Bruce C. Miller wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:
You're not a Bohemian, Bruce, you're a snob.

I would have thought you would have been more supportive.

Why ever? If you lurk on RAT you will know I admire precision of
thought and expression. But why should I stroke someone who hasn't even
troubled to discover the correct name for what he aspires to? You don't
even know what a Bohemian is. Bohemia was a part of central London
inhabited by artists and people closely involved with them. Painters,
models, art dealers, are one example of a set of related bohemians.
They produced works of art or were instrumental in producing them or in
selling them. Someone who merely goes to a gallery to look at the
painting made by Bohemian doesn't thereby become a Bohemian. Some
Bohemians had a louche lifestyle, free love and all that, and some
didn't wash too often, and some moved out to the countryside and
committed incest with their daughers (Eric Gill), but the
distinguishing mark of all was a life in the arts. (Note that all this
is in the past tense. Bohemia is now inhabited by my publishers --
those who haven't yet moved further out, all of whom would be hugely
flattered to be called louche and some of whom may still dream of being
offered free love but all of whom would certainly not touch the person
who offered it with a ten-foot pole.) Bohemianism doesn't describe what
you are trying to do with your life.

If you had said merely that you want to be a cultured person, or
stylish, or a trendy, or a hanger-on of the arts or intellectual life,
I would have helped you out with a list of the right possessions, words
and attitudes. Now that the communications revolution will put all
information instantly at your fingertips, and all entertainment,
literature, etc, we need enlightened, actively discriminating consumers
of culture, which you are as specifically as you are not a Bohemian. (I
suspect anyway from your writing and obsession with lists that you
would be most uncomfortable with the general standard of hygiene among
the arty-farties.)

A Bohemian is created by his culture and taste and achivements. You
don't choose to be a Bohemian; bohemianism chooses you. Bohemianism is
not a tool for posing as fashionably cool.

I'm not
trying to fit into a specific label. There are Bohemian aspects of my
current thinking, but a true Bohemian (if such a thing exists) would
probably consider my lifestyle unimpressive. I use the term for lack of
a better description.

Uh-huh. You couldn't have looked very hard. A cultured person suits
fine.

Additionally, these changes have happened slowly over the last 10 years
or so. It's not like I woke up one day and decided I no longer liked
Hollywood movies and was going to watch art films. In the case of film,
for example, I gradually grew disenchanted with the assembly line of
cookie cutter plots and gravitated more towards more thoughtful films,
like I would assume any intelligent person would after getting a
constant dose of Hollywood for years and years. I don't hate those who
can find enjoyment out of a mindless action flick, but having
experienced it countless times, I'm tired of it. If that makes me a
snob, then I guess I am one.

What makes you a snob is publicly expressed contempt for sound
middle-class values, and dumb cracks about the proletariat. What makes
you a snob is choosing some form of consumption because it is a
minority interest. What makes you a snob is looking down on majority
tastes. All of these solecisms you have publicly admitted to.

I think you've been lucky so far not to meet a girl of genuine
intellect and taste. When you do, her contempt for your pretentious
shallowness will sear your soul.

Hell, I'd be happy to meet one who wasn't crazy or just living for the
next shopping fix. Besides, I haven't said anything about my own
intellect.

You told us you don't have your brain in gear even to the minor extent
of using a dictionary about the name of your life-changing aspiration.
You told us you have gullibly exchanged one set of designer labels for
a more expensive, less comfortable set in what you consume, think and
dream. When I was in advertising, we used to dream of cloning trendies
like you; an associate of mine had a list on his wall of 900 plus
trendy things we had made trendy that we would not be seen dead
wearing, doing, consuming or thinking. As a 13-year old intern (I had
just published a book of poems, so this ad agency offered me a vacation
job complete with first class air tickets--there is the root of my
expense account tastes!) I sat in a meeting where this man turned
rough, uncomfortable, cowhand's pants into fashion gear: you own a pair
of jeans, don't you, Bruce? None of the guys in that meeting would be
seen dead in jeans.

I could very well be quite intelligent. Or not. I don't
think any of this stuff has much to do with true intellect. One could
be a cultured idiot or an uncultured genius.

To be cultured, discrimination, a learned art, is as good as true
intellect. True intellect gives entree to intellectual activities
peripheral to the arts, like criticism, and talent besides can make one
an artist. None of this necessarily brings happiness. Critics want to
be artists. True artists are never satisfied; the desire to do better
is what drives them. I know many perfectly self-satisfied trendies; I
don't let them in my house, of course, but they are at least happy in
their ignorance of the greener grass in the paddock next door.

I don't discount the possibility that I still need character
development or have personality flaws to address. Pretentiousness may
very well be one of them. Your criticism isn't exactly constructive,
however.

Suck me. Who said that I have a duty to be supportive of every
dithering teenager who flies his broomstick across my horizon?

Andre Jute
Artist. Intellectual. Bicyclist. Sophisticate. Dressed daily in
joggers.

I at least have to dress professionally for work, so I might as well do
it well. I realise that after a certain age, there's not much point in
trying to look good, especially if you're married. I am still young by
comparison to most here and a bachelor, so it's not yet a complete
waste of time and effort. I put more effort into physical fitness than
clothes though. A fat man in a $2000 suit is still a fat man, after
all.

Never had a 2000 dollar suit in my life. My suits were from Pierre
Cardin's own hand (1), before he was famous, were cheap (if I paid for
them at all, they might have been complimentary), and the dozen or so
(which I wore with shirts off the last few bolts of Macclesfield silk
that my fashion account exec snared) lasted until I gave up wearing
suits for good and reverted to being a barefoot genius in a track suit.
When I meet Nelson Mandela, I stretch all the way to unpressed chinos
and an old yachting blazer. Note as a lesson in the snobbery of
possessions that things have greater value than mere expense when they
are unobtainable by anyone else (Cardin will never be young and unknown
again, the silk mills of Macclesfield are silent forever). Note in the
snobbery of superiority that inverse snobbery (unpressed chinos) works
better than mere brand names (actually my chinos are off the rack at
Marks & Spencer, the British parent of Brook Bros, but *you* shouldn't
ever admit that). There you go, Bruce, you only have to ask and I give
you a lesson in superficiality for which we will skip the gratitude.

Andre Jute
Trendiness coach

(1) In an earlier sullen genius stage I wore suits of Irish linen cut
for me by Lars Erik Christian of Copenhagen. The jackets had no sleeves
and no pockets (I didn't carry money because I didn't have time to go
anywhere where my company didn't run a tab and my assistants always had
a hankie and a cigar and credit cards, on which I once bought a second
Learjet because the ashtrays in the first one were full). The silk
shirts I wore with these suits had no buttons either to press into my
skin. Anyone who didn't like my navel could find another consultant. I
wore no shoes and my minders rolled a carpet out of the plane to the
car, and from the car to whichever building I wanted to enter. But you
shouldn't try that either; you need real talent and productivity to be
worth that much hassle and expense.