I have always had an introverted nature. As a child, I would immerse myself for hours reading a book or other solitary activity. When my parents sent me to my room for punishment, they found it didn't work as I would not be begging to come out.
But at different times of my life, I have been quite active socially. My college years especially were filled with social interactions that I grew to enjoy. It started out as friends and roommates dragging me to one thing or another, but after a while I instigated a lot of it.
But I naturally gravitated to a career in programming where I can spend 10 hours straight at the keyboard with almost no interaction. My hobby project is a major one that deals with a whole new way to manage data. It has consumed several years of my life as I spend a great deal of my 'free time' thinking about it, writing code, or optimizing something.
My introverted nature has affected my family life as I withdraw into my own little world. My wife sometimes wonders if I am depressed, unhappy, or stressed. Although I am perfectly content, I have to force myself to come out of my shell and interact much more with the wife and kids (and friends and neighbors). Many of my fellow programmers that I have worked with over the years also exhibit some of these tendencies.
I guess it is debatable whether this adds to or subtracts from actual creativity.
I feel very much the same regarding childhood and college, but I feel I came out the other side a different person.
In grade-school, my family moved often. I never had the experience of a friendship longer than about 3 years. Tech appealed to me - I always wanted to know how things worked and since no one took kids seriously, outside of it being a bonding experience with my dad occasionally, it was an activity I did alone, one where I spent large parts of my days learning about and experimenting with whatever I could get my hands on.
College was the first time I was exposed to people who shared a common interest. It wasn't a large campus, and somehow I ended up getting a reputation for being one of the more competent CS students on campus. People would approach me every day in the university's coffee shop to ask for help with class or pick my brain for ideas on hobby projects. I grew to seriously enjoy talking to people about what they're working on. I also grew to enjoy teaching and tutoring people - to the point where I'd give unofficial supplemental lectures in our ACM meetings about things I felt were missed in various classes. Computer graphics was a huge passion of mine at the time and a lot of people hated the class because it did a poor job of bridging theory to practice. I did so, so many OpenGL tutoring sessions.
After college I moved away from everyone I knew to take a job in another part of the state. I didn't really start to understand until then that I now craved socialization. I spent the next few years without anyone to (physically) spend time with. Much of my socialization was my Discord gaming group of everyone from back in college (still all together 6 years later).
After the main part of the pandemic I decided I was tired of being alone. I feel like I spent 6 years of my 20s locked up so I packed my life up and transferred to where all the people I was actually friends with were. Multiple social engagements a week for the past 3 months - I haven't been this happy in years. I even have people to go to the gym with!
I feel like being alone turned me into a more negative and reserved person as opposed to the "can't wait to share the cool things I know and or learned with everyone" person I was in school.
I don't know what to call myself. A shy extrovert? I'm horrible at starting a conversation but wow can I keep one going if someone else initiates.
I feel similarly, I find it a little difficult to start conversations and to ask people questions that get them to open up. Knowing what exactly to ask about is hard for me. But I thoroughly enjoy talking to people especially if they are leading the conversation and they are one of those people that can get others to open up.
It comes down to trying to have a little balance in your life. It's been said that programming is an art form. Those who take pride in their work try to build something elegant that is not only functional, but also a beauty to look at and work on. If you are not careful it can also become an obsession that can dominate your life. Being an introvert just compounds it.
Unlike some other types of art, software is never really finished. I don't think that painters or sculptors regularly revisit their creations to try and improve them. They don't have versions 2, 3, or 4 of a painting or statue. The closest thing might be writers who sometimes have multiple editions to their books. There is always something to do to improve a piece of software so it can keep you up too late at night because it is just a compile or two away.
Oops, gotta go, I just thought of a new feature for my project...
Perhaps not regularly; artworks that are relatively quick to perform are probably more susceptible to this. Anecdotally I’ve known calligraphers to find themselves practicing the same words over and over again out of muscle memory when just doodling or writing without full focus. I find similarities between this and sports, or even games such as counter-strike. Same map, same mechanics, slightly different flow each time.
On the subject of creativity, I (like many others Im sure) have found travelling to be great for creativity, alone or otherwise! There was an article linked here a while ago about a person who embarked on “staycations” where they just remained confined to their hotel room explicitly to enhance their writing.
