The Flâneuse

So, I've been thinking about writing a blog (in the same way that I've been thinking about starting the revolution, going back to my internship at Witness, and finally returning one of Ali Robinton's emails) for some time. I didn't want to, necessarily, because I had some wisdom that anyone else lacked, but because I'd come up with a really super name: The Flâneuse. It's French, fine, and I speak even less French than I can make a blog (?) but I felt it would be highly apposite.

A flâneur is, as I understand its conceptual presentation by Baudelaire, an urban observer. A lot of definitions on the, you know, Internet would have it that flanerie--seriously. that's apparently what it's called. a word that makes me think of flailing with streamers in both hands--is a state of idleness, passive spectating.

Instead, I'd say that the flâneur and flâneuse (masculine & feminine) are active members of the cities they observe; as though by walking down Third Avenue near the Gowanus Canal I have inexorably altered that environment. Or at least reified it, carrying it with me as an interpreted image.

One reason the term has experienced a scholarly resurgence of late--I mean, since 1848, or whatever--is because Baudelaire only wrote of a man walking the streets, leaving the existence of a flâneuse unexamined. That's a question that resonates with me; can I walk down the street, relatively unobserved, engaged only in the act of looking? Because that means that I'm not engaged in the act of averting my eyes from middle aged businessmen, bawdy teenagers, and hard-hatted construction workers.

I walk all the time. I look all the time. But do I believe that I, or anyone, can be a flâneuse? Undetermined. Anyway, the blog name was taken by some professor on WordPress. That's cool. I like the name Red Admirable, too. It's a butterfly.

For further elucidation: someone is more educated than I.