On Loneliness and Art
All creative people were once lonely kids who fell in love with solitude
Growing up is like making a tie-dye T-shirt: twisting, turning, tying, and coloring experimentally with loose yet hopeful expectations of what the permanent results of our decisions will look like.
In this blur of figuring out ourselves and prodding at our identity — a journey that is usually done alone — we learn to be ourselves. The hallmark of artistic maturity is the ability to transform that elemental loneliness into the “fertile solitude” psychoanalyst Adam Philips called the elixir of our creativity, the “fruitful monotony” Bertrand Russell recognized as the key to our happiness.
And when we’re inspired enough, we reach out from this primal loneliness to other lonelinesses in that great gesture of connection we call art.
