the splendor of the creative mind
“The true Bohemian is a connoisseur of texture, color and sensation. While the bourgeoisie can experience excitement, a feeling of fulfillment only through consuming, the Bohemian is exhilarated by observation, by creation, by experience itself. . . .
Bohemians do not take comfort in consuming to fill the hollow emptiness of existence that rattles like small shattered bones; they find poetry in the free and everyday things: the pinked and silvered lights of Paris in early October, a spiderweb decked out in jewel-like dew, a nineteeth-century china tea set in an antique shop window next to a taxidermy fox, humble objects and books and paintings and conversations in a coffee shop, things overheard in a botanical garden or on a wharf. . . .
It is splendor in which the Bohemian lives, not squalor—the splendor of the creative mind—and it requires ingenuity, free-thinking and nerve.”
—Laren Stover, from Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge, 2004.
we used to stop and watch those signs
“We’d play a gig, then smoke and take a walk, and the streets were lit up with colors, neon signs, and we used to stop and watch those signs, we didn’t read them, just watched them glow.”
—Vic DiMeo, trumpet player, on his New York heyday. As quoted by step-daughter Laren Stover in Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge, 2004.
Black jeans
“Beats look cooler than any other Bohemian. They are the toughest, most tautly attired of all the Bohemians. Indigo, white, putty and black are the main colors, black being the most dominant. Black jeans, black jackets, black wingtips, black sneakers, black ballet slippers, black berets, black sweaters, black shirts, black coffee. . . .
Outerwear is generally the same for Beats of all sexes and will include a trench coat in black, navy or beige, a camel’s-hair coat from a thrift shop ar a navy blue peacoat. A corduroy jacket may appear from time to time in the academic as well as the non-academic Beat wardrobe. This will be brown, forest green or burgundy.”
—Laren Stover, from Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge, 2004.
The Bohemian version of a dimmer switch
“The Bohemian version of a dimmer switch is fabric—shawls and scarves thrown over a shade. This method may also be used to alter the color of the room to, say, rose or yellow. For special occasions, Bohemians bring out the colored lightbulbs. Pink, red, blue, yellow, amber, black. It would not be unusual to find black-light posters of Jimi Hendrix in the Gypsy/Psychedelic Bohemian home, as well as a Lava lamp bubbling away in a corner.”
—Laren Stover, from Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge, 2004.
a nice cool red dim scene
“I’d always put my red bandana over the little wall lamp and put out the ceiling light to make a nice cool red dim scene to sit and drink wine and talk in.”
—Jack Kerouac, from The Dharma Bums, as quoted in a footnote to Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge by Laren Stover, 2004.
the choice of Zen Bohemians
“White teas such as Chinese Silver Needle, Chinese Mutan White or Ceylon Silver Tips (the tea is actually pale pink) are the choice of Zen Bohemians before morning meditation or Wu Ming qigong. A grassy cup of Sencha is also a Zen favorite. Bohemians also appreciate black tea from France—especially from Mariage Fr’res—and they cannot resist tea from Fortnum & Mason, by appointment to her Royal Majesty. Later they will use the tin for paintbrushes, chopsticks or kitchen utensils.”
—Laren Stover, from Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge, 2004.
green tea
“Gypsy and Zen Bohemians may drink green tea. The tea of choice is loose Gunpowder or Green Thunder, which is coiled tightly as a fist and unfurls in the pot when hot water is poured over it, until the water is as dense with leaves as the seaweed-swirling Sargasso Sea; it is consumed until all hours when work requires alertness and lucidity.”
—Laren Stover, from Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge, 2004.
Beneath The Blue
“Oh Muse, how I served you beneath the blue;
And oh what dreams of dazzling love I dreamed!”
—Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Wyatt Mason, from My Bohemia, A Fantasy. As found in Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge by Laren Stover, 2004.
Pastel: Masks and Faces
“The light of our cigarettes
Went and came in the gloom:
It was dark in the little room.
Dark, and then, in the dark,
Sudden, a flash, a glow,
And a hand and a ring I know.
And then, through the dark, a flush
Ruddy and vague, the grace
(A rose!) of her lyric face.”
—Arthur Symons, Pastel: Masks and Faces, as found in Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge by Laren Stover, 2004.
I am the Bearded Iris
“I am the One out of
a Hundred
I am the Bearded Iris, the flower of chivalry
with a sword for a leaf
& a lily for a heart
I am the Rainbow—a hybrid of celestial
hues
blue in the end, a message between
Gods.
I am your shadow in the
darkness,
your reflection in the
mirror
I am the Jack in your box.”
—Ira Cohen, from I am not a beat, 2004, as quoted in Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge by Laren Stover, 2004.