Solitude and the Allure of Insanity.

IS THIS ENTRY ABOUT MY RECENT SHRINKAGE AND OUTCAST FROM MY FAMILY THAT CAUSED ME TO FIND REFUGE UNDER A VIOLIN, ON A DISK IN THE MIDDLE OF A WHITE VOID, NEXT TO A SAD ROCK!? READ ON AND FIND OUT!

Every now and then, and by every now and then I actually mean rather regularly, I get very strong feelings of longing to be alone, way out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but my thoughts.

"Into the Wild" is one of my favourite films and I wish I could grow a beard. A month of travel around Europe with the lack of a singular home and hours of train journeys, it turns out, was right up my street. Though despite the feelings that well up in my chest, making me think my heart will explode out of my ribcage, wearing a backpack, wrestling a bear and spouting proverbs in a gravelly voice that denote wisdom beyond his years, like a true mountain man, I decided to recently spend my money on a cello instead of a yurt. Why, if part of me thinks solitude is the bomb diggity?

No matter how hard I try and use the mental image of the mature steel faced Lady Science to bring rationality to my feelings it is very hard to not be a little distracted by the more flirtatious, younger and perhaps a little bit tipsy mistress of romanticism. For me, living the life of a hermit is the same thing as serving in WWI for the glory of your nation was for dudes of my age almost 100 years ago. Instead of a boy being baptised into manhood by war, hermatism has me imagining a sage, more mature version of myself, treating silent epiphanies about the universe as sustenance and animal skins as insulation so as not to give anyone awesome-burns if they came too close... okay, so perhaps not that extreme but you get my point.

Realistically, I am embarrassed to acknowledge that I think of solitude as being the panacea to my list of obnoxious, self-diagnosed problems. Given the wide open road and no pressurising factors apart from my drive to survive and be as hedonistic as said survival will allow, surely I will overcome my laziness and my self-doubt and with the absence of social anxiety I can truly play around in my own head. These are inspired by stories of Isaac Newton going into isolation and emerging with calculus, the theory of gravitation, binomial theorem and the field of optics under his belt. (I should add that it wasn't all done in one stint.) Throughout history you see the reverence of isolation amongst scholars and academics and musicians. Perhaps a questionable example but Van Gogh is amongst their ranks along with many Greek philosophers, Renaissance artists AND MOOORE.

Yeah, so I totally forgot where I was going with this but would living out my romantic dream of being a mountain man make me happy? No. It would make me dead. Really dead. I only own shorts, I forget to eat when food is in abundance, I have the very real worry of being a bit mentally unstable in the absence of social glue (as much as that truly pains me to admit. How dare I share a trait of humanity?) and most importantly I can't grow a beard... Yet, I will not throw such romanticism out with other childish ideas such as "hard work will always result in proportional reward" and other favourites, such as "If you try you can do or be anything you want.". It's fun to imagine and pretend sometimes and anyone that feels disengaged from that statement has obviously not dressed up as a super hero lately, or built a pillow fort.

TL;DR: Be true to your inner child because who knows where it may lead to. WEAR CAPES AND MAKE INFRASTRUCTURE FROM STRUCTURALLY UNSOUND CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL!