THE TIME MACHINE HAS NO ENGINE!

by Roberto Sironi

I pedal it, so sooner or later I’ll get somewhere!

When I started cycling I discovered a world I had never seen before, a world in motion! I know it might be a trivial phrase, but it isn’t! The bicycle is an instrument of movement, a silent, effective, in a certain sense mysterious instrument, it could even be science fiction given its total and very simple technical complexity! The bicycle is simple and I, who am a follower of the movement, have interpreted this “slow and silent ride” as an act of happiness, an allegory of pastime but above all and without a doubt, this motor exercise is essentially a movement of the soul!

Soul, psyche and spirit united in a single device that is almost diabolical and at the same time angelic, heavenly like everything that lives in the air, in a lightness and suspension that is difficult to describe, to live!

On this medium, I would say “mechanically ancestral” like an Icarus of modern times, I began to fly on other ideas, other concepts, other views and other convictions.

So, slowly this enchanting vehicle has transported me on the roads of the world! I have done almost twenty thousand kilometers on the saddle of my bicycle, day after day, season after season, year after year along the winding paths of inspiration and intuition, reflection and meditation, chasing perceptions and sensations that in a certain sense have changed my way of thinking and acting ... In this hypnotic and pedaling madness, as an artist, painter and musician I let all the imagination I could free to restore a visionary and certain existential presence to reality!

Cycle can become magic, spell and spell, charm and suggestion if only one is able to fully understand it in its disarming naturalness and sobriety!

The sense of measure of those two wheels, which despite being close to each other, is pure and extraordinary witchcraft ... The roundabouts of the imagination know the circles, the circumferences, the orbits, the perimeters of the roundnesses and everything that rotates millimetrically, as if by magic, it becomes an unrestrained liberation, an uncontrollable destiny from which to start and then return and leave again and return for eternity!

All this led me to create an eco / cycle / artistic project that I called “Art on two wheels”, an idea built as a triad made up of painting, music and literature! In short, the bicycle as a meeting point between past and future, passing from a present in eternal movement! The purpose of this project is to be able to raise awareness and to aggregate an audience around the idea of the bicycle not only as an ecological solution and intelligent transport but also as a means of “cultural and artistic locomotion” to generate another way of creating “ movement ”, to promote culture through humanistic mobility and new socializing energies. A creative and artistic journey dedicated to the most ecological means existing on planet Earth and on a human scale! A journey into the incomprehensible clarity and logic of “metronomicity!” Exactly, the “metronomicity!”

...

How I understand this “metronomicity”, a word that I invented for expressive necessity, although it does not exist, it perfectly conveys the idea of rhythm, succession, cadence, therefore of the trend, it is ultimately what I think is harmony in things, in life, in thoughts: a particular measurement of time, of my time and I do not mean the time established and determined by a clock, but by a strange swing that rhythmically marks the steps of my life which, if desired, could be like the obligatory pedals of a bicycle that chasing each other are never wrong, never go out of time, never out of tune! All and only harmony! The melody is in the wheels, that is, in the events that have composed and will still compose my life!

But let’s stay with the bicycle, indeed on the bicycle!

On that saddle I trained my brain to do more things, to look at the landscape, to think, to be inspired and to love that silence just touched by the whirring of the wheels! It is a beautiful way to understand the road, the asphalt on which you are traveling and then there is the air ... The air that ruffles your hair and that gives you the feeling that infinity is a portion of the fantasy that only your eyes can imagine.

I defined the bicycle as a “Time Machine without the engine” and it seems to me, a little presumptuously, an excellent definition, interesting, nice, I even wrote a book about it which I gave as title

“The Time Machine it has no engine “!

As an artist I felt the need to take care of the bicycle, this “purebred mare”, which trots on two wheels and which once again imposes itself on the attention of the world and in this current situation as a possible existential solution!

And as I said before, as far as I am concerned it could and should become the prologue of a probable and surprising cultural evolution, an unexpected fusion of eco / socio / futuristic and sustainable technologies that will impose themselves and modify our basic thinking regarding livability of the our planet!

In short, since I’m talking about “cyclosophy”, I would say that on the path of thought there must be a “pedaling” anthology where the wheels are the pages of a book that flow freely in every direction, in an unusual florilege that brings together words, observations and experiences of a journey made up of kilometers and kilometers of life through an extraordinary universality, in fact, a “time machine without an engine”, a miracle of the human being’s intelligence, an invention capable of reversing the fate of obvious, a work of art created by a simple intuition coming from who knows where !?

After all the flying and bizarre machines, war machines, walking machines, on rails etc ... here is the bicycle that messes up the game et voilà: here it is in all its splendor the time machine without an engine, without a rumble, a bang, a rattle ... Here it is in its magnificence, almost human, as if it were breathing, as if it had its own thought, therefore probably also a soul!

The bicycle was for me a source of great pictorial, literary and even musical inspiration! I really like the idea that an object has attracted my attention up to this point ... Of course, looking at it carefully, you understand the magic of that movement in constant balance with the inscrutable! If one thinks about it, he could also imagine that the bicycle has wings hidden somewhere and that his Icarus, as I was, and as I still am, believed in an impossible dream to the point of making it possible with just one metronomic gesture: pedal!

Even Leonardo had the intuition to imagine this hypnotic “machine” . .. “

In short, the bicycle is an attraction for everyone and for all ages! Look at it well, observe it, spy on it and you will realize that before your eyes it is not just a prodigy on two wheels, a wonder in balance, a silent and phantasmagoric portent, but an amazing and amazing lady or young lady who for once, finally, pay no attention to her skirt and the wind that lifts it, no, this time, finally, that lady or young lady smiles and pedaling and then disappears forever from your life, it will leave you with a memory as intimate as it is forbidden that will follow you for a lifetime !

After all, the bicycle is female!

Pedaling you go everywhere surrounded by a sense of fatigue that slowly, gesture after gesture, disperses every slightest hint of weakness, of exhaustion to reinvent itself in a sort of existential vigor, thanks to an unlimited feeling of happiness mixed with a perception of enjoyment, for example. an omen of satisfaction and an impression of immense bliss!

I did a lot of swing in my life as a musician, but I did the same following that “metronomicity” that amazes me every time for its perfect harmony while on the saddle I think about how nice it would be to fly!

Did I want to pedal? And then sooner or later I’ll get somewhere! Where is it? It does not matter! The important thing is to go everywhere and in the meantime also be there in that trend, really be there while the world and things turn as the wheels of this luxurious, fascinating and inimitable time machine turn without the engine: the bicycle!