The Spectacle and the Tingle Inside

by Lael Ewy

Everybody loves a spectacle.

Well, I don’t.

But it’s interesting enough to see others love them.

The artistry is undeniable, and, every year, the proprietors of the Pike’s PeakInternational Hill Climb bring a Red Bull Motocross trick motorcycle team in as part of their “Fan Fest,” which takes place in downtown Colorado Springs the Friday before the race. Every year, they show their stuff, promote Red Bull, and otherwise cause a scene.

A Red Bull Rider high above Tejon

Every year I go with a group of friends, and every year I remark that there seems to be fewer people than last year, and fewer race cars on display, until the motorcycle team begins flying through the air, from ramp to ramp, twisting their bikes 90 degrees off center, doing flips and various forms of creative dismounts—ranging from the super-hero elegant to the borderline obscene.

And sticking the landings, every single time.

It ought not to be all that surprising: you don’t take your show on the road until you get it good and good. “Good” requires precision and smoothness, fluency, a kinesthetic sense that goes way beyond a simple knowledge of physics. That’s where the artistry comes in; the felt sense of your self and the motorcycle in the air, the intimate knowledge of what a twist of the throttle at launch will translate into at landing.

But the people who crowd around me—and there seem to be more of them now than last year—clogging the sidewalks, boozily hooting from the bar balconies, with their dogs and their babies and their fragrance-funk in tow, are here for the spectacle, here for the show, the idiot announcer obliging their carnal desire with his barking play-by-play, the felt-sense of referred risk.

None of this would matter without “mirror neurons” firing off of that inner tingle that suggests we know how that feels, to find yourself upside down athwart a throbbing motorcycle, 30 feet above the raw asphalt.

Only we don’t. To really do what they do, they need to be in a state way beyond the mere thrill; they need to be in Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow state,” existing in a manner deeper than we sidewalk dwellers are even aware.

The spectacle, then, is imaginary: our projection of ourselves on their perceived peril.

And there’s value in that. Probably not the same as you’d get in a great novel or even the best of conversations, but for a matter of a few seconds, it’s there: the falling bodies drawing us together, drawing us in.