> My introverted nature has affected my family life as I withdraw into my own little world. ..Many of my fellow programmers that I have worked with over the years also exhibit some of these tendencies.
I believe many professional writers, artists, even musicians exhibit similar traits - they live in their own self-created worlds, stories, imaginary inner lives - often to the detriment of their social lives in "real" life.
Some are extroverted, some are introverted, but most are solitary brooders and counter-intuitively, exhibitionists at the same time.
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This is a beautiful passage from the post.
> You need to get back to the solitude that you knew as a child. They see the world with eyes unclouded. They live in their own world, a world of pure authenticity.
This resonates with me so much to the point where I’ve started publishing blogs about my own struggles and resolutions. It sounds like you have a lot of awareness.
It’s kind of easy to take this extremely literally and pick it apart, which a lot of comments here are doing, but might be helpful to broaden what “solitude” means and maybe even read it as though it’s a bit allegorical. Also important to remember this was more than 100 years ago, and that he’s talking very specifically about how to write poetry. All the way through I felt like he could have been talking about social media.
Metaphorically, he seems to be saying (to me even more strongly than isolation): that motivation needs to be intrinsic, it should come from yourself and your own desires, not from others; and that you should practice your craft intensely and make sure the practice of writing poetry is free from interruptions or noise that cloud things. He may be naming the state of flow we all want using words for it that we’re not used to these days, along with a push for writers to set their own standards and not judge themselves by publishing metrics. These are fairly timeless and applicable ideas today, not to mention all of us programmers frequently dream of solitude and perhaps resent the fact that we almost never get it at work.
My partner does a lot of art and frequently draws in social settings. She finds drawing by herself lonely, isolating, and draining. These sorts of takes incense her as she faces pressure to work alone. The problem with these sorts of theses is that they affirm the experiences of those who agree but do nothing with others. Programmers are more likely than most to prefer solitude, but even that isn't a constant. Extrapolating behavior across humanity from personal anecdotes has never been particularly effective.
Yeah I agree with this too, which is one reason I was subtly making a distinction above between goals and actions. Rilke’s goals seem to be intrinsic motivation and intense focus, but “solitude” is the action he concludes one needs to do to achieve those goals (of writing poetry). Really, there are different kinds of people and different kinds of creative work, and different goals. Rilke had success, but there are plenty of poets, and many many more artists and creatives, who are wildly social. Creativity doesn’t require solitude, I just wanted to extract the parts of this essay that were helpful for me.
I liked reading this fictitious conversation by Rilke, but I’m not about to take it as bible truth and go live in the woods in hopes of being more creative. (And I don’t think he was actually suggesting that either, it seems like he was talking about protecting his work time, like during the day, because it’s an action that worked for him to achieve his goals.)
> Programmers are more likely than most to prefer solitude, but even that isn’t a constant.
True! And we often want solitude even when it isn’t the best thing. ;) I have watched myself and others go too far away from what is needed in some situations because the requirements weren’t understood well enough, and assumptions were being made, and because it’s super fun to dive into a clever algorithm or data structure, or a learn and implement a fancy technique. Programming in a business setting is a social process and sometimes means checking in with people early and often, iterating, and getting repeated feedback. I got in trouble in my very first industry job when I complained about having to report my progress daily because it took an hour to prepare and interrupted my flow, the note in my file about uncooperativeness stayed around for years. Later I came to believe I was in the wrong because of watching people drift away from the goals without enough talking…
To me it's just one certain type of creativity, and there are also many other types to indulge in as well.
When I was a college student I was in science but we used to go to the full moon parties thrown by the art students. They would have a blank canvas about 6x12 feet on their main wall and guests had lots of space to paint in teams or contribute to the community effort. It was amazing to see what it looked like at different times during the weekend. Real soon you would never mistake that it could be the work of only one person. This would be a good idea these days, and have some webcams recording it so you could watch later in fast motion.
>It’s kind of easy to take this extremely literally and pick it apart
I don't think you have to pick it apart, but on the whole you could say if you spend a lot of time on your own you could eventually expect to start making up conversations with people who truly exist(ed), but unlikely to ever meet in person and flesh things out for real.
Maybe better than a non-existent counterpart, maybe not, who am I to judge?
> My partner does a lot of art and frequently draws in social settings.
