Here’s one small metaphorical leap from travel literature: the journey of life can be enjoyed even in cheap hotels. This idea is standard in any folk philosophy — better to have modest means and do what you enjoy. Even in the carpeted corridors of yuppiedom, people are considering “downsizing” their frenetic careers, although this is more a search for sanity than the pursuit of an ideal. What I advocate is more radical than winching down from six digits of income to five.
The simple life I refer to would qualify me for the “underclass,” that great specter created to assist the mainstream economy in distancing itself from those not like itself. Living simply has been central to our mythos of the artistic life, conjuring a smoky demimonde of ill-heated flats, spartan furniture, a diet of staples like potatoes and peanut butter, and a rustic kind of self-reliance that draws inspiration from the inability to afford anything beyond rent, if that. But such archetypal images do not explain the merits of a simple life, which can be discovered only by the examination of particular lives.
