Are you a Bohemian or a Dandy?

Are these two our only choices? I'll pass on both. Visit me http://www.radiodenver.org/

I guess I'm a bohemian, but with dandyish qualities.

You can't really be either without wealth. ~ I'll Show You Tyrants * Fuselit * The Prowl Log * Woe's Woe

Oh I don't know about that, what about the cliche of the dandy who hasn't actually got a penny to his name. Spike Milligan told a story about sitting next to a man on a plane who was imaculately turned out and talking about everything in terms of 'millions of pounds', then Spike noticed that he had painted his feet black so the holes in his socks didn't show. He was the inspiration for Grytpype-Thynne.

I enjoy sheer simplicity and happiness in poverty. I'm an urban-taoist, the uncarved block. Ask me a riddle and I reply... There's nothing more mind-teasing than the incomprehensible eagerly avowed - Dennett

I guess it depends how generous you are with the terms - I can imagine having difficulty convincing anyone I'm a dandy or bohemian, no matter what I wear or how I act, if they know about my job or background. Both types might be skint every now and then, but are kind of defined by their not doing proper jobs. ~ I'll Show You Tyrants * Fuselit * The Prowl Log * Woe's Woe

I've always tended to think about bohos (possibly wrongly, I'll admit!) as being middle-class, quite well-educated, reasonably comfortably off artist types who make affectations of poverty. I don't think of myself as a boho. Socially unconventional in many ways, certainly. The very idea of conformity is something for which I feel a deep aversion, even though I have to conform in many ways - for the sake of peace and liberty if nothing else! I've never felt more trapped and oppressed than when I was a civil servant with health insurance and a pension scheme. I've never wanted to earn huge amounts of money, and have always been happy, until now, to take low-paid 9 to 5 jobs - enough to pay for food and rent and give me time for reading and writing. I couldn't give less of a toss about fashion and always having the latest consumer gadgets. Don't have a mobile, an iPod, a car, a microwave, or a telly. Just personal preferences, not bohemianism. Quite a few artists over the centuries - we can all think of examples - have lived off the generosity of friends in order to give them time to write, paint, compose, etc. I don't see anything wrong with talent being supported in this way if people are prepared to do it - particularly, though not exclusively, if the ensuing work enriches the world and our experience of it. In our own times, many writers, artists and musicians have developed their art whilst on the dole. I'm not talking here about malingerers - but people who are genuinely talented and dedicated.