Dropped in on the folks of the Harley-Davidson persuasion up in Sturgis, South Dakota once about 10 years back. Meaning to get back there each year ever since, but it looks like I'm going to miss the gathering again this year.
It was lovely then. Mega-gathering. More than a hundred-fifty thousand. More numbers come later.
This would've brought apoplexy upon anyone with postmodern sensitivities (actually, you don't need any sort of radical progressive orientation here to freak), or tears to the eyes of anyone who's a sensitive graduate of the Robert Bly School of Drum Banging and Weeping.
This is a land where men are men and women ain't. Where machines are probably more valuable than human life. Hell, they are more valuable. And you take that with the territory, or you get the hell out.
For now, suspend all your ideology and stereotyped notions of this entire culture, and recognize this world as one of power, sexuality and mystique. With no apologies from anyone. Any time. For anything.
****
NOTE: Doing these writings and trips have brought me to the realization that
the current form and format of writing for the newspapers, and most magazines,
is a lie. We've got to get past the sterility of the cult of objectivity,
but we've got to do it without losing the presence of the experience that
experiments in new journalism tended to be crippled by.
The way it's done now...we get a detached attempt at objective reporting. What we get is sterile numbers (try this -- from the Rapid City Journal, Aug. 13: "Estimated at 160,000 to 170,000, this could be the second-largest rally. The 50th annual rally in 1990 was the largest.") that tells us nothing about the experience or the meaning of 165 ,000 people in a particular place. In fact, this attempt at objectivity bleeds the subject so dry, that we get a distorted, not clearer, view of the news.
An alternative:
I was in the restroom/shower at the camping site I'd ended up at the night
I got into South Dakota. There was a biker there. I asked him if he was on
his way in to Sturgis, or headed home.
"Did one day," he said. "That's enough."
"One day?" I ask, seriously wondering about this dude's party-capability. Biker...party...till you die...and he's going home after just one day?
"Mostly, you just watch people," he says. "I've watched. Hell, figure this one's bigger than the 50th. People...you got a lit cigarette in your hand and you turn around like this (he does a small semi-circle, his arms and elbows held in close, his hands in not far) you're gonna burn someone, it's that tight."
Now, that...that's the experience of 165,000 people in a small town in South Dakota. Turn around with a cigarette in your hand, you're going to burn someone.
Younger people are turning away from newspapers and news magazines in ever-increasing numbers. Perhaps it's not so much that the video revolution's captured them, as much as it is the lifeless product that we produce in the news media under this "objective" banner that drives them away. It's time we look at what objectivity is; how it can be used to advantage; how we can get reporters to truly write, and not merely do hack reportage by the numbers.
****
SLAMMERS AND PAGANISM: I'd spent hours at home thinking about how to prepare
for this trip. All kinds of mean, evil, smelly killer-types (some prolly broke
out of jail just to get to this motorcycle rally in Sturgis) are going to
be there, and I'm gonna stick myself right in the middle there.
So I figure that if I drive the highways for a couple hours, locate some roadkill, squat down there by it, stare at it, smell it, and poke it with a stick for a while, slit it open and gnaw its liver out ... maybe that'll set me up with the right karma.
Or maybe I just respect it.
Too extreme, I figure. One slip in the technique, I could end up with bad Karma and get my ass waxed up in Sturgis. I talk to Jan. She tells me that Carhenge, a group of cars dug into the ground on end and set in a circle like Stonehenge is in Alliance, Nebraska, on my way up to Sturgis. Well, hell. There you are. Ritual death of cars. Motorcycles rule.
And this place has been put, by God and farmers, directly in my path.
I leave the next morning and stop at Carhenge about five hours later. I look at this magnificent sculpture called Carhenge in the middle of some god-forsaken field; go immediately to the ten-foot metal fish rising out of the ground on the other side of the 'henge, and turn to look back at the cars on end, noticing that from here, it looks like the sun will set over the old Caddy.
Incredible. These people...these primitives 'Merikans who built this structure while surviving on an agrarian economy in the very middle of a country bent on an information economy, knew astronomy.
I think for a couple seconds, and realize that no matter where the sun sets during the year (further north or south, depending on the season), all the viewer has to do is wander around in the general area I'm standing in and they can get the sun to set over that Caddy every time.
Damn. Amazing.
****
Some yahoo tries to tell some other looker that ... up there, you see ...
that's a '48 Willys.
Goddamned idiot. Doesn't realize that it's not the kind or year of car that matters. This ain't no used-car lot. This 'henge-thing is sculpture. This is concept. The type of car doesn't matter. You just enjoy the whole damned thing. You don't tear it apart, deconstruct it, by calling a car a '48 Willys. It's the idea that drove these cars to be used this way that's the thing.
B'sides, I think it's a '50 Willys.
As I walk back to my car, I realize that this sculpture is not about the death of cars. It is instead, an arcane symbol raising the notion of motorized travel itself to a religion. Car, or cycle. It's all the God Travel. A celebration of the drive, the ride. That's all that matters. And following this religion, I head to my car to leave.
****
The Biker with the beer at Carhenge with the Harley T-shirt and Harley bike
tells you he's on his way back, out of Sturgis. He says he couldn't take any
more. Too much booze ... and this damned killer hangover ... Real nice guy.
You can tell by the way he's considerately trying to not throw up on your
shoes while you talk to him
You see how the partying can hurt. His eyes are heavy-lidded. His mouth speaks around the words, lets them drool out, can't spit them out at you. Looks like he's in agony. Badly. Hangover? Hell, a drug counselor coming up on this guy'd quick-draw on his cell-phone and speed-dial 911. Guy's got one of them Busch's in his hand. Put that 275 pounds on a bike and you've got a horrorshow. And it's gonna happen out on the two-lane once the beer's downed.
****
Eight minutes later, the relentless monotony of the white line to my right
drives my thoughts to friends and colleagues at home.
Some are installing wiring in other people's new homes. Got one or two doing time in prison. Some are at a major scholarly conference in Atlanta. There are relatives who remain forgotten and would take weeks to find, and it is guaranteed that they are doing something not in Sturgis. They are doing things they know.
Meanwhile, I'll be goofing with the bikers.
****
End PART I, Go to PART 2, or Move back to the Mutant page, or on to the Mojocity page.
