Being a flaneur is about taking your time. Your time. Taking it and spending it. Just like spending money, with its thrills and deep satisfaction, except your time belongs to you from the start. You cannot save time; you can only choose what to spend it on. And what better than food, art, beauty, experience…? No one comes to the end of their life wishing they’d spent more time at the office.
Flaneur literally means ‘stroller’. Not a walker, and perish the thought a jogger. A stroller, strolling round taking it all in. Really taking life in, in long lung-filling heady draughts. Making connections, observing the details, encompassing the whole.
Some historical flaneurs would take a lobster for a walk on a piece of string to make a point. Which is nice. And really quite a political statement at a time where automation, speed and efficiency were all the rage. There’s some more of their history here.
What about today? Well, beyond taking your time, which is already as heretical an idea as one can find these days, I think it’s about finding what you love in life and gently, lovingly, dedicating yourself to it. Live somewhere where the things you love also reside, not somewhere convenient for work; take time to find what it is that you love doing and find a way to get paid enough to live from it. Or failing that, do just enough work to enable that life, but not too much so all your time is taken up working. James Gleick in his book ‘fstr’ (formerly ‘faster’) suggests that ‘wasting’ time may be the ultimate modern heresy and antidote to a global meme now seemingly out of control. I urge you to explore the concept of slow food, slow cities, and join me in becoming a slow citizen.
But remember: ultimately you cannot waste time. You can only spend it. Spend it wisely. Spend it joyfully. Spend it on yourself and with those you love.
I had a career once. I retired at the age of 23 (my English teacher of yore who retired recently herself commented “yes, but I always knew you would”. I’m still not 100% sure how she meant it). I felt I should spend some time figuring out what I really wanted to do with my life, so I spent 3 months just sitting around in cafés, reading, writing, listening to music and watching people. At the end of this time I had it figured out: what I wanted to do with the rest of my life was sit in cafés, read, write, listen to music and watch people.
Years of protestant upbringing urge me to assure you that despite my dedication to this path, I’ve led a productive life. But what does it matter really? Whom does my productivity serve?
I love coffee, whisky, music, reading, books in and of themselves, cafes, pens and notebooks, creative technology, women, chocolate, ideas, stories, fragrances, nature, being warm especially on cold days, aeroplanes, films, cameras old and new, communication, records and record players, food, of course, and magazines. I love travelling to spend time with these things, and most of all to spend time with people who also love these things. I love passion, and passionate people.
So I got a job in insurance, which, after deducting the cost of my annual rail pass from Reading gives me just enough to cover the mortgage, though it’s always a bit of a struggle. But to be honest, by the time I get home each night there’s not enough time to go out and spend any money anyway.
NO! how bogus would my life have been if I had? Given what I say I love most? If you live for insurance GO TO IT!! Same goes for HR, Reading, semi – d’s, and suburbs. If it’s your thing, then do it. And if it’s not what you love most….
Tick, tick, tick….
I take photographs for a living. Sometimes I’ve made my money from writing. I’m soon to be writing the revues of cafes, bands and art in the capital of Bohemia. I own no property, and probably wouldn’t attract a mortgage these days, which many would find a concern at my age. I’ve got lots of stuff, but most of it is creative equipment, really. This is where all that dangerous thinking can take you. Be warned – I will fully admit it’s been a struggle sometimes. You can feel you’re tacking against the blustering gale of a blind urgent culture, one that has no time to ask ‘why?’ These are the times that being a flaneur can seem a desperate and subversive activity.
A subversive coffee? Yes, dammit! It’s not about a well-earned break; it’s not about working 9 to 5 in the job you hate saving for a year to spend a week in the Maldives. It’s about finding a way to spend all your time there! To devote your life to spending time in cafes, savouring the coffee, the steam, the time and the people. It’s the opposite of towing the line and being a productive citizen. Yes, it’s a subversive coffee.
Neither is it about doing the things flaneurs do. It’s about being a Flaneur. It's about really living it. As an experience. Actually being a rock star. Or a Bohemian, for that matter. When people research their family trees and they excitedly relate what they have found they never seem to talk about the accountants.
Whores and hellraisers, pirates and gamblers, writers, inventors, explorers, men and women who won it all and lost it again, who found redemption and sold it for another ride. Activists, libertines, revolutionaries and hermits. Knights Templar, film stars, plutocrats and bohemians.
Why should our entertainment be vicarious? Has television turned us into utter voyeurs? Voyeurism did start as a fetish remember. Life is not a spectator sport. And you don't get stars in the afterlife for not fucking up. If you're not failing now and then, you're not pushing very hard. Whither atrophy? Look around... and look within. Life as art. Really. Better still as entertainment. It's not about getting it right; it's about having fun.
Because if we're supposed to live as responsible citizens, surely our first responsibility has to be to ourselves. To our life. And that's a responsibility to live fully.
There's a lot of life out there. Why spend half your waking hours in an office? Come and find me – email me and we’ll find a suitable café. Share a coffee and some time with me, and let’s start a slow revolution. A perambulation, if you will.
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