Confessions of a Lapsed Bohemian

I’m freakin’ old.  How old, you may ask?  Well, not to put too fine a point on it…really, incredibly, disgustingly old.  I was at the Red Sea when they dyed it and the Dead Sea when they died it.  I was there when Buddha sought his boody, Howdy got his Doody and Ann Coulter caught her first cootie.  Yes friends, in November I will hit the magic age of sixty.  That’s older than most self-respecting dirt.

I don’t like it one bit.  When I look in the mirror, there’s no  sixty year-old geezer staring back at me; I still see the awkward pimply-faced teenager who used to sneak a smoke behind the school building and ogle the go-go dancers on Shindig.  But apparently, that’s not what others see.  A few nights ago, as I was leaving the studio in Manchester after a trio rehearsal, I remarked to my thirty-something bass player, “I’m turning sixty in November- can you believe it?”  To which he replied, while giving me an assessing sideways glance, “Yes, I can.”

There are those among us who look forward to celebrating such a repugnant milestone; some even feel compelled to mark the occasion by jumping out of a perfectly good airplane or by getting a naughty tattoo of a voluptuous hula dancer- but I’m not one of them.  With my luck, the naughty little tattoo would probably just get hot flashes and start nagging my bicep.  As for jumping from a plane, I did that once, spraining my ankle in the process.  (The fact that the plane was already parked on the ground is neither here nor there.)  So I must content myself with the realization that life as I know it is rapidly coming to a close and there is more of it to look back upon with nostalgia than to anticipate with any degree of hope or excitement.

The thing is, I felt exactly the same when I hit the magic age of fifty… and forty… and thirty.  In fact, probably the only reason I didn’t feel that way at the age of twenty was that, at the time, there was nothing in my turbulent childhood and adolescence I thought I could look back upon with any fondness.   Naturally, with hindsight, I discover that I had it all wrong.  There were many occasions in my youth I now recall with mawkish sentimentality and realize that my life at thirty or forty… or even fifty still held much promise.  Of course, that’s all so much bupkis now that I’m hitting the big six-oh.

So, no birthday wishes, please- I intend to ignore this dark day completely.  If you feel that you really must mark the occasion, in lieu of cards or gifts you may make a charitable contribution to my favorite worthy cause.  Please send checks or money orders to: The Bill Barnes Retirement Sailboat Trust Fund*, C/O this website.  Fair winds and following seas, dear friends!

* After extensive investigation, WordPress has determined that no such charitable organization exists.   DO NOT send any donations.  Mr. Barnes would probably just spend the money on booze and hookers.

I suppose I’ve always been a Bohemian at heart, even at a very early age.  As a pre-schooler in Pittsburgh, music and art were as important to me as Howdy Doody and Cheerios- my toy piano and my well-worn record collection (featuring stellar recordings of sophisticated tunes such as “Teddy Bear’s Picnic”) were prized possessions; these and my drawing pad, crayons and pencils, were my main fix to satisfy a precocious creativity Jones.  Early on I also grappled with the absurd rationale of my existence and the twisted logic of religion, as explained by our local Methodist minister, Dr. Manny (and got nowhere, I might add).  My family’s move to semi-rural North Carolina when I was barely six gave me plenty of solitude to ponder the ironies of life and a longing for the urban sophistication we had left behind.  Between the time I received my first guitar at the age of eight, and my beloved bongo drums when I was in the fifth grade, I had developed a love of music and a thirst for the freedom of expression and uninhibited thought horizons that the world’s loosely-connected artistic/philosophical/literary community seemed to offer beyond the dank, red silted banks of the Neuse River.

I didn’t know the term ‘Bohemian’ then, just as many don’t really know it now, but I knew what I liked and, more importantly, what I didn’t like.  What I liked: jazz, folk music, painting, theater and beatniks, who I thought were the coolest.  What I didn’t like: team sports, at which I sucked, ignorance, violence, intolerance and any form of authority.  The Beats, led by poets and writers such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg and populated by folkies, painters, jazz musicians and Ban-the-Bomb radicals, seemed to be kindred spirits and soon became my role models.  By the age of twelve I was working backstage as a grip at the Raleigh Little Theater, playing Tom Paxton, Woody Guthrie and Dylan tunes on the guitar at post-rehearsal cast parties and rubbing shoulders with local college lefties.  This was a magical time for me, the hootenanny heyday of Camelot and coffee houses, with Baez and Brubeck blaring from the HiFi.  To this budding hipster, Beat culture was compelling and romantic: sweatshirts and shades, chinos and desert boots, bongos and gut-string guitars, bitter, nasty espresso served by angry black-clad waitresses in rustic, dark, smoke-filled coffee houses… a lone spotlight on a platform stage, where itinerant poets, folk singers or jazz cats would spill their guts.  What’s not to like?

