virtualDavis

Peculiar. These seem to update to the file on my website, but the insert page which combines the destination file with the output page refuses to update with the new information. The new entries… So, some bugs still to work out. Hmmm…

Seems to be a better day for trying to work out the kinks. Not positive that all of the strange bugs are gone, but I seem to be getting more or less the results I want. This will enable me to plug in blogs through blogger.com, or rather to permit CRD, III and GGD, Jr. to keep their homepages updated through this free service. Hmmm… still having some problems with CRD’s insert though. Not quite sure why.

This is a test to see how this new blogger option (blogger.com) might work for virtualdavis.com… Well, seems to have failed during the first try, so I’ll tweak the code a little and then try, try again. Here goes. Well, the second try is giving a little more reason for hope. But a great many kinks still to work out. I’ll keep plugging away. Okay, it seems that I’m making a little progress. But still can’t figure out how to control the size of the content page when plugged into the embedded destination page. The insert overrides my table width settings when it inserts the blog into my template… Hmmm. So still having problems. Now the font style is being overridden!

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Charles Baudelaire,
flâneur originale

A flâneur, according to Webster, is “an idle man-about-town”. It’s pretty evident that a man who was compelled to log words and definitions day and night knew little about the art of flânerie (flâneury), French for strolling. For the flâneur is not merely a loafer gadding his short life away.

He or she is a creature so enthralled by the world that the internal yields to the external, so fascinated with the other that the self is temporarily forgotten. The flâneur is misunderstood by the non-flâneur who fails to recognize the endeavor in his art. For the flâneur is indeed striving toward a goal, making a concerted effort to become anonymous in the crowd — an undetected voyeur — and to sate a philosophical, an aesthetic and an almost spiritual fascination with the scene around him/herself.

“For the perfect flâneur, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow. To be away from home, yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the center of the world, yet to remain hidden from the world—such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define.” ~ Charles Baudelaire

The flâneur seeks communion with the other, and this requires a receptivity and a yielding to the bustle of the urban crowd.

“[Flâneurs] are opening their eyes and ears to the scene around them. They are not treating the street as an obstacle course to be negotiated; they are opening themselves up to it. They are wondering about the lives of those they pass, constructing narratives for them, they are eavesdropping on conversations, they are studying how people dress and what new shops and products there are (not in order to buy anything—just in order to reflect on them as important pieces of evidence of what human beings are about)… While cities bring together huge numbers of people, paradoxically they also separate them from each other. The goal of flâneur[s] is to recover a sense of community… To do this, they let down their guard, they empathize with situation they see. There’s a constant risk they will be moved, saddened, excited – and fall in love.” ~ Alain de Botton

“Flâneurs don’t have any practical goals in mind, aren’t walking to get something, or to go somewhere. What flâneurs are doing is looking. Opening their eyes and ears to the scene around them, wondering about the lives of those they pass, constructing narratives about the houses, eavesdropping on conversations, studying how people dress and street life in general. Flâneurs relish what they discern and discover.” ~ Alan Fletcher (The Art of Looking Sideways)

“Flânerie… is immersion in an anonymous, spectatorial gaze that gives license to wandering and observing… It is an aesthetic action, art form, and social phenomenon… The flâneur… possesses a way of seeing the world and being in the world that intrinsically reveals meaningful, social commentary.” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology

“The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life…” ~ Georg Simmel (The Metropolis and Mental Life)

Sometimes it’s best to step aside and let others swing at the piñata. Though none of the definitions/ruminations above precisely encapsulate my personal brand of flânerie, taken together they come close.

“I quote others only the better to express myself.” ~ Michel de Montaigne

My own flâneur précis remains a work in progress, but for now you’re welcome to meander through my piñata swings: virtualDavis: a Flâneur in the Digital Age.

Updates for What is a Flâneur?

Just another listless dreamer… (virtualDavis)

The earliest version of this page was coded into existence with clumsy, labored HTML around January 2000. It has dilated and contracted over the years like a stubborn accordion. From time to time I stuff in another tune, then — a month or a year later — I manage to pull it out again, usually adapting it into a standalone blog post (most can be found in the Flâneur category). What remains are a few of the most helpful sources I have found. If you’re looking for a source that has vanished from this page, try using the search function and you can most likely find what you want in a blog post. If not, contact me and I’ll try to help you out.

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• Kiyoshi Yamashita

Note: This is an excerpt from a story I wrote while living in France at turn of the millennium. A story about blue jeans and a woman who designs them. And wears them rather well. To read the full story contact me and specify “Jeans” in the your message.

Photo: virtualDavis

Maybe I should just break the narrative after the e-mail. Cut straight to the café where we met tonight.

She was late. I was already sitting at a table outside with a beer when she arrived. Christ, she was great looking. Really beautiful. One of those ultra-tony, model types. Tall and willowy; dressed to dazzle. BCBG—bon chic, bon genre. Movie star sunglasses, a flowing white linen shirt that looked like it was from North Africa or maybe India, and jeans clinging to amphetamine legs.

“You like them?” she asked, pulling her shirt above her wasp-like waist and turning around slowly, pointing out the Paparazzi label above her right buttocks. She tucked the burgundy hip strap from her thong underwear back out of site below the denim and let her shirt fall. “This style is Napolitana,” she said and sat down next to me.

Note: This is an excerpt from a story I wrote while living in France at turn of the millennium. A story about rain in Paris. Among other drizzly things… To read the full story contact me and specify “February Rain” in the your message.

Rain in Paris (Photo: thezartorialist.com)

It had been about half an hour since she dropped him off. Maybe a little longer. He hadn’t actually checked his watch then, nor could he see the clock now. Not from where he lay, slumped on the couch.

He had promised himself not to take a nap as he waited for the elevator in the lobby. He was shaking the water from his raincoat and waiting for the right elevator to descend to bring him up to the seventh floor and thinking, “I really shouldn’t fall asleep when I get home. I really should do something productive.” The right elevator because the left elevator was out of commission for a month. An entire month seemed an unreasonable amount of time for repairing an elevator, and he’d said so to the concierge. But the concierge had only shrugged…

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“Writing is both mask and unveiling.” ~ E.B. White

A mask is a dissembler’s illusion. A knight’s protective shield. An actor’s costume. A robber’s disguise. A clown’s emotions. A diver’s goggles. A model’s currency. A posthumous record. A semblance. A counterfeit. A simulacrum.

A mask is a mask is a mask…

It’s that fuzzy image above. I may simply have taken that image from a newspaper or a milk carton, but its presence on these pages suggests that it represents me. Or did. Or does it?

After all, even if it is a real photograph of me, I did Photoshop it plenty. In fact, I Photoshopped it a lot more than this neon image of an African sculpture which was originally black ebony with inlaid white mother of pearl against a tan background. Only a hint of the original sculpture – or even the original photograph – remains. Fortunately, the ebony original remains intact on the wall facing my desk.

Behind the Mask

Can we ever get behind a mask? And if so, what do we find? Another? Or do we finally arrive at that authentic self, the uncontrived, the unselfconsious, the unaffected and naked self?

This blog – this digital dump of stories and dreams and artifacts – is the song behind my mask. My masks… Unfiltered melodies hummed and chanted, false starts and wayward ruminations.

The Mask Revisited

This post was originally published in January 2001 in the early days of this blog while I was fumbling around for a way to explain my purpose. Blogging was relatively unusual at the time, and this post was one of several attempts to sort through (albeit a bit self-consciously) my plans. Or my hopes. I updated the original blog post on December 22, 2011 and again on March 4, 2014.

And yes, more than a decade later I’m still fumbling.

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