The Art of La Flânerie
The practice of flânerie reveals how short our attention span is. But there is beauty in this truth.
I am walking. Or, more precisely, meandering. Aimlessly wandering around the city, half guided by the map on my phone, half by intuition. It is a tricky endeavor: balancing the need to orient myself in space — so I don’t get lost — and observing — the essence of la flânerie.
flâneur — the one who saunters around observing the environment around him.
I feel a deep connection to this practice, not just in the literal sense of “the one who saunters” city streets, but in heart and mind too. My mind wanders around in search of the next thought to be captivated by; in short, it “flânes”. From the outside, I may appear relatively normal, but inside my head, a maze of distractions is unfolding. If you look closely into my eyes, you would see that I am not actually present.
Tis the paradox of le flâneur — or la flâneuse in my case. To properly “flâne” there is no question that you need to be present — what’s the point, if not? — But there is also an inherent non-presence in the act of flânerie — feeling like a ghost levitating across the city. You’re there but not there. You are a mere presence floating around everyone else.
Hence why introvertedness is a central idea to la flânerie. On the surface, the flâneur does not like to be in the spotlight, to be with people, or even to be seen at all. That is why most flâneurs — those who practice it professionally, as one does— go unnoticed. They blend in with the crowds and hide in plain sight, like a visitation.
They work in the background, moving in the shadows.
But behind this facade is a cry for attention, almost in desperation.
The flâneur thus finds himself walking a tightrope, teetering on the edge of two wildly different expanses: presence and non presence; recognition and disregard; consciousness and unconsciousness.
It is a tricky place to be in — one I am very familiar with. Maybe you are too?
Flâning reflects my state of mind: consumed by indecision and doubt, distracted by my vagabond schemes, yanked back into the reality of responsibility. I — it — saunters and zig-zags every which way, unsure of where to land. In short, it has fully assumed the role of the flâneur.
Its main mode of practice is walking. But as you may have gathered by now, the flâneur doesn’t just “walk around”. As much as flânerie is about vagrancy, it is also about focus. It requires the maintenance of attention, which, in today’s world, is practically impossible.
Case in point: it took me about three hours to write this short piece. I stopped in my tracks approximately every ten feet, my attention being pulled by something I wanted to investigate further. Sometimes I stopped only a brief moment, realizing that what I had seen was only vaguely interesting. Other times, I stopped longer, looking more intently at the object.
Life is constantly testing our ability to survive in a world designed to challenge our focus and incentivize reckless behavior — a world where every object, person, and place becomes a temptation, turning you into a prey. We are judged by our relative ability to not fall into the trap. It is frustrating because most of the time we do not realize we are cast under a spell. And if we do, we feel powerless.
Flâneurs find a way to take back this power, to turn this powerlessness into a virtue. For the flâneur is, by nature, powerless to the world around them. Their whole project rests on their acceptance of the fact that the world is messy, it is chaotic, it is complicated, but it is beautiful. Their existence relies on surrendering their being to their environment. They let themselves go, conscious of the reality that they will not be able to grasp everything, to understand everything or even see everything. And that is ok.
The flâneur is aware that they are not aware. How beautiful is that?
