After the show, we decided to have a quick drink at Cafe Van Kleef. I think of this bar as bohemian with a touch of the diabolical, and it's haunted- always a bonus for me. One of the first times I visited, I asked the owner about the haunting, which he matter-of-factly confirmed as he sipped a glass of red wine behind the bar. A band was playing, made up of a woman on accordion, a guy on fiddle, and a guy on bass, sounding like the band that would have accompanied the devil in The Charlie Daniels Band's The Devil Went Down to Georgia. I had fallen through the looking glass, the mood was perfect.
Tonight my mind wandered and focused (as it often does) on the idea of the bohemian proletariat. Let me elaborate... I am by no stretch blue collar, but I do consider myself among the ranks of the modern-day worker. I enjoy the fact that I work hard all day, and that makes possible my ability to go out after work and enjoy live music, a drink at a pub, what-have-you, so long as it distances me from the workaday world.
A few scenarios recur in my mind: Kafka's Prague, with his Protagonist, "K.", going out after work with the local anarchists, or Edna St. Vincent Millay, tossing back drinks at La Rotonde with her fellow Lost Generation expats in Paris. Bringing it closer to home, I like to imagine men in fedoras clinking pints at the House of Shields circa 1930, right next door to my present-day office.
We are doing just as they did, and belong to a brotherhood and sisterhood that has spanned time since the advent of the modern work culture.
No comments:
Post a Comment