Flâneur

Flâneur
- noun
a man who saunters around observing society.


I always knew I took strongly from my mother’s side of the family; the hair, the eyes, the inability to read in a moving car. Then at our wedding she gave a speech that was emotive and personal and I thought, “yeah! that’s how I’ve been trying to do it.”

This week my mum introduced me to the French word/concept of flâneur, and now I finally understand who I am and where I come from. My mother is a Flâneuse and I am a Flâneur.

The term seems to have begun with a real lounging around, drifting aimlessly type of French vibe. People with nothing better to do than saunter slowly about a city. Then flâneur grew and had a little bit of a revival with some real positive appreciation of architecture and society components linked in to all that walking and looking around. It's important to have people move around a place and appreciate the minutiae and the splendid.

There is even a real nice element you can graft on to flâneur about deliberately rejecting the over consumption and distractions of life to make way for meaningful observation, interaction and reflection on the world. ​

Mum told me she thinks this whole blog is a place for the thoughts I develop though various saunters around observing. I think she might be onto something.