While I probably never met a true Beatnik until years later (I suppose David Amram fits the description), the varsity variety of left-wing radicals, folk singers and poets hanging around State College (which later became NCSU), Duke and UNC behaved as if they were offering a bold, revolutionary new vision.  They weren’t of course; they were simply part of a movement that had repackaged Bohemianism for the post-war atomic age; by the late nineteen fifties the beat culture had caught fire on college campuses around the world and was instrumental in the American civil rights and anti-war movements of the sixties.  However, the beginnings of the Bohemian movement can actually be traced back to the early 1800s, as artists, musicians, poets, philosophers and political radicals began to congregate in major European cities, the byproduct and catalyst of a rapidly changing social order in the western world. While artists, musicians, writers and philosophers have been with us since the dawn of civilization and have been a part of every culture, the Bohemian movement didn’t emerge until the final stages of colonialism in the nineteenth century and the ensuing rebellion against the arrogance of Eurocentric diffusionism and its class structure.  Ever since, the rejection of traditional social values and aesthetics has been endemic to subsequent incarnations of Bohemianism.

The brand name “Bohemian” originated in France, referring to the community of Romany people (Gypsies) erroneously presumed to have arrived from Bohemia.  In time it came to represent any free-traveling, free-spirited or artistic soul living in poverty, or those embracing nonconformity, radical left-wing politics or avant-garde culture.    By the mid-1800s Bohemian sensibilities had hit the United States, as writers like Bret Harte and Gelett Burgess chronicled the free wheeling lifestyles of their European counterparts.  The “Belle Epoch” era saw the emergence of the impressionists- painters such as Manet, Renoir and Monet shocked the art world and Debussy shook music’s foundation with “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.”

Throughout the twentieth century, Bohemians have been living among us in various incarnations.  From the “Génération du Feu” (Generation of Fire) in pre-WWI France, the “Lost Generation” of the post WWI era and the “Beat Generation” of the post-WWII era to the sixties radical counterculture or “Woodstock Nation” of the Vietnam War era, Bohemians have resurfaced time after time, to shock and stir up the status quo in counterpoint to periods of establishment excesses and mass conformity.  Bohemia has become more of a state of mind, rather than a geographic location or even a specific cultural movement.

Ironically, the Bohemian brand had become a bit tarnished after being embraced by a group of people with a completely different agenda.  The Bohemian Club, founded in 1872 by San Francisco artists, poets and writers, was soon taken over by wealthy businessmen and capitalists, who turned it into an all-male secret society of sorts, an enclave of the rich and powerful, an Old Boys network which included honorary members Richard Nixon and William Randolph Hearst, along with leading industrialists and military contractors- an ironic perversion of the core values of bohemianism.  Their rationale: though thoroughly establishment to the core, these movers and shakers considered themselves bon vivants, supporters of the arts and “free thinkers,” so they could call themselves Bohemians.  To flex their bon vie muscles, once a year they cavort at an exclusive retreat called “Bohemian Grove,” a secluded wilderness camp where the rich and powerful get to caper about like goofy adolescents for a few days. However, the poet George Sterling (also a BC member) had disputed their Bohemian ties, asserting there were two criteria for a true Bohemian: a passion for one or more of the seven arts and a lifestyle of poverty- the “starving artist” concept, which has become de rigueur in establishing proper Bohemian credentials.

