Flâneur : French for “stroller”, “lounger”, “saunterer”, “loafer”, “loiterer”, “wanderer”, “rover”. However, none of these words really fit. Quite simply put, a flâneur is a wo/man of the streets.
Francis, too, was literally both a man of, and living off, the streets. I first met him on the train home where he greeted me with these simple words: ‘You look like a sensible young fellow, come and sit down.’ He introduced himself before drawing a harmonica from his backpack and playing for me an air till I got off.
I saw Francis again a few weeks later walking along Swanston Street and looking lost. I knew it was him because he wore the same motley Harlequin-like jacket. I approached him and asked on a joyful note: ‘Hey, where’s your harmonica?’ At first he did not recognise me, and turning his face towards me it is then I realised his nose had been crushed and was bleeding profusely.
I asked if he wished me to accompany him to the hospital. Instead, we entered a Macker nearby and headed for the toilets where I helped him clean his face. Then I bought him some meal. He was obviously hungry and devoured his chips and burger in silence. I still remember his last words to me until a month later or so I met with someone who knew him and told me Francis had been bashed to death and his body found under Princes Bridge by the Yarra River.
‘You French? Read or heard of Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur? Maybe you guys’ version of the noble Australian swagman ahahhha. Well, I came across his poems once - it’s his poems that convinced me to become a hobo…Now of course there’re other circumstances to it. It all started after my wife and I got divorced. I lost my job not long after, and soon enough found myself in the streets. You know, the classical story. But, in a sense, I believe I really chose to be a hobo. Or the street chose me. Either way, I’ve come to think, the only way I’m ever gonna make it up to my wife and children, to people in general - you know, relationships, ties, connections and all of that - is here, in the midst and the womb of that city-bitch of Melbourne …Can you hear the city-beat now?’
He marked a paused, feigning to listen to whatever beat there was, but the only noise I could hear was the tinkle of the cash register and chit-chat of customers behind us. His voice rose again more fiercely now.
‘Or else you never learn and keep on living like an automaton. Look at them’ - he made a gesture towards the sidewalk outside Macker - ‘all busy, all knowing where they going, but it’s only pretence. Deep inside we’re all flâneurs…But they clean people, they keep away from things.’
He paused again, the rosy tip of his tongue sticking off his mouth in suspension like a question mark. Then smacked his lips noisily and resumed.
‘Yeah that’s it, from things and people like you and me. You’re a nice bloke so you get it, but there’re people outta there who’re scared and beat you up for no reason. I’m a flâneur and a glâneur you know - I glean- I’m a collector of raw emotions.’ He pointed to his broken noise and laughed lavishly while drawing his harmonica from his backpack, and then added, enigmatically: ‘There is no trace which I haven’t made mine, no road nor line which I didn’t cross and make rhyme.’
I was told later Francis had received no burial. He could not afford one; besides, I believe he wouldn’t have liked the idea. Francis was a true flâneur, not the dandy bourgeois city drifter of Baudelaire’s 19th century Paris but a modern hobo in late capitalism’s Australia who persuaded himself that the streets of Melbourne and the experience he could draw from them were his predestined aristocratic birthright.
When you meet Francis’ kind, give a coin, or better, stop by and have a chat, there might be one or two things you’d like to hear about the meaning of the word flâneur. Or don’t. Melbourne CBD - its phallic skyscrapers, its square-grid-like rigidity made of straight streets and for straight people - was never intended for mollified flâneurs like Francis in the first place. Walk straight past your designated flâneur till you reach or invent a final destination for yourself. And never look back. Keep on walking, past the library, past the station, past the Arts Centre, and all the way past the Shrine of Remembrance and even further still, to where you may at last deem is a safe point of no return. But don’t forget: the Earth is round, so there’s always a chance for you to come full circle. And if you do (and your feet must be sore by now) or appear to be lost in the meanders of the Royal Botanical Gardens nearby, and cannot find your way out, and think this is all very funny that such gardens can exist right in the heart of cities - then you may recall Francis’ words that deep inside we’re all flâneurs; only some more so than others.
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