MODERN BOHEMIANISM
“Sometimes the customers threw something into the hats. Sometimes they took something out of the hats. Sometimes they took the hats.”
Out there, on the road, we are all a part of the caravan of traveling gypsies. Sometimes our paths intersect, and we come together to learn from one-another, like the Bohemian painters of Paris. Other times, we are just making our way in the world.
A fortune-teller stops young girls on the street, asking to see their hands, pawing at them with her own cracked and wizened fingers, while a young monkey of a boy creeps in to steal from their backpacks.
Two young men perform a silent act, one levitating above the other, drawing crowds of onlookers.
Painters on the streets gather in common, to sketch and daub their works in the eyes of the adoring public, along the bridge of Charles IV.
A man dips a length of string into a bucket, then blows giant bubbles that dazzle in the sunlight, to the delight of all the laughing children.
And then there is me. I come to learn from these masters, to take from them the magic I see on spellbound faces, and to transform it, via alchemical process, into glances of feeling: my photography. I wish to join with these uninhibited souls, I want to learn more from them.
And then the question may be asked, why are we out here, traveling this alternative route? Sometimes I am questioned about my future. They ask me what I plan to do with myself, when I might begin working. As if my life is at a standstill until the real work begins. I have no solid answer for these people, only gestures...
“I have see a vision of a great rucksack revolution... all of ‘em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their head for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.”