Just as an aside: drawing is just a technical activity, no diferent than programming. It can be creative or pretty rote (just ask any game dev artist working on yet another big guy with an axe) - same as programming. Same with music, btw.
I'm aware of the overlap between programming and drawing/creative arts, though I don't know if I'd call it as simple as a "technical activity", but yeah my partner and I talk about this all the time, and I watch her work a lot, so I know.
Anything can be a creative practice once you learn that the rules that constrained it can be bent. Obviously there are areas where creativity will lead to massive explosions (which is how we know!) but programming, computers, art, hell even sitting in a toll booth can be creative endeavors. (Shout out to the fun folks working the booths at Universal Studios Orlando!)
That's an interesting perspective. It's been clear to me that creativity often arises from constraints, but I'd not really flipped the concept around like that before. Thank you for sharing!
I think so. Here are several possibly unrelated takes that are my own opinion: one is that a “creative practice” at it’s most basic is simply creating something, and in that sense programming is absolutely creative. It need not be mysterious or artistic or particularly unique or personal, it can be seen as creative if it’s nothing more than new. Another is that I practice digital art on my own, separate from my day job, and the process of making procedural art using a computer is similar in many ways to making art using traditional techniques, I absolutely view programming imagery as creative programming. A third view is that good programming is an art, not a science. We always have lots of options and it can be hard to choose; the people who are best at it are the ones who spend time designing and crafting and worrying about function and form. Deciding on the architecture is usually about balancing goals and understanding your audience. Tuning the performance of code is done best when finding out and thinking about how people perceive it while they use it. I do personally think of writing good code as an artistic process, conceptually similar to my own workflows for writing stories or painting pictures. The tools are different but the ideas are often the same.
I mean programming is more or less understanding a thing well enough to tell the machine how to go through the steps of it. I've always thought of it in a similar vein to the problem solving we use in design.
So if we think of design or writing as creative, yes I think programming is too.
There is a core duality to being human (for all except for rare cognitive outliers):
We are fundamentally a tribal species. Our entire evolutionary history—the thing that turned us into the species we are—revolves around our incredible ability to cooperate and share information. The basic unit of survival for our species is the tribe, not the individual. So at one very fundamental level, we must be around others to survive and thrive. We must subsume parts of ourselves that are unacceptable to the tribe so that we can be allowed to be one of its members. "Us" is more important than "I".
But at the exact same time, the tribe only wants and needs us if we can provide value, preferably unique value to it. So while we need to fit in to survive, we must also stand out in ways that the tribe finds valuable, explore where other tribespeople won't and bring back resources (physical, conceptual, etc.) that others can't.
The tension between these two opposing forces—to conform or to stand out—is, I think, one of the key pieces of being human.
> A small-world network is a type of mathematical graph in which most nodes are not neighbors of one another, but the neighbors of any given node are likely to be neighbors of each other and most nodes can be reached from every other node by a small number of hops or steps.
I mean there are people like that. As someone teaching at an art university this is something I observe frequently.
The caveat being: there are also people who are the polar opposite, so the global scope of that statement is indeed a bit to broad.
Also consider this: we are social animals, but this does not automatically imply that everything we are doing we like to do in a social setting. E.g. most humans will prefer not to defecate in public. Many people instinctively pull back from society in times of shock, grief or pain etc.
True loners are rare I believe. There's also a lot of people that "participate" by not participating in social life. I've been truly alone a bunch of times and I realized that my introversion was not desire to not have people around, but mostly a weird kind of mode I was stuck into socially.
I'll share here a quote from Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism, which I mentioned in another comment. Our brain's so-called default network, the one that fires "when thinking about nothing, […] seems to be connected to social cognition."
> Because the subject wasn’t engaged in a specific task, it was easy for researchers to think of the default network as something that comes on when you’re thinking about nothing. A little self-reflection, however, makes clear that our brains are hardly ever actually thinking about nothing. Even without a specific task, they tend to remain highly active, with thoughts and ideas flitting by in an ongoing noisy chatter. On further self-reflection, Lieberman realized that this background hum of activity tends to focus on a small number of targets: thoughts about “other people, yourself, or both.” The default network, in other words, seems to be connected to social cognition.
I think the stronger interpretation is that as sapient beings, we're each our own 'island universe' as Huxley said in 'The Doors of Perception' - I believe it's also a big concept in zen practice.
