Vivre en bourgeois et penser en demi-dieu.
No less of an authority than Gustave Flaubert licensed us, the artists, to live a life of predictable and rational stability. So long as in our minds and in our work we remain the savage demigods we are exempt from the onerous demands of bohemianism.
My dear friend David Schoffman has taken the first half of Flaubert's injunction to the absolute extreme. Under the lush splendor of southern Californian skies David suffers daily the grievous monotony of great weather. Like most of his colleagues he has adopted the climate as something of a birthright and spends as much time as he can sitting outdoors drinking coffee.
In Paris by contrast, the harsh, grey winters turn us inward, forcing upon us a kind of domestic exile and in turn producing the optimum conditions for thought and creativity.
Los Angeles is more of an unfortunate paradise where great minds wither under the incandescent urges toward pleasure and repose.
The formally ferocious Schoffman is no exception. In the past twenty years I have seen him evolve from the feral insurrectionist to a genteel handicrafter, content in dabbling in his garden with his watercolor and brush.
It's a sad spectacle seeing this former gladiator of the avant-garde relaxing under a canopy, sipping a beer and admiring nature.
Perhaps my dear Flaubert was right when he wrote "Nous danson non pas sur un volcan, mais sur la planche d'une latrine qui m'a l'air passablement pourrie." David reeks from the fetid fragrance of contentment. He has returned unharmed from the wilderness and remembers nothing but the trees.
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