Travelling by motorcycle through the US this week, I’m struck by the tension between my sense of both its familiarity and difference, Unlike the twenty or so miles separating Dover from Calais there’s no language barrier here, the roads and infrastructure are not dissimilar to our own, and the food, for all its occasional oversize portions, would find a welcome home in most British pubs. I guess the climate is more extreme, but that’s increasingly so in the UK too - frankly, even Vegas felt like Blackpool on acid.
Indeed, so much of our culture is now shared that the differences between them are smaller and subtler than we perhaps like to admit. There’s a tangible lack of self-consciousness in America (even more so of deprecation or irony) that to us Brits can feel brash to the point of cringeworthy. So too with the overt displays of patriotism and religion; yesterday, on the road to Cortez, I counted over fifty US flags, several of them flying from Baptist chapels.
While that’s not something you’d see in the Cotswolds, a moment's reflection brings to mind the Union Jacks we dig out for the World Cup or Royal Weddings. And as for Americans being arrogant, consider the plummy accents of our upper classes and elitism engendered by public schools. Ultimately, for all our superficial contrasts, I can’t help but feel that deep down we’re more together than apart, not least in a common if incompatible faith that our respective homelands, and their associated values, music, sports… you name it… are a model for the rest of the world to follow.
But riding through - and ‘in’ - the landscape here, I’m struck by one overwhelming difference, encapsulated in an adjective that repeats with every turn of the road. This place is vast! And as I said today, tongue in cheek, to a delightfully welcoming gallery host I met in Durango - size matters!
We were viewing some over-scaled photo prints by David Yarrow, and thankfully, she laughed, confirming that we can share a sense of humour after all. It turned out that we also shared an interest in nature and art, and the capacity of both to inspire and connect us to something bigger than ourselves.
Of course, all this is possible in a more intimate setting. My point is not that bigger is better. Rather, that it’s different, and at the risk of using an intentional pun, massively so!
Scale is important - and especially in landscape and art - because, more than any other visual or spatial factor, it impacts directly on our intuitive responses. By this I mean those visceral feelings that come in the nanoseconds before thinking and categorising and verbal proxies such as beautiful, or awe-inspiring, or for that matter, vast! Taking a painterly example, it’s precisely why the abstracts of Rothko or the water lilies of Monet were rendered so large.
And following that vein, I wonder how riding here - and the physicality that involves - has shaped my first impressions after an absence of twenty years. So much of America is bigger, and yes, brasher and less apologetic, than the distances and polite understatement that sit more comfortably with our British reserve. But it’s also wonderful and immersive and - that word again - vast.
On Tuesday this week, I rode across the Navajo First Nation territory, uninterrupted and almost entirely alone. ‘Follow the road for seventy-two miles,’ my sat-nav said, the arrow straight tarmac melting into the heat of a pale desert sunrise. As the miles clicked by, I kept thinking of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the violent, if ultimately redemptive, novels of Cormac McCarthy.
That probably says more about me than it does about modern-day America. But then this is a landscape that it’s easy to get metaphorically lost in, and yet also, I sense, a good place to find yourself. In both regards, there’s, thankfully, still much to discover.
Thank you for not bashing my country as much as we deserve it at the moment. Have a wonderful rest of your trip, travel safely.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to imagine the vastness of the roads in the USA. What interesting things and people you will see.
ReplyDeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteI think any road trip - the act of travelling - lends itself to instrospection, meditation, rumination....speculation. Landscapes everywhere can inspire. Does size matter? Some of the most exquisite moments are to be found in the miniature... What does matter is the journey and what we take from it. You are clearly gaining much from yours! YAM xx
The enormity of the USA just seems so normal to me, and yet it's the thing that every British person comments on when they visit. I only crossed the USA by road once in my life, driving back from California with my family in 1983. It took five days, as I recall, but we did some sightseeing along the way. Since then I haven't set foot in most of the middle of the country.
ReplyDeleteI find British and American culture to be growing ever closer together, for better or worse. I see more American influence in the UK now than I did when we moved here in 2011.
As for brashness, unfortunately, brash is rewarded in our current political and social climate. Personally, I could do with less of it!
Welcome back, so we should be having long blog posts on the wonders of America. I envy you the National Parks but not riding a motorbike, All very romantic I am sure but all that gear! What an adventure from the lonely wastes of Wales and what a cultural shift. Take care.
ReplyDeleteI’ve only seen American straight roads from the sky , amazing
ReplyDeleteWe drove across Canada two summers ago, from our island in the west to Newfoundland in the east. The vastness of my country imprinted itself on me. The summer before that we drove to the Arctic Ocean in the Northwest Territories. Sea to sea to sea. It gave me great appreciation for the varied cultures and landscapes we saw engaged with.
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