For much of my life, I have met the criteria- at least for those periods in which I struggled to live off my musical career, when I wasn’t raising a family and working day gigs.  As romantic as this may seem, it takes a certain amount of determination to stay true to your inner voice.  In general, most of us trying to eke out an existence in the arts are not consciously living “the bohemian lifestyle;” it’s forced on us by economic necessity.  The often quoted line from Omar Kayyam’s Rubiyat celebrating “a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and Thou, beside me, singing in the wilderness” sounds romantic, especially in the candlelight.  But, believe me, when the jug of wine is empty and the loaf of bread is down to the crumbs, “Thou” will not long linger in the wilderness, romantic candlelight notwithstanding.  There are times in my life when I’ve paid a bitter, lonely price for artistic integrity.

Most ‘normal’ folks really don’t understand the mind of a true Bohemian.  The apparent lack of conventional values, rejection of materialism, distain of conservative government and irreverence toward organized religion cause a great deal of discomfort for those comfortably entrenched within the establishment.  There’s a deep-rooted (and often well-justified) suspicion of anyone who disregards accepted rules of conduct in favor of more intangible, evolving philosophical principles.  When the Old Testament’s Ten Commandments meet Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics, guess which value system gets the most votes?  There’s also the inescapable stigma of poverty in a society that equates material wealth and ownership of property with personal worth.  To a true Bohemian, property is a burden; money is merely a tool, a means to an end.  To society as a whole, money and property are measures of human life value.  In the material world, the starving artist is frequently regarded merely as an indigent loser, a social parasite to be either shunned or endured.

Throughout my life I have been torn between the staid world of materialism, consumerism and fiscal responsibility and the Spartan frugality of Bohemian artistic and intellectual freedom.  Like a bumper car, I have been alternately attracted and repelled by both worlds: the crass consumerism, insensitivity, competitiveness and corruption of mainstream society versus the messy, chaotic anarchy of counterculture aesthetics.  Every choice is a trade-off and there is a certain implied obligation of conformity and an unfortunate element of hypocrisy on either side.  Both sides have their share of imposters and posers: the corporate exec shedding his Dockers to slum with his musician buddies on weekends or the ‘trust fund hipster’ who indulges in shameless, expensive hedonism while flaunting the trappings of artistic integrity.  The dilemma of the Bohemian without independent means is that you frequently have to work to meet family responsibilities or fund an artistic project; as a result, never really fit in either society and are frequently misunderstood by both- ergo, Lapsed Bohemian.

I will never completely abandon either world- whether hunched over a computer in my office cubical or navigating the modes on my D’Angelico archtop at a local café, I’m still the same person.  And that person will always cherish the vision of a more open, egalitarian world, one in which the artist, musician, poet or philosopher is considered at least as important as the hedge fund manager, industrialist or football hero.

Cabernet Sauvignon is a popular,  versatile red varietal, perfect with beef, pasta, bread and cheese or global crisis intervention.  I prefer it with a thick juicy steak, a ripe brie or a robust bowl of fettuccine with pesto, while listening to “In a Silent Way” on the iPod.  It’s also a nice accompaniment to tackling the number one environmental issue of our time.  “Aha,” you exclaim.  “Lapsed Bohemian, you so crazy…. anyone knows that you can’t solve a global crisis while sitting on your backside tossing back buckets of Two Buck Chuck!”  Well, you’re wrong there, Grasshopper.   Can you say, “Population Control?”

Of course, this phrase instantly conjures images of a Huxleyan nightmare or Orwellian, Stalinist government intervention, along with a few other ugly concepts touted by the pitchfork-waving crowd.  But reining in the explosion of human flesh currently mucking up the planet is, or should be, Job One; and averting a global disaster may just be a simple matter of universal sex education, family planning and birth control.  As individuals, we can do our part right now, by limiting the number of children we bring into the world.

There are two humane, effective and morally acceptable ways we can do this.  One is abstinence, a favorite of fundamental Christian zealots.  The other is the deployment of one or more effective birth control mechanisms during the phenomenon known as non-abstinence or, as it is commonly called, sex. Abstinence generally requires less effort and expense (simply do nothing, don’t even think about it) and therefore is the easiest way to do your part to decrease the surplus human population, while sex tends to be very complicated, time consuming and requires a great deal of energy; in other words, it’s hard work.  Although abstinence is clearly the simpler, easier path to population control, I personally have never chosen the easy way.  Perseverance in the face of adversity, that’s my motto- “once more into the breech, dear friends!”  At any rate, both methods are greatly enhanced by the consumption of a decent Cabernet in large quantities.  So, in between frequent cold showers, we could just sit back and relax, sip our vino and contemplate visions of wide open, sparsely-populated green fields full of cute little spotted owls … or, conversely, we could roll up our sleeves, step up to the plate, so to speak, while consuming boxcars of Conceptrol and cases of Mondavi.  Well, I have always relished a challenge. “Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work…”

