the second movie tonight, recently finished. a good choice for reasons i will not delve into whatever. i recommend it, particularly if you need a reminder of what really matters in life.
i find i am bohemian in spirit, if not in actuality. yet. here, a brief and wry grin, for i comfort myself by saying ‘there is time’ even as i grit my teeth for my own motivational lacking. perhaps it is changing what with the new book still roiling about the brain. i suppose we shall see.
i ponder what happened to the bohemian revolution. i conclude it was largely usurped by commercialism.
i find two definitions, either of which are quite suitable and both containing what seems to be the spirit of it all:
“The term ‘Bohemian’ has come to be very commonly accepted in our day as the description of a certain kind of literary gypsy, no matter in what language he speaks, or what city he inhabits …. A Bohemian is simply an artist or littérateur who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art.” (Westminster Review, 1862[3])
and the more mainstream adaptation, courtesy of The American College Dictionary:
“A person with artistic or intellectual tendencies, who lives and acts with no regard for conventional rules of behavior.”
more often than not these days, such a slant in propensity is as like to get you labeled many things, and believe me, i’ve heard just about all of them. nonetheless, i continue to encounter this and it continues to feel comfortable to bear as a label (if one must be put upon to have them), so i embrace it officially instead of just referring to it here and there.
when i first encountered Luhrmann’s ‘Moulin Rouge’, i spent some time trying to discover if the purported credo of the bohemian revolution was more than fiction. it seemed a very fitting thing and all the more interesting to me because i have on many occasions stated it myself without any notion whatever that it might belong to some official or perhaps even grassroots movement.
Luhrmann’s Toulouse-Lautrec said it practically verbatim and that rocked my brain in its casing as such instances of synchronicity usually do:
Christian: I–I don’t even know if I am a true Bohemian Revolutionary.
Toulouse: Do you believe in beauty?
Christian: Yes.
Doctor: Freedom?
Christian: Yes, of course.
Satie: Truth?
Christian: Yes!
Doctor: Love?
Christian: Love? Love. Above all things I believe in love. Love is like oxygen. Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love.
Toulouse: See, you can’t fool us! You’re the voice of the Children of the Revolution! You will write of the world’s first Bohemian Revolution show!
and more directly (and eloquently) later in saying quite simply:
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”
all this rambling is to underpin the reason why this movie (listed as the title) affected me as it did. also, to indirectly relate it to this bohemian ideal that has always (and likely always will) cause me fits of either saudade or angst for its sheer fragility and transience in the world.
i’ve spent much of my life making choices in relation to the abject, direct, and utterly dedicated pursuit of freedom, beauty, truth, and love… and it is odd that while i have nothing to directly point to or show for it, i have every bit of it in ways that words just cannot manage to convey.
i am that fool who has moved cross-country (a few times) just to give a chance a chance.
i am that fool who would as easily cross oceans as this continent for the same thing.
i am that fool who has given up jobs, careers even, because it is more important to be content and happy in life than to have ‘a job’ or ‘a career’.
i am that fool who has sacrificed the immediate but lesser result in the name of hope for the greater one in future.
most often, i am disappointed. the world is not kind to a bohemian heart. but… not always. and i find that perspective makes quite the difference. the crumbs scattered by the world are yet a feast here. most times. and when they are not, then feast upon the savor of lacking and make of it its own having. i suppose that sounds quite insane if you’ve never managed it. but there is delight in it, albeit sometimes darker than most are comfortable embracing.
somehow, i have let this entire post get off track. i’m laughing for it. it doesn’t matter, really. self talk in the late hours with a red nose and sniffles from weeping with enjoyment and pain for the movie that started this post.
it was not at all about bohemian anything. and yet, it was. hard to explain except perhaps to draw the parallel between people who are willing to live rather than speak of living.
i think that, in the end, this is the true difference between the bohemian and the rest of the world. the bohemian sees a chance and takes it, knowing that it is impossible to know how, if, or when it will ever again arrive.
much honor to the reckless impermanence of the world. may it continue to present me with chances to be taken. there is savor and sweetness in it… the world is like a sun-ripened orange and i am thirsty for all of it. dribble sticky sweet over my hands, collect in the corners of my mouth, run free, just let me taste it.
a feast of love, indeed.