La Vie Bohème

OK, I have my move to a suburban house coming up, I go to work in a tower wearing a tie (and I like it) and I have been wondering what happened to my Bohemian ideals (I bought the "Moulin Rouge" DVD the other day). Then this occurred to me the other day as I was pulling into the garage of my building and I'm looking at the other cars: a Cadillac SUV, a Rolls-Royce, a BMW M3, etc... and I realized how wrong it all was. Even my old building, down by the railroad tracks in the seedy part of Gastown east of Main eventually had a garage filled with the same sorts of mobile pretensions as well. I moved to that building and subsequently to the one I am in now, both "artist live/work studios" because I am a painter, a writer, a designer, and just generally a creative sort. I imagined myself living a life surrounded by other creative people, trading ideas and inspiration and perhaps falling into some project or movement that would end up noteworthy. The old studio had a sense of that in the first months I lived there... we opened a gallery, had group shows, rooftop parties with musicians from the building spontaneously providing the music on fiddles and acoustic guitars. It was great... for a few months. Then the building started to fill with the worst of movie/television industry types in their SUVs, people who called themselves musicians because they could make a computer go "doof doof doof" who promoted raves and sold drugs out of their studios, and other annoying sorts. The interesting people from the first few months filtered away, the gallery closed, and the building became intolerable. I moved to the studio I am in now, with it's galleries, salons, café, innovative architecture and such I hoped once again for an inspirational environment filled with creative people. And at the very least I was assured the building would be quiet. Well, neither materialized. I went to some of the openings in the galleries and ran into people who had lived in the old studio before it went to hell. I once again find myself surrounded not by artists but by slimy yuppies and drug-dealing ravers.

So I had an epiphany looking at a Cadillac SUV. This is not la vie bohème.The reason this hasn't been working for me is these "communities" have been forced. These things need to just happen. I'm looking forward to the house. The last time I was really productive in a creative sense was when I lived in the basement of an old house in a quiet neighbourhood with my now ex-wife, had a straight job to pay the rent, and just let the world carry me along. So now I look forward in a few weeks moving in to an old house in a quiet neighbourhood where I will have my studio in the basement, my fiancée to share it with, a new straight job that I like, and the glamourized, gentrified, annoying-as-fuck, studio life can go to hell.

This is it and it is all about "truth, beauty, freedom, and above all, love."