For anyone who's watched the movie or musical "RENT" or seen the opera La Boheme, or read any of the dozens of books or articles written about Bohemian life, or seen the movies, or...
Ehem. For anyone who's come into contact with those advents of culture, "La Vie Boheme" is a familiar term. It's French for "The Bohemian Life" and the Bohemian life...
IF you want a long-winded description, read the Wikipedia entry on Bohemianism. If you want to really fall in love with the culture, read Bohemian Manifesto by Laren Stover.
What it is, though, boils down to a group of people living outside of the confines of convention. The concept of the "starving artist" is a modernization of la vie boheme. It spent years meaning the same thing as gypsy life, and came from 19th century French.
Bohemians have long been associated with seemingly unorthodox and often anti-establishment political/social views. Free love, frugality and voluntary poverty (which in todays world bring to mind hippies and flower children, not artists and other bohemian subgroups) were keystones in the lifestyle. Yes, sometimes people assume that it also involves bad personal hygiene and a dislike of things like fidelity, but judge not an entire cultural movement on the happenings of a handful of situations.
For a long time, la vie boheme has really drawn me in to it's romance and artistry, because I've often theorized that I'm just not cut out for traditional life. I really am happy to live on pennies in a shitty loft somewhere and just work on art, and am jealous - yes, jealous - of the starving artists I meet, who aren't trapped by life in cubicles and on payroles. I don't want to have a car - though I'd be sad to give up Janis - and while I adore material possessions in some senses (clothes from resale or inexpensive stores, vintage things, artwork, books, and technology) I also don't give a fuck. I don't want a diamond or a brand new designer gown or a mansion for the sake of having a mansion.
I'm happy to be unemployed, learning and reading and working on my creative pursuits instead of showing up to do a menial task day after day after day for people who I really fucking DONT like.
Perhaps I really will fair better in a life undefined by the conventions of money and popularity, where artistry is king and judgement isn't a way of life.
Gelett Burgess, an American writer and member of the Bohemian Club, wrote about Bohemia like this:
"To take the world as one finds it, the bad with the good, making the best of the present moment to laugh at Fortune alike whether she be generous or unkind - to spend freely when one has money, and to hope gaily when one has none - to fleet the time carelessly, living for love and art - this is the temper and spirt of the modern Bohemian in his outward and visible aspect. It is a light and graceful philosophy, but it is the Gospel of the Moment, this exoteric phase of the Bohemian religion; and if, in some noble natures, it rises to a bold simplicity and naturalness, it may also lend its butterfly precepts to some very pretty vices and lovable faults, for in Bohemia one may find almost every sin save that of Hypocrisy. ...
His faults are more commonly those of self-indulgence, thoughtlessness, vanity and procrastination, and these usually go hand-in-hand with generosity, love and charity; for it is not enough to be one's self in Bohemia, one must allow others to be themselves, as well. ...
What, then, is it that makes this mystical empire of Bohemia unique, and what i the charm of its mental fairyland? It is this: there are no roads in Bohemia! One must choose and fine one's own path, be one's own self, live one's own life."
(Thank you Wikipedia for having that listed as a description, I've read it before but had lost it and always loved it.)
To be a Bohemian isn't to give up the joys of worldly possessions but rather to share them. Make money on something, then do something good (though perhaps frivolous) with it. I may be of a slightly more of a nouveau bohemian mindset than the bohemians of lore, but that doesn't make me less of a bohemian soul.
XO
FREAK
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