Amazing, you can brush aside everything he said as "wrong" without providing any evidence or any sort of interesting argument whatsoever.
Not to mention your counter claim makes no sense and is far too broad. Which humans can't function outside of a society? All of them? For how long? For 10 milliseconds? What do you mean by "function"? What does it mean to be "outside of a society"?
The post makes perfect sense to anyone who is actually willing to understand it, rather than poorly attempt to nitpick at some aspect of it you hold near and dear to your heart.
Oh, I understood "every word" to pertain to the quoted text, not the whole article, but it's a little ambiguous, I grant you.
But are you taking exception to the parent chuckling over the premise of humans as solitary animals? Humankind of society and culture and trade and language and art solitary animals?
I am an artist, I sell at national fairs such Art Palm Springs, Art Market San Francisco, Scope Miami, L.A. Art Show and I have sold works in New York's Chelsea district. With the group of artists I know, and hang with, the introverts really put in the work and explore to the far reaches of an idea, and then they catalog it. Being an introvert does not give one a creative advantage, but in my experience, introverts have the patience to thoroughly explore without distraction or caring what others think. Extroverts in my experience, like myself, discover ideas via serendipity, collaboration, and asking for critiques.
"Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me — they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone — best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has ever been invented by committee… I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone... Not on a committee. Not on a team."
I haven't read the book, but that paragraph makes me think in all the artists that never did anything interesting, but were artists. It makes me think in all the artists that believed strongly that their work, and indeed their existence, was of the utmost importance, even if it wasn't.
This is not a rant, you need to believe in yourself to do art, you need to believe that your work is of the most upmost importance, otherwise you wouldn't be able to give in to it.
The problem is that, from the outside, that is not necessarily true, and often isn't.
I actually agree with the premise, I do need solitude to be creative. I don´t want to feel lonely, but I need to feel that my mind will not be perturbed at unexpected times, for unwelcome reasons. I just want to emphasize that calling ourselves artists is not making us any favors.
What does it matter if it's true? Many artists won't even know if it was true or not, because, for the many of the most revolutionary ones, the recognition only comes many years after their death. For others, it may never come, due to confluence of irrelevant factors (let's say they were writing in a very niche language). If the artist believe in what they're doing, whether or not people recognize it is secondary and not something they should worry about too much.
This comment resonates with me. I'm currently working in a corporate environment, and I suffer every single second. I always fantasize about being a writer, programmer, producer, artist, no matter what, but where I reduce social interaction to zero.
This is why I think the so-called loneliness epidemic is either overblown or does not exist. We see that as soon as people get some money and autonomy, what do they do? They isolate. People spend a huge premium, such as business or first class plane tickets, stadium box seating, vacation retreats, man caves, etc. to isolate from other people. There is no shortage of ways for humans to interact with other humans, yet we see people choose to isolate, like netflix or smart phones.
My impression of the loneliness epidemic is that people only ‘choose’ to isolate once they have money and autonomy because it is easy, not because it is truly something they enjoy.
At least that’s true for me. Organising things socially and then participating in social events, with all the awkward moments and crappy small talk, is painful and at times daunting. But I know after it, I feel enriched and over time it builds strong relationships that add huge amounts of joy to my life. But as we have more and more excuses not to put ourselves through this, like endless Netflix or smart phones, we end up not doing it and feeling lonely.
> We see that as soon as people get some money and autonomy, what do they do? They isolate. People spend a huge premium, such as business or first class plane tickets, stadium box seating, vacation retreats, man caves, etc. to isolate from other people.
The low quality/safety of public infrastructure could be to blame. Why would anyone use unpleasantly hot and smelly public transportation, full of loud and potentially shady individuals, without any security around in case someone creates a commotion - when they could just pay a little bit more and not even worry about any of those things?
Why would anyone go to a public gym with a tiny shared space, number of subscriptions that far exceeds the capacity of the place, and deal with unpredictability of whether or not there will be room to train - when they can build a private gym and train whenever they feel like it?
Why would anyone stand around in the crowded "fan pit", having problems even moving because vendors sold more tickets then there is capacity, wait in the line for public bathroom, wait in the line for drinks, make yourself a target for pickpocketing, etc. - when they could just buy a VIP seat, enjoy their time, and go home?
