For me, the spirit of amateurism is always at the heart of the Bohemian sensibility.
The Boho is chronically mercurial in his or her pursuits. Hyper sensitive to atmospheres, moods - there own and other peoples - they flit from one thing to another like children abandoned in a world of toys, imagination ignited from moment to moment by each new 'novelty'.
This 'infantile' sensibility/sensitivity is the key I believe to understanding the dissociation and disaffection with the banal, everyday, stagnant rationalism and mono-practicality that less imaginative types put up with. Or maybe they are unaware of an elsewhere or an otherwise. I have noticed myself, how art and creativity in whatever medium, when not performed in a 'professional' capacity - for money or fame - tends to be treated as a bit sad, tragic and/or pathetic by those that see every area of human endeavor as utilitarian or financially rewarding.
Bohemian's are Hermeticist's, Alchemists of all experience and human perception. Overstimulated by the vast fizzing 'Isness' of consciousness, they are all too aware at every moment of the labyrinthine connections between the most seemingly disparate objects and ideas.
Their laboratories are their own psyche's. The most minutely examined life is the only one worth living.
I myself have designed various experiments in living, and have had experiments thrust upon me. My numerous adventures in the world of work - from Landscape gardener, farm worker, shop assistant, Brewery employee to narrowboat painter and signwriter - have revealed to me how each of these spaces represent their very own, symbolic and psychogeographically enclosed world. Each have their own lore, science, culture, dominant psychology and narrowed perception of worlds outside of them too.
Being in prison when a teenager revealed to me the inviolable truth of this psychic 'many-worlds' theory of human perception. Prison is the mother of all human microcosms. Prison is the societal machine transcribed into six-foot letters with garish primary colours on every wall, door, ceiling and floor, until it is written on the dissident psyche itself.
For those few like me who had the benefit of seeing an elsewhere, a creative tunnel or hole in the wall in childhood, we can re-use the prison canvas, reduce it to a palimpsest and scribble our riddles and baroque poetry upon it once more. For those who never knew an elsewhere, and were afflicted at all times in their lives with what Francis Bacon called, 'The brutality of fact', prison is the heavy lid on the coffin, a narrative grave which can never be escaped - it is too narrow and too deep.
I was an amateur criminal. A tourist on a cheap package, ticking off all the sites, 'doing the itinerary', taking mental snapshots, learning a bit of the lingo and sending a postcard home.
There is a saying in Hindu theology: "Be the actor not the doer". Be free of spirit, keep moving, don't get marooned and stagnated on one little island of knowing, don't identify and completely lose yourself in the world 'out there' or any one thing. As the Beats said: "We're just passing through".
Another interesting concept originating from the Hindu religion - and related to the actor - is the 'Avatar'. Literally meaning "From heaven to Earth", a manifestation of the God Vishnu in many guises. The Boho should always manifest themselves through an appropriate avatar - be at all times acquainted with heaven while visiting earth.
To cliche Oscar Wilde: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars".
I make art, I write, I play the guitar - these are things I do, not what I am. This is akin of course to the Buddhist notion of non-attachment too. All good Boho's need a bit of Eastern enlightenment at various points in their lives.
Professionalism is of course the trap for many. We are taught from childhood about the tragedy of Jack and his familiarity of all trades but mastery of none. When this notion is transferred from the utilitarian, workaday world and infects the arena of individual human creativity and imagination, all may be lost...for a while.
But when we touch heaven again, become an avatar and detach ourselves from being a peg, cog or drone in the organizational/disciplinary machine that is modern consumer society, we may find that being a mercurial, exquisite amateur of the infinite fractal islands of experience called life, allows a beautiful raw freshness to seep back into our awareness again.
The trick is to see as a child again. The child loves acting and is always unattached and full of whimsy.
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