information.