November 4, 2010: The Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You

The Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You: youtube.com/watch?v=vK5MC8pa_cY

I went to university for 5 years and studied English literature. As I started there was no question that this was something I wanted to do for I had to discover the joys of reading, how to be a writer. Two years in I saw that I wasn't learning to be a writer at all but learning to be critical and form an argument. I was learning to write essays. I was learning how to shit on any writing that wasn't canonized. I was learning from hack writers, closed into tight cold rooms with people who generally didn't want to be there. After three years I had a moment where I had to get out: I was reading On the Road in the library, boxed in and silent, living through this book and not truly living this book. I had to move, I couldn't learn living through this form of death.

But I stayed in university despite this. I had been developing a tendency to quit before finishing and had to see it through. There was a reason I originally wanted to be there and I had to remember it. In ways I'm glad I stayed for my final year found amazing books and projects and a brief mentor of sorts.

And through university, when I told people I was in English Literature, they would ask me the same question always: "So you're going to be a teacher?" At first I would say, "Maybe" just to humour them but then, growing tired, would challenge. "You can be a lot more than a teacher with an English degree." "I'm not going to university to get a job." Or, "Nope. Never."

I'm often faced with a problem when asked, "What do you do?" I find most to be ill-defined by a single title. I work in bars for money. I write. I write and perform music. I study books and records. I drink. I am neither a bartender, a writer, a musician, a student, nor am I a drunk. Not singularly, anyway. So how does one title oneself? And why? I often cater the answer to who I speak with but find myself more often challenging that question. It can be a problem for the questioner.

When I was a teenager I wanted to move to Toronto. "What are you going to do?" my brother asked me. "I'll be a bohemian." I think that's the best answer I've ever given. But how pretentious is that? And the self-awareness of such a statement is a bit of a turn off. And today I may identify as bohemian but what of tomorrow? I suppose for the present I fit certain criteria; poor, concerned with art and culture, without any significant ties, prone to move.

I used to like this song, by the way, but now find it a bit of a turn off. I think it's the snide sort of irony they apply. It degrades a lifestyle to a style.