There is a great romanticism to locking oneself in one’s room with the hope that we’d emerge one day, a happy tiredness upon our face, a magnum opus clutched beneath our arm. To have a room for oneself, as Virginia Woolf famously states, is a vital refuge for the artist— and yet we’d be remiss to believe it is the complete picture.
I seem to hear it all the time, that writing is a solitary pursuit, that creating art is best suited to the hermit, the home-dweller— and perhaps this is what has drawn you to making, or has charmed you once you discovered it. I know it did for me, as a self-proclaimed introvert I often revel in the fact that I get to spend days in my own company, concocting imaginary worlds, sketching scenarios, and losing myself in the creative act.
With the coming of autumn, I feel none of the so-called seasonal depression, I relish instead in the quiet comfort of hearing the rain patter against my window, misting up the glass, and I watch with a warming enjoyment as blurred pedestrians shapeshift to wherever they’re so hurriedly rushing towards. When the rain passes, and remnant raindrops tinkle against the metal edge of my balcony, soft xylophonic pangs become the score to my creative practice, as I write, or conceptualise ideas for films. However, as fulfilling as it can be to have ‘a room for oneself’ to dream and create, it is almost useless without the vital need to have something to say in the first place.
"Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.” — Henry James.
To be ‘one of those on whom nothing is lost’ means to grasp the depth and complexity of social dynamics, nuance, surface and surprise which burst out of life constantly. If we read between the lines, James’s statement points to the fact that to squeeze the juice from the world and transpose it into our work, we must first firmly be in it.
To be in the world with two feet placed firmly on the ground means to be less impressed and more involved. How much do we miss by skimming the world across with our eyes? How much more can we soak up by engaging with the world instead, with a curious empathy?
Such a mindset reminds me of the practice of Josh Safdie, ½ of the Safdie Brothers director-duo known for films such as ‘Good Time’ and 'Uncut Gems.’ Wandering the streets of New York, Josh would walk with no real aim except to engage with the world. Interest shown to a character that everyone else rushed passed led to many weird and wonderful scenarios; being a witness to a backroom game of poker, wandering into the mysterious world of the orthodox Kabbalah, hearing whispered rumours of mysterious diamonds in the cramped storage rooms of the diamond district. On one such day of world wandering, Josh stumbled into Arielle Homes, a homeless heroin addict who’d been hired as an intern by a diamond dealer who’d seen her sketch on a subway train. Fascinated by her story, Josh hired her to write a memoir, paying her per page for what would become an unpublished work, “Mad Love In New York City” and would later serve as a foundation for the feature film she starred in, playing herself, directed by the Safdie Brothers, — ‘Heaven Knows What’.
Life can so easily tumble into stories if only we choose to go out and meet them.
Perhaps, true knowledge is more easily discovered beyond the threshold of our doorstep. To see the outside world as an extension of our ‘studio’ means to bounce from stimulus to response in a way that is intentionally rhythmic, visceral and conducive to ideation.
Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the seminal Fight Club has a story that has stuck with me ever since I heard it. “To know if you have a compelling story, tell it at a party. You’ll know if the story is good if the room immediately erupts with everyone having a different version of that same story, that all start with ‘Oh my gosh, the same thing happened to me, only bigger’ Then that’s a good story.” Fight Club, I later discovered, was written mostly at parties, in the world rather than within the four walls of a solitary room. Listening in to interactions at parties, fishing for moments of human connection, became a way to infuse real-world feedback into his work, a kind of dance seen only by those who are attentive enough to look for it, marking it down like the fading footsteps of a fleeting dance.
Perhaps working in the world makes coming home gain evermore value, like gliding fresh eyes across a familiar sight. Saul Bellow writes about such experience with a grace that interweaves a sense of spirituality with open observation.
“I gazed up at the comfortable room and heard the slight mixed rhythm of her breathing and mine. This endeared her to me more than any favour could. The icicles and frost patterns on the window turned brilliant; the trees, like instruments, opened all their sounds into the wind, and the bold, icy colours of sky and snow and clouds burned strongly. A day for a world without deformity or threat of damage, and my pleasure in the weather was all the greater because it held its own beauty and was engaged with nothing but itself. The light gave an air of innocence to some of the common objects in the room, liberating them from ugliness. I lost the aversion I had hitherto felt for the oblong rug at the foot of the bed, the scrap of tapestry on the radiator seat, the bubbles of paint on the white lintel, the six knobs on the dresser I had formerly compared to the ugly noses of as many dwarf brothers. In the middle of the floor, like an accidental device of serenity, lay a piece of red string.”
To have a room for oneself becomes even more valuable when we have the agency to be able to return to it. Instead of retreating like a prisoner who has grown fond of his cell, we must step into the world to enrich our inner landscape and fill our cups with intention to overflow it.
Art flourishes not solely within the confines of our solitude but through delicate interplay with the world itself; so that our rooms are not just sanctuaries, but also, glimmering mirrors that reflect the world around us like fleeting photographs on the surface of our blank canvas.
— IL.
Thank you for reading Bluezone.
Bluezone — Philosophical Musings On Artistic Pursuit.
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Wow, I really liked this one! It was very similar to my feelings about loneliness and my own room and the way I look at art, it really aroused my feelings 🥹🤧 and your blog has influenced me a lot, since I am a comic writer and graphic artist, I am deeply interested in writing and I have this feeling that you write from your heart✨️ and even though I am Iranian understanding English long texts are difficult for me, but I read "The Cost of Being Me" every day since you posted it and it really had a good effect on me and took me out of my comfort zone, thank you so much for your creative writing ⭐️
I love this post!! Those truths live in me too... probably because I want to reshape my world and give it more colors.🙂 Solitude seems to me like a sieve that sifts reality - the saturated moments, the encounters, the chaotic nature of the world, its mediocrity, but also the encountered humanity, the beauty, the stories, the images, even the noises of the world - they all are broken down in solitude, and it sifts the necessary from the unnecessary, the meaningful from the meaningless. And so it turns out that the solitude seems to be 'pregnant' - new thoughts, new sensations, a different awareness of things arise in it. And finally, something new is born- an inspiration or a new layer of our essence... but this happens only if "we step into the world to enrich our inner landscape and fill our cups with intention to overflow it."!!