But seriously, folks…there are so many social, political and environmental issues facing our species, like third-world exploitation and oppression, war, genocide, accelerated extinctions of other species, world hunger, and, of course, global warming; but all these problems are interconnected with and pale in comparison to the imminent threat of overpopulation; the fact is, there are just too damn many of us on this planet and we are rapidly choking the life out of it.  It’s the mother of all issues, one that calls for a rethinking of an essential part of human nature.

As the most advanced primate species, our fundamental nature hasn’t really changed since the days when we first walked on two legs- we have been genetically programmed to survive, dominate, self-actuate and perpetuate.  For the first thirty thousand years or so, it was nip and tuck in the war between man and nature.  Then we began to get the hang of it, moving from the survival column to the domination column with the help of Bronze Age technology.  Along the way, we wiped out Mr. Neanderthal, who was physically stronger and actually had a larger brain, and Cro-Magnon Man, who was a fine cave artist and probably played a mean saxophone on weekends.  Oh, not to mention Bucky the Cat and his hairy elephant buddy, Tuskzilla- they were out.  This worked well for us; fairly soon we began to get cocky, deciding that our huts were not fancy enough, food in the wild wasn’t abundant enough and jolly old Sun wasn’t God enough.  We tamed beasts, grew crops, invented the bongo drum, erected monuments and palaces for ourselves and fashioned deities in our own image; or rather, we fancied ourselves to be created “in God’s image.”  We went forth, became fruitful and multiplied… and multiplied…and multiplied.  You see, we had to- we were too busy smiting each other, at the behest of whatever gods du jour we erected to serve our narcissistic pleasure.

By 10,000 BC the world human population was estimated to have been between one and ten million happy souls, running around like crazy screaming, “My God is red-hot; your God ain’t doodly-squat!”   They didn’t know any better- they thought the world was flat, or riding on the back of a turtle…how were they to know that they could simply move to another neighborhood and stop smiting each other?  But then, we became enlightened, educated, civilized and, presumably, wise.  We explored the world and found plenty of elbow room.  Our brightest minds gave us more expanded, rational views of our universe.  We also figured out where babies came from.  You would think that we would stop all this smiting, learn to reign in our primitive nature and get a handle on the indiscriminate procreating. But, as we all know, that’s not what happened.  Just look at us now- still waging wars, still going nuts over religious ideology, still living the same narcissistic, all-consuming existence, stinking up the joint with our garbage and fossil fuels.  And still reproducing like lab rats.  In God’s image, indeed.

According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates of world population growth, between 10,000 BC and 1800 AD the total number of humans had grown to one billion.  One hundred years later, at the turn of the twentieth century, the world population had grown to one and a half billion people; you’d think that, by now, we would have realized we are not an endangered species.  But NO, human life is sacred, isn’t it?  It must be- because, by the middle of the twentieth century, a billion more mewling, diaper-clad curtain climbers were dropped into the world.  Think about it: It took all the time from the dawn of civilization until the nineteenth century for the world’s human population to reach one billion.  By 1900, it had increased to 1.5 billion.  A mere 50 years later, the population figure exploded to 2.5 billion.  Even taking into account the mass amount of technologically-enhanced smiting going on, that’s a mess o’ being fruitful.

Yes indeedy, two and a half billion is quite a number, but more shocking still is the time frame in which we have reached this level of redundancy.  Consider that, in 1800, the world population finally hit the billion mark, by1900 we had reached one and a half; but by 1950, we added an extra billion.  Now, hold onto your hats, folks: 59 years later, the population has blossomed to nearly six billion, seven hundred ninety-five million. If this keeps up, we just might have to evict a few more spotted owls.