People will stop isolating themselves when not isolating stops being so unpleasant.
Incorrect - though for some, it seems to be their only access to productive creativity.
What about collaborative creativity? What about spontaneous creativity which is independent of environment? What about the kind of creativity that happens when a person goes into a very public place and sits alone and writes poetry... is that solitude?
I know some writers who are exactly as described in the interview. They cannot work if they are not alone. It makes sense. I know others who are almost the opposite - who need the presence of humanity to be creatively productive.
Methinks the calculus here is more complex than Rilke states.
"Ask yourself at the darkest hour of the night: must I write? If your answer is yes, then you should redesign your life to align with this necessity."
This is really great practical advice. Decide what you must do. Remove the roadblocks and optimize to achieve your goal.
"You’re looking outside of yourself for the answers, and that’s the last place you’ll find them. The only way for you to move forward is to move inward."
If I can only find answers internally, then why the hell would I listen to you now? What if my internal voice tells me the only answers come from outside?
"Do not strive to uncover all of the answers right now. The answers can’t be given to you because you haven’t been able to live with them. What matters is to live everything. So live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answers, one distant day in the future."
> Decide what you must do. Remove the roadblocks and optimize to achieve your goal.
The problem is that humans don’t work like that. We aren’t the passionate bunch the author think we are.
People work for money and status , we are extremely result oriented not passion oriented.
Even on here people enjoy technology , hacking etc. But if you gave us absolute certainty of economic and social success via some other drastically different path (e.g. a reality show such as Jersey Shore) , we would not hesitate one second and wear our tightest tank top and trunks , get tanned and play the part.
I say “us” because I include myself in this scenario too, and I despise reality shows but you cant argue with millions of dollars and millions of followers.
They are respectively the currency of financial and social success.
it’s far better to be a millionaire reality star whose claim to fame is clubbing and partying on camera than a professor with an IQ of 185 whose fusion startup went under
I'm not so sure about it. Maybe I'd do the Jersey Shore thing, but if someone offered me enterprise sales job at twice what I make as a coder, I wouldn't take it. It is just so much at odds with my personality, that the money would absolutely be not worth it. (If it was $1m per year, and my middling performance would be acceptable, I'd probably take it though).
This seems very opinion based - I would say that it does sort of match my own experience, though. Being alone at the house (on those rare occasions) watching TV or browsing the internet doesn't inspire much creativity on my part. Taking the dog out for a long walk in the woods does - for me it's more the lack of distractions than it is the "solitude" part.
Agreed, glad to see it put so bluntly. I’d extend it to say that creativity requires solitude, but is bolstered and course corrected by interjections of collaboration.
For me, my creative project is writing a non-fiction book. YMMV, as a sibling comment about musician’s jam sessions indicates.
The problem is not everyone has the same needs for solitude. My partner draws a lot and finds it depressing to work on isolation. She frequently shows up in low-key social situations with art equipment and works as she talks.
Newport's message always lands on the people that crave solitude the most. Some people work this way. I tend to work much better alone, distraction-free. But it's a dangerous game to take anecdata that speaks to yourself and extrapolate it out to an entire species with very different societies and cultural contexts.
Agreed. We're all different and there aren't one-fits-all methods. Yet it's worth understanding what has worked for others and experiment with what works for yourself. I don't think we should give Newport's advice for granted.
Creativity requires a frame of mind. For some, this frame realizes in the solitude. For others, it may be lo-fi music, a movie with mindless action and forgettable story, knitting, fishing, etc.
In personal experience, I thrive with interactions; sometimes less and sometimes more. Other people's ideas spark new perspectives and reveal the limits of my thought canvas. Solitude just makes me lonely and depressed.
It makes sense that creativity requires solitude. If you are constantly exposed to ideas from other people, your mind will become primed to popular ideas and your output will be more likely to be derivative.
My theory is this; when everyone in your group thinks alike and members are highly attuned to each others' sensibilities, they tend to be careful to not offend each other (and they tend to be good at it) - this means that more safe ideas and fewer risky (potentially offensive) ideas will propagate throughout the group. Over time, due to the low exposure to risky ideas, members of the group become accustomed to an increasingly higher degree of safety, which feeds into the vicious cycle of increasing sensitivity, intolerance, self-censorship and dullness.
