5 November - Seth & the bohemians
Seth was round the house the other night, with phone pics. of his baby son to show me. Very cute, but as yet indistinguishable from any other Caucasian infant. I wasn’t allowed to see pics. of the mother though heard how she’s soooo in love with being a mum and happy to get up every 2 hours and how she’s given birth in 3 hours and lost all the weight already after 2 weeks or so. After that I avoided asking any questions for fear of choking on my food with envy. By and large we avoided talking about that anyway or his arrangements to look after said new family.
I was telling him about the literary festival I went to in Deia/Majorca recently, Tertuja, the sister festival to the Hay-on-Wye one, and he declared I am the most artistic person he knows, in fact bohemian. I objected to this and said English bohemia seems just a byword for not cleaning the corners of your rooms or beating the rugs often enough. Am I wrong? I am not bohemian at all. I work everyday for a monthly regular salary… that automatically excludes me from the taking a stroll, having a coffee, staring out of the window for inspiration type thing and not having time to tidy up or air my clothes from the smell of the cigarettes the bohemians smoke. What does he know? I replied saying he’s the only member of the medical profession I’ve ever known and his idea of bohemia may be as skewered as mine.
A few nights later I decided to drop by one of the Dear John’s letter recipient’s usual haunts in Soho. He’s out of the country and I thought it a good time to check on his life without me in it. No sightings of Tracey Emin or any Turner or Whitbread prize winners am afraid. Only 5 people plus the barman whose appalling spectacles and grey skin do not endear him to me at all and vice versa as he asks me to sign the visitor’s book rather than assume I’m a regular he hasn’t spotted so far – I mean he doesn’t work every night does he? Or maybe he does and lives upstairs perhaps. Eavesdropping - easy since the place is no larger than my bedroom -I gleaned a couple were locals planning a birthday drink of another Soho stalwart down the road (French House or Gerrys), one was an Irish painter just in town and a little later an old eastern European man turned up with a younger far eastern architect woman who had appeared to be a man to me. The bar is unbelievably bohemian perhaps in that it’s depressingly badly lit with smoked out décor and sad dirty Irish bar colours, that green that goes with these kind of places, forlorn furniture, assorted pictures or posters of old shows etc. Ok, so it makes a change from anything around there, I wouldn’t go and have a drink in All Bar One either believe me, but having been there mostly when the places is hosting some kind of launch or event, this quiet Monday at 8pm was truly a downer, apart from vintage Primal Scream on the stereo. I had to reflect on how Dear John likes to go to the same two places in town where he’s guaranteed a chat with someone he knows or gets to know there or the barman, whereas I love anything that’s new and different and would rather kill myself than be coming to the same bar for YEARS. Or perhaps I expect that in Paris such a place would be less run down, and Beatrice Dalle and Henry Bernard Levy would lit it with their interesting faces. And I have no desire to talk to people who are only here perhaps because it’s warmer than their studio in the East End or because they can run a tab. So er, despite what Seth thinks, it’s not my milieu. And the Dear John letter is kind of apt. I left at 9pm having become now one of only 4 punters. Any longer and I might have gone blind.
I was telling him about the literary festival I went to in Deia/Majorca recently, Tertuja, the sister festival to the Hay-on-Wye one, and he declared I am the most artistic person he knows, in fact bohemian. I objected to this and said English bohemia seems just a byword for not cleaning the corners of your rooms or beating the rugs often enough. Am I wrong? I am not bohemian at all. I work everyday for a monthly regular salary… that automatically excludes me from the taking a stroll, having a coffee, staring out of the window for inspiration type thing and not having time to tidy up or air my clothes from the smell of the cigarettes the bohemians smoke. What does he know? I replied saying he’s the only member of the medical profession I’ve ever known and his idea of bohemia may be as skewered as mine.
A few nights later I decided to drop by one of the Dear John’s letter recipient’s usual haunts in Soho. He’s out of the country and I thought it a good time to check on his life without me in it. No sightings of Tracey Emin or any Turner or Whitbread prize winners am afraid. Only 5 people plus the barman whose appalling spectacles and grey skin do not endear him to me at all and vice versa as he asks me to sign the visitor’s book rather than assume I’m a regular he hasn’t spotted so far – I mean he doesn’t work every night does he? Or maybe he does and lives upstairs perhaps. Eavesdropping - easy since the place is no larger than my bedroom -I gleaned a couple were locals planning a birthday drink of another Soho stalwart down the road (French House or Gerrys), one was an Irish painter just in town and a little later an old eastern European man turned up with a younger far eastern architect woman who had appeared to be a man to me. The bar is unbelievably bohemian perhaps in that it’s depressingly badly lit with smoked out décor and sad dirty Irish bar colours, that green that goes with these kind of places, forlorn furniture, assorted pictures or posters of old shows etc. Ok, so it makes a change from anything around there, I wouldn’t go and have a drink in All Bar One either believe me, but having been there mostly when the places is hosting some kind of launch or event, this quiet Monday at 8pm was truly a downer, apart from vintage Primal Scream on the stereo. I had to reflect on how Dear John likes to go to the same two places in town where he’s guaranteed a chat with someone he knows or gets to know there or the barman, whereas I love anything that’s new and different and would rather kill myself than be coming to the same bar for YEARS. Or perhaps I expect that in Paris such a place would be less run down, and Beatrice Dalle and Henry Bernard Levy would lit it with their interesting faces. And I have no desire to talk to people who are only here perhaps because it’s warmer than their studio in the East End or because they can run a tab. So er, despite what Seth thinks, it’s not my milieu. And the Dear John letter is kind of apt. I left at 9pm having become now one of only 4 punters. Any longer and I might have gone blind.
posted by Lisa Taylor @ 7:56 AM
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