And it seems that this geometric trend will continue.  According to Forbes.com, “Global population numbers are on track to reach 7 billion in 2011, just 12 years after reaching 6 billion in 1999. Virtually all of the growth is in developing countries. And the growth of the world’s youth population (ages 15 to 24) is shifting into the poorest of those countries.” This demographic shift has monstrous implications.  While developed nations are stabilizing their populations, in the third world there is an increasing mass of people living on the fringe of human existence, and these hapless souls are most vulnerable to the horrors of mass starvation, war, pestilence and genocide.  But what do we care?  To the leaders of the G-20, these are simply emerging markets that will suck up Fords, BMWs, Toyotas and Kias like greedy little ant eaters.

Now, here’s the kicker- according to US Census Bureau projections, by 2050 the world population will have increased to over nine and a half billion- a 50% increase in just forty years.  At this rate, we will be 18 billion by 2080; by the year 2100… well, these geometric leaps will probably have taken their toll, and not just on developing nations- factor in loss of habitat and arable farm land, overfishing, global climate change, depletion of energy, war, global famine, pandemics and a number of unforeseen events, life, as we know it, will probably cease to exist.  Forget technological advances, forget civilization, forget religion… forget all the wonderful things mankind has achieved.  It will all turn to crapola within the next hundred years or so, unless we change the nature of the beast.  By ‘the beast,’ I mean us.

So, what does this have to do with imbibing Cabernet while listening to Miles Davis?  Absolutely nothing.  That was my shameless ploy, to get your attention, although it does serve to frame the issue in more personal terms.  While we are sitting around sipping our wine, enjoying the bon vie of modern civilization, there are billions living a tenuous, substandard existence in the so-called emerging markets.  Tens of thousands are dying from malnutrition and disease.  The harbingers of massive world famine are already staring us in the face, as are the other key environmental issues, all related to that one big issue- overpopulation.   Paradoxically, while we allow thousands of unfortunates to die of starvation, the world population is exploding.  What can we do?

We can stop pretending that the problem isn’t ours to solve.  Even though the developed nations have reached what is sometimes euphemistically referred to as “neutral replacement fertility,” there seems to be no unified consensus on what roll we should play to combat the looming crisis.  Because fringe groups (anti-immigrant groups, racists, anti-Muslim hate groups, etc.) often exploit the raw data to rationalize and promote their own twisted agendas, the subject has become almost a third rail of political correctness.  But hate mongers and political fringe groups be damned- sealing our superficial borders against third world immigrants, ignoring mass starvation and genocide, treating refugees as if they were problems, not victims in need of our compassion- that’s a fast track to our own self-destruction.  We can continue to ignore the issue, until it is in our own backyard.  You think we had problems during the recent recession?  Pack your bags and book a vacation in the Horn of Africa.  Or stop averting your eyes when you see images from a world hunger organization fund-raising ad.  This shame is on all our heads and is a prelude to what our great-grandchildren face, unless we start changing our behavior.

Obviously genocide, mass starvation, pestilence, government-forced abortion and war are unacceptable ways to control the population and not at all necessary, at least at this stage of the game.  Don’t even think for a second that I advocate targeting any particular demographic or ethnic group for such Draconian measures; there is an effective solution which is much more palatable and doesn’t harm anyone.  What we need is a global paradigm shift in thinking to embrace the concept of gradual, uniform, voluntary negative population growth, with increased emphasis on sex education for all, equal rights for women in developing countries and adequate access to family planning and birth control for everyone.  Educated, socially liberated women in control of their own reproductive systems are not so quick to conceive a gaggle of unwanted children and educated, enlightened people tend to favor rational parenting, especially if responsible reproductive practices are culturally reinforced and encouraged, politically and economically.  (Note that I said reinforced and encouraged, not enforced.)  When all nations achieve neutral fertility, we will have gained enough time to create, if not utopian perfection, at least an egalitarian global community which would offer the opportunity for an acceptable quality of life for all inhabitants.  This is a very simple concept, though one that will be difficult in its implementation as political, industrial and religious leaders all over the world will fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo- but this is a fight we must join and win.  The alternative is too horrific to imagine: a doomsday trifecta of climate change, mass starvation and eventual extinction.  Wrap your head around this image, from year One Million, PH (Post Humanity): a nattily-attired cockroach, selling insurance door-to-door, a shining example of the planet’s dominant species.  (“…and for a few crumbs more, Mrs. Scurry, this policy will include a guaranteed thorax protection clause!”)