> they tend to be careful to not offend each other
Do they? People are consciously holding back internal floodgates of offensive ideas that would otherwise flood their peers? I don't think artists and genuinely creative people are doing that among their own group.
It's encouraged and celebrated when artists express original, challenging ideas. That's the whole point of being an artist. It's why social groups among artists, writers and musicians are so much fun because of the inherent acceptance and good will associated with "risky" ideas.
Artists are adventurers, stomping new ground. They are not egg-shell treading, well-behaved clones.
As for solitude, obviously it has benefits. I don't think it matters though. Each artist or creative person finds their own ways and methods.
I don't find modern artists to be as creative as those from earlier generations. Maybe it's because they are over-socialized nowadays. Many people's idea of 'risky' these days isn't actually risky. Risky ideas imply that you would normally get kicked out of your social group and be treated as a pariah for having these ideas - This was definitely a reality for the breakthrough artists of earlier generations because the social mold was so rigid and people were so easy to offend. Artists were treated as a special category; people who could live well outside of the social norms without being shunned by society; they were forgiven because of their high creativity.
IMO, many modern artists only project a facade of risk but in fact, they are calculating and know exactly how far they can push things; they almost never go beyond that point, in the rare cases that they do, they will issue a public apology. They project the illusion of being controversial while in fact their repertoire gets safer and safer as they gain more acceptance. Almost all of them are living well within modern social norms; the successful ones are those who embrace the power structures, not those who confront them.
>His attempt to improvise failed when he lost track of the chord changes. This prompted Jo Jones, the drummer for Count Basie's Orchestra, to contemptuously take a cymbal off of his drum set and throw it at his feet as a signal to leave the stage. However, rather than discouraging Parker, the incident caused him to vow to practice harder, and turned out to be a seminal moment in the young musician's career when he returned as a new man a year later.
On display in any jam session is thousands of hours of (solitary) practice, study, and reflection.
> On display in any jam session is thousands of hours of (solitary) practice, study, and reflection.
But not necessarily. Some musicians exclusively learn to play through being taught and jamming with others. I admit it's rare, and even as an extrovert it's not true for myself.
However, for a more damning condemnation of this "creativity requires solitude" viewpoint, we only need to venture into the world of improv theatre. Almost everyone in improv is unleashing non-stop creativity, but they've almost never practiced improv alone. It's the total counterpoint to this unnecessary association between artistry and isolation.
Highly extroverted artists exist. They rarely create alone. They rarely practice alone. I urge people to acknowledge that this is a worthy way to be a compelling artist, rather than acting like the preference of the introverted artist is the only worthy way of doing things.
>Highly extroverted artists exist and do not create alone.
Find me one professional jazz musician that is "100% extroverted" and I can find you twenty places or quotations that clearly demonstrate that s/he has listened and studied the history of the music.
I'm not saying who is "worthy", whatever that means. I'm saying what needs to be done to be educated, to understand.
You've shifted the goalpost from "any jam session" to "professional jazz musician".
Yes, I'd agree that all professional jazz musicians have spent considerable time working on their craft alone. That doesn't detract from what I was saying. Professional jazz musicians aren't the only type of people who do jam sessions, and they're not the only type of compelling artist.
In fact, even if every single artist in the world had spent considerable time studying alone, that doesn't necessarily mean it's required. The fact is, every single piece of music theory, every single thing you can read from a book or hear from a record, every single practice session, can be done in a group. It may just be that people prefer not to do that, or don't have the resources to do that.
I am very curious now, because you seem to be alluding to it: is there any real world example of any kind of artist who is both "compelling" and did most of their studying or work in a group? Or is this just all in theory, like "Johnny Thousand-Livers"? https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/organs
The vast majority of human beings throughout time lived in extremely communal situations without separate bedrooms, without sheet music, without books, and without records. Solitude in the home was rarely available. Virtually all folk music around the world was developed in these contexts. We barely know their names or their work, and that's simply because sheet music and historic record were limited to the interests of the rich.
The availability of prolonged solitude to practice an instrument is an aberration in human existence. Modern humans, and the historic rich, do not represent the wider experience of human existence. Unless you think compelling musicians are also an aberration in human existence, I personally believe a wider perspective is needed.
