There is something undeniably romantic about the idea of creativity in solitude - that state of deliberate, sought-out aloneness.* The symbiotic relationship between solitude and creativity has been cited by many of our cultural giants - Ernest Hemingway championed the value of working alone in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1954, Susan Sontag stated that ‘One can never be alone enough to write’, and the Romantic poets certainly couldn’t get enough their own company, so long as they were in wistful gazing distance of a grassy knoll or, like, a tree. In The Prelude, Wordsworth pays tribute to Isaac Newton: ‘a mind for ever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.’
I’m writing this from the Galt House in Louisville, Kentucky. As well as being the venue for AMTA’s National Music Therapy Conference, The Galt House is hosting Kentucky Muscle’s Kentucky’s Strongest Man convention. In order to crack on with some work between sessions, I sought out a quiet spot, and my refuge from the merry sound of Boomwhackers has turned out to be Spray Tan Center adjacent. As it turns out, it’s much trickier to voyage through strange seas of thought when one is sitting in a spray tan thoroughfare. Folks are filing past me, walking like John Wayne. They’re going in pink, and when they come out, they’re practically puce.
This may seem irrelevant, but I suppose that’s partly the point. I wanted to reflect on our current civilizational anxiety about being alone, but - no, really - that man is purple! I had noble intentions of pondering the way in which modern life presents a curious paradox of connectedness and loneliness. Living, as we do, in a world of constant stimulation and interconnectivity, we are in perpetual ‘communion’ with one another (#constantcontact) but an increased sense of isolation, at both an individual and societal level has been well documented. How, then, does this impact our creative selves? This may be a question worth dwelling on, but I am too distracted by this human circus to even attempt a cogent exploration. I can fall asleep in any situation - regardless of my physical position or social situation (there’s one for the CV) but in order to think clearly, I need a bit of peace and quiet. For me, solitude is to creativity what spray tan is to enhanced muscle definition - non-obligatory, but strongly encouraged.
*and I think it is this intentional aloneness that is crucial - we are very skeptical about entire, or involuntary solitude. A lone ranger is a cowboy - almost a cultural ideal - whereas a loner is a potential threat. And this isn’t a new idea - according to Aristotle ‘the man who is isolated who is unable to share in the benefits of political association […] is no part of the polis, and must therefore be a beast or a god.’ In Greek tragedy, exile was seen as a far greater punishment than death. Shakespeare echoes this idea in Romeo & Juliet: ‘Ha, banishment! Be merciful, say ‘death’ / For exile hath more terror in his look, / Much more than death.’ (III.iii)
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