Drawn to Subversion

Feeling the allure of dangerous books.  

Stir Your Soul

Picture this: You’re a writer, a disrupter, a subversive underground agitator living in the back alleys of eighteenth-century Paris. You spend your days jotting down ideas in a coffee-stained notebook. Wrapped in your cloak, you walk through the cold winter air and find refuge in your favorite local tavern.

After warming yourself by the fire, you nod to some pals and see an open spot at the end of a long table. Pulling up a stool, you recharge with black coffee, warm bread, salted butter, and hand-rolled cigarettes. And at this point, you are ready to go.

Brandishing your ink stick, you unleash incendiary words against the status quo, reminding yourself that no one—not kings, popes, or the police--can arrest your brain or shackle your soul.  

Scribbling, feeling, and drinking late into the night, the crackling fire smokes through the wooden tavern as candles melt on tables. You hear empty metal cups clanking as their holders ask for more. As the commotion buzzes around you, ideas once again dart to your brain.

Hunched over the table, you scribble more--pouring yourself into your words, sentences, and paragraphs. You draw upon all those hushed conversations, heated arguments, and the treasured books locked in a trunk at the foot of your bed.

You think what you want, write what you want, and hope you make just enough money to keep doing what you want until the end--whenever and however that may come.

You are the underground man, published by an underground press. You stay one step ahead of la police secrète, who would love nothing more than to find your trunk, burn your books, and deliver you to chez Bastille.

Okay, okay, okay. I’ll stop and come up for air. Why am I writing this?

Because it feels good--that's why and that's it. Let's keep going... two minutes to go.

When traveling to Paris two years ago, I saw the bouqinistes, holding court along a stretch of the River Seine that’s considered the largest open-air bookstore in the world. With their iconic green wooden boxes swung open, I began my frolic through heaven. Books, pamphlets, prints, maps, and other enchanting ephemera dazzled me. It was my “pinch me, I’m in Paris” moment. Oh, what a feeling it was.

Centuries before, in the age of our imagined writer above, these stewards of wonder had a more sinister role. Selling heretical books and rebellious pamphlets “under the cloak,” as historian Philipp Blom described it, these men peddled their wares after dusk along the banks, beneath the bridges, and through the smoky taverns of Paris. The books they delivered helped poison state narratives, free minds, and unleash a fever of ideas that would one day spark a revolution.

The authors of these books often paid a price for their art. Voltaire languished in the Bastille, Diderot sat in a Vincennes prison, and the notorious Marquis de Sade, the sex-mad devil himself, screamed heresies out a Bastille window just days before citizens stormed the fortress.  

Am I embellishing the Romance of this age? Yes, I am. Were things in monarchical and revolutionary France way more nuanced and complicated? Yes, they were. Do I care? Not at all. Because when it comes to wonder, I’m not chasing nuanced facts. I’m after a feeling! And I want to live with that feeling until the end--whenever and however that may come.

Scribbling feverishly at a local coffee shop, reading with lit candles, watching a haunting scene from Heat--these are the moments I feel self-actualized, raising my fist from the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This is the space where I flourish, and I hope, where you flourish too. Thinking, feeling, creating, and doing whatever in this universe stirs us with wonder is a great way to live.  

Please Seduce Me

As humans, I think we have an innate desire for seduction. Admit it, life is more enchanting when we’re naïve, more romantic when we’re charmed, and more tantalizing when we take a bite from that forbidden fruit.

So listen to the canceled song, watch the provocative movie, and read the outlawed book. Give yourself the thrill of eyebrow-raising art. Free your inhibitions, seek wonder, and feel the barbarian in you.