GROHL: Well, I remember we talked about this. I think we were talking about practicing. . . .
STARR: I never practice [laughs].
GROHL: Nor do I! Because I don’t like playing alone. I only like playing when there’s music.
STARR: I’ll play with you all night, but on my own, after two and a quarter seconds, I’m like, “Ugh. That’s not what it’s about.” When I’m doing shows, and people hold up their little seven-year-old: “This is Tommy. He loves you, and he’s taking drum lessons.” And I always say, “I hope he’s not taking too many!”
Incredibly hard to understand. As if, say, Einstein waved his hand and produced a rigorous theory of the general relativity. And spent no time on it himself. Or if, say, Coltrane revolutionized music but never practiced.
I agree that adversarial interactions can produce results. That's not what the OP is saying. What the OP is saying is that you need a whole lot of self understanding to create good work in the space of writing.
I would posit that the person you're replying to is challenging the title, not the article. The title and the article are incongruent.
The article essentially suggests that considerable solitude is required to really take one's writing to a higher place. That might be the true, or it might not be true, and it depends on how we define 'good writing'. But we can agree that it's not so easy to dismiss.
On the other hand, the title plainly states: 'creativity requires solitude'. That's a clear-cut statement. And it's extremely debatable. Not to mention that Rilke never even said that.
> Humans are fundamentally solitary. That is our nature
This quote is getting lots of criticism but if you think about it , then you will realize it’s true.
Humans are capable of a wide spectrum of social emotions but 99.9999% of interactions are small talk and collaborations based on an already established pattern and procedure.
We are extremely lonely because although we are surrounded by 8 billion beings like us we only get to unlock the really cool stuff with about a dozen of them (after we spent thousands of hours in their company)
That seems to be a reflection of our society, rather than a reflection of our nature.
Civilization is highly alienating and dislocating, but we evolved in an environment in which we were near-permanently embedded within a tribe (or village) of people we knew extremely well. Strangers were relatively rare.
Rilke confused his alienating environment for a fundamental truth.
I think the biggest issue presented is the idea of framing solitude as "authentic" and "external pressures" as 'fake'. This is very common nowadays.
"Turn inwards and get in touch with your authentic self. If you’re able to write something in this state, it won’t even occur to you to ask anyone whether your writing is good or not"
I don't know of any person who writes and is not always aware of the quality of their own writing. Even if you write for yourself, you're still writing for an audience, even if that audience is in your head. It's always communication, imaginary or otherwise. there's no self without relationship to the other by the very definition of the term.
Even the tool you use for writing, language, is a means of communicating with others by its nature. A child raised in actual solitude can't even speak, let alone has something like an 'authentic self'.
I think generalizing on creativity is difficult. There can be incredible creative synergies when people work together. There can be impressive solo works.
A lot depends on the individual(s) in question, their background(s), and the type of endeavor.
I find this classical viewpoint of "create only for yourself" to be essentially suited to only the most individualistic of people.
Many, if not most people want to have value to others. Including introverts. We want to behave in a prosocial manner within an embedded social context. Art itself was borne out of social contexts, especially music and storytelling. Most of us gain untold fulfilment from creating art that is valuable to others, i.e. art that people like.
I can speak to this myself: I have little motivation to create anything outside of a social context. When I create something exclusively for myself, it feels hollow. When the social context is there, I come alive. It brings me deep fulfilment to bring someone joy with art. Of course, I have to also like the art myself, otherwise it's just excessively sacrificial.
If you're individualistic enough to gain fulfilment from only creating for yourself, then all the power to you. But I'm tired of this being expressed as the only valid way to do things, especially since many people will be less fulfilled with this mindset.
I think the idea is that Artists should ideally pursue art, not the approval of others.
If the intention is to please others, the art is at risk of being made in a top-down manner. The extreme extension of this being a public survey, the results of which determine what the artist does.
"People like boobs, so let's add more boobs". Or "people in the test screening didn't like the sad ending, we need to make a happy, audience-friendly ending".
There's always crossover. Artists must do things to make money (mass production of their work, selling their song to advertisers).
> "Of course, I have to also like the art myself"
And if not the art, then at least the pay day.
Some of the confusion in this thread is about the word "creativity". We can be creative in the kitchen tonight by adding a new ingredient to the sauce. We can't suddenly be artists in the kitchen tonight though.
