A Return to the Tour de France

This year, the advertisements interrupt the countryside and man on bike in peloton. The most common: men in make-up and wigs who follow a sporting event broadcast on the same channel that brings us the coverage of the Tour, which is cage fighting. The screen flashes with autism-provoking violence and hype of a violent inner persona of the rebellious kind. An energy drink that won't let you bonk. Bull-riding. Red hot and blue summer. Kicking, swinging, fighting. Heavy speed metal to accompany. Everything in your face with the frantic mania of those who bring us nothing.

Then back to France. Back to the Tour, Le Tour. Fragile, even with the venerable 93 years of its running, a farmer spelling out Vivre Le Tour with hay bales still speaks of emotion, the allowing of something gentle, archaic, beautiful and emotional to come rolling through our towns, and if we are removed from those towns and country roads, over the airwaves received by our televisons. The only sound that off the helicopter as it hovers over an 11th century castle, then the eye dipping down to follow the pack of cyclists following an old road at a sailing clip. A lot of variables in play, as far as the race, and along with that, many traditions and traditional practices. The peloton closes down on the breakaway, just so as for the team protecting its lead rider to preserve its energy. A sprint finish.

I tape a stage. It gives me a pleasure to stop the recording everytime a commercial comes on. Saab has been particularly cruel on the ear this ear, almost sardonic, with a repetitive statement uttered three times concerning the function exhaust in a turbo engine. Proud of the repetition, thinking it humorous, as a sadistic jailer might when rattling a prisoner's cage, the original captive audience. Advertising to perfection, and yet who can take the commercial more than three times, thence having studied it, shun the television? Cage fighting TapOut. Bull Riding. Energy drink. Saab. Male Enhancement. I record a stage leading from Provence up into the hills on a VCR, cutting out the cancer patiently. A brand name printed on a jersey, I can handle that. I like that. Back before helmets they used to wear jaunty caps, useful to keep sun and rain off the brow, with names of immediately pleasurable and useful things like apperitif liquors and sausage makers before more modern times when the brand names changed to vacuum cleaners, super markets, lottery games, credit issuers, phone services. After a while, the viewer sees only the team colors, which is useful, a necessity for following the race and the individuals one might develop a fondness or an interest for. Green of Thor Hushovd. White of Cancellera. Blue of Hincapie.

The commercials remind me of how people often act in bars. They pretend to be innocuous, relaxed, but if you were to spend any time with them, you would not want to spend a moment witnessing it.

After bartending four straight nights, I don't want to go out. I don't want to talk to people. There is some great abuse of people's basic gentle quality as it is construed and distorted by the ever-present of the commercial, so that each one feels obliged to shout from the rafters.

A writer's work will be good to the extent that he realizes how unimportant talk is, how necessary writing is. Talk is annoying, people having been trained by commercials to think a certain way. Talk is the most problematic and unreliable form of communication, and television relies on it. Talk fosters lies, miscommunication, misrepresentation, misunderstandings passed along. Sunday morning television offers good examples. Placed within the context of a barroom, a speaker, like Mr. Paulson, or Mr. Cheney talking about connections in Prague and weapon stashes, would find a rightful place to the listening ear.

Talk killed Kerouac. Everyone wanting to party with the King of the Beatniks, demanding him to put his understandings beyond words and Zen into cocktail conversation, banging on his window as he sat as his typewriter. Kerouac knew better than to talk. The best minds retreat in a wordy age. So as not to be used.