At the very least, we can start talking about it.  In the meantime, we still have to solve the myriad environmental and social issues, along with the economic disparity among the different population groups.  Currently, while most citizens of developed countries live in what can only be called decadence, over one billion people in the world don’t have enough to eat.  That’s a disgrace, since we now have the means and resources to eradicate the problem.  Eventually, if we allow the world population to reach critical mass, we won’t have that luxury- because we will all be starving.  Is this the legacy we want to leave for our great-grandchildren?

By taking preemptive action now to reduce the human population numbers, we may still look forward to a future in which our descendents can sit on their front porches, sip Cabernet Sauvignon from a long-stemmed glass and yell, “Hey you spotted owls- get the Hell off my lawn!”

One of my favorite things to do whenever I visit Paris is to sit at a sidewalk café and watch people.  In Parisian cafés it’s not unusual for people to sit for as long as they like, nursing a single cup of unfailingly superb café’au lait, with no pressure to buy anything else or to move on (at least that was the case the last time I was there).  You see all kinds of people, from the sublime to the ridiculous- for some reason, Parisians have always seemed  to be more cosmopolitan than the denizens of most other cities around the world, running the gamut from the cutting edge of fashion elite to the ordinary, work-a-day middle class stiff.  In short, the sidewalk dwellers of Paris encompass the entire strata of humanity;  mundane, exotic or occasionally, strikingly bizarre.

An example of the latter captured my imagination one blustery, chilly afternoon in late March, 1985, a day over which winter and spring were waging an ongoing battle.  It looked like spring would prevail, as there was a bustling throng on the Champs-Elysees.  I was sitting inside a café on the boulevard, deep in thought and enjoying the jovial parade, when an ominous shadow intruded on my daydreaming.  A tall, thin man totally garbed in black entered the glass-enclosed apron of the café, slowly made his way to a table a few feet from where I was stationed and sat down, directly in my line of vision.   He reached into one of his coat pockets, deposited a pile of francs and cintemes on the table and began to methodically count and stack them.  A waiter came over and took his order for a single cup of coffee.  The cut of the man’s coat and his porkpie hat gave him the air of a defrocked priest and it was all but impossible to tell his age, although he couldn’t be much over thirty.   But the most startling feature was his face- gaunt, sallow and devoid of hair, it had a waxy, porcelain patina- he may have been a burn victim.  His eyes were too large for the rest of his face, nestled deep in sockets and were shockingly morose; his mouth was a grim slash.   One look at him and a wave of depression flooded through me, down to the very essence- but I couldn’t tear my eyes away.  He had an otherworldly, nearly skeletal countenance, almost as if he had been conjured from the depths of the darkest hole inside my imagination.  The eyes spoke volumes; I had never seen such a compelling display of abject misery.

The waiter brought his coffee and took his coin.  For what seemed an age, he sat there, seemingly oblivious to those around him and to my observation, which, I confess, bordered on rudeness.  I wanted to know his story, what had happened to him and what tragic burden he bore, but my limited facility with the French language and the sense that I had already exceeded the boundaries of proper behavior inhibited me.

From time to time he would recount and restack his coins, but otherwise he remained still, staring into space with what appeared to be a look of utter despair.  There was an increasingly palpable sadness in the air.  I wondered if others in the café felt it as well.  If they did, they kept it to themselves.  As for myself, I felt as if I couldn’t bear much more.

Mercifully, after what seemed to be an age, the gentleman polished off the last of his cup, absently gathered up the remainder of his francs and centimes and left the café.  I watched, transfixed, as he slowly made his way down the avenue toward the Arc d’Triumph and disappeared from sight, dissolving into the mass of shoppers, lovers and sightseers.

The world is full of tragic events that touch our lives and we all have our share of scars; a few are external, most are internal.   Occasionally you run across an individual who bears both.  The shadow of that dark specter lingering over a cup of coffee in a Parisian café has remained etched into my consciousness ever since and I often ponder that, if I had offered a kind word and another cup of coffee or perhaps a baguette, that simple act of kindness would have yielded a fascinating dialogue; or if it would have just been a humiliation for him and an embarrassment for me.  Well, too late now.  But the vision of that pitiable figure in black has haunted me to this day.