Foonicate

Creativity and Loneliness

September 30, 2007 – 5:05 pm

Every once in awhile, I send someone a link to my old blog, circa 2004.  The question that inevitably forms on their lips is, “why don’t you write like that anymore?”  Not that it has taken me three years to formulate this answer, but my lack of creativity is due to a lack of loneliness.  This response usually illicits a confused look followed by a shrug.  And usually I don’t feel like elaborating because most people don’t actually care to hear the answer, they just want to come across as if they care.  So, for all those people I never answered that really did want to hear why, I shall elaborate:

Creativity and loneliness go together.  This is not to say that one must be lonely to be creative, but they must afford themselves solitude in which to create.  Creative people have a particular detachment from the general world around them; they aren’t necessarily loners, but they definitely are not conformists.  This detachment allows them to view things uniquely, from a perspective that cannot be learned or expounded upon.  Without the required solitude, a creative person is stifled.  Unable to create.

Here is where people tend to disagree with me.  Since the above statement is broad, I will attempt to narrow it down a bit.  A person can be happy, healthy, romantically involved, and wealthy in friendship and still be creative.  In order to pull this off, they must be able to remove themselves from distraction and move into solitude.  It is when the person cannot recede into their own mind or set aside time to create that they lose their inspiration.  A person must afford themselves loneliness, in the form of solitude within and around themselves, in order to tap into their creativity.

And still, some may argue that this is a case-by-case manifestation.  Sure, it may well be.  But there are still a few for whom this rings true.  For me, being alone (romantically) is the catalyst for creativity.  When I am involved in a healthy relationship and can find no reason to distance myself from the comfort of it, I lose the ability to write.  For the past three years I’ve been comfortable.  As a result, I have not been able to tap into the same creative passion that once fueled my writing.

The decision to choose between comfort and loneliness doesn’t seem to be a difficult choice.  But when loneliness brings out a side of yourself that you truly adore, the decision is markedly hard.  You find yourself asking, “Am I willing to sacrifice my creativity for this?”  Sometimes, the answer is yes.  I don’t think it fair (but what really is?) that one should come at the cost of the other.  This the choice that we, that I, have to make.  And although I miss writing the way I did, at this point in my life, I’d rather be happy and comfortable than happy and lonely.

This is why I don’t write like that anymore.