Okay, well look, we have to step back and admit that what makes art valuable is a subjective question.
If I understand correctly, your belief is that the art of 'highest value' is created in a vacuum from the approval of others. That's okay. However, for myself, and usually for most others, the most valuable art is simply that which brings them the greatest joy.
When it comes to creating art, I receive the greatest joy when I'm also giving others joy. I'm much better able to give others joy when I consider their tastes. So I take my own (actually quite extreme) desire for experimentation, my own sense of aesthetics, and find where that overlaps with people's tastes. It's a hybridization. Not top-down, or bottom-up.
My argument is that most people, being essentially prosocial, gain the most fulfilment when they incorporate the tastes of others. And sometimes, our value system can make us feel less fulfilled. In this case, I believe that the value system of 'ignoring the approval of others' makes most people feel less fulfilled.
Simply put, it's like sex: the best sex is simultaneously self-focused and other-focused. I view art exactly the same.
Talking about "what is art" gets foggy quickly! One more post from me.
The original point about isolation is simple. It can be good for the creative process. That's not a controversial idea. Writers often get away, painters hide out in their studios. It doesn't mean they don't routinely draw inspiration from their social worlds.
By tapping into your own humanity, you tap into the joy of others. Your tastes will likely be shared by others. So in satisfying your own taste, you will be satisfying others. This can all be done in complete social isolation!
> I consider their tastes
Okay cool, but generally artists don't know the taste of their audience, other than they like art. That's why artists get nervous showing their work, because you're baring soul. The tastes and joy in others isn't relevant for the creative process that aligns with raw "truth-telling" artistic pursuits. Pleasing others is a nice secondary consequence of whatever you created, but when pleasing others is a key driver of the creative process, you might be limiting your work.
This is a really interesting format. Researching a historical figure then producing a
fictional interview with them is a very engaging way to communicate their ideas in a modern context.
Not at all. Creativity requires a base knowledge. To have a base knowledge on a topic you need practice from your mentor. Creativity doesn't happen from thin air.
It is said Shakespeare wrote in taverns because the lighting was free. The environment didn't matter to him, only the physical ability to read and write. I can't think of a better counterexample for a writer. Do whatever puts words on paper. There is an entire site dedicated to finding what works for you: https://famouswritingroutines.com/
I would not take solitude that literally. It's enough to be in creative solitude. In a tavern, you can still be lonely, working on your stuff, not caring about your environment.
"if you’re going to create you’re going to create whether you work 16 hours a day in a coal mine or you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children while you’re on welfare, you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown away, you’re going to create blind crippled demented, you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your back while the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment, flood and fire"
If the pandemic taught me anything it was sitting alone in a room did not inspire me to 'look inward', 'find myself' and 'create'. I suspect this is a very individual thing that works for some people but not for others and turning it into a naval-guru-like prescription isn't that helpful.
DO your own thing...if sitting helps, sit. If moving helps, move.
Anecdotally, solitude is unhelpful when it comes to figuring out the context or direction of work. It sounds counterproductive, to get creative by burrowing oneself with solitude work, to produce results that cannot be understood or appreciated by other people.
The actual creative work might involve solitude (I do better with less distractions), but brainstorming sessions with other people are incredibly useful for finding new ideas and perspectives you'd have missed on your own.
It does sound catchy and inspires introspection - focusing on a single word/quality/idea. As long as we know that that is the game being played here and don't take it literally.
But at different times of my life, I have been quite active socially. My college years especially were filled with social interactions that I grew to enjoy. It started out as friends and roommates dragging me to one thing or another, but after a while I instigated a lot of it.
But I naturally gravitated to a career in programming where I can spend 10 hours straight at the keyboard with almost no interaction. My hobby project is a major one that deals with a whole new way to manage data. It has consumed several years of my life as I spend a great deal of my 'free time' thinking about it, writing code, or optimizing something.
My introverted nature has affected my family life as I withdraw into my own little world. My wife sometimes wonders if I am depressed, unhappy, or stressed. Although I am perfectly content, I have to force myself to come out of my shell and interact much more with the wife and kids (and friends and neighbors). Many of my fellow programmers that I have worked with over the years also exhibit some of these tendencies.
I guess it is debatable whether this adds to or subtracts from actual creativity.