“…and writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”~ Pico Iyer
We’ve heard an enormous amount recently about the pandemic of loneliness sweeping much of the world today. For the most part, the reasons for it seem to stem from the breakdown of community, and therefor human connections. We’re told about the assault to our physical and mental health resulting from this failure to attach ourselves to others, and if we had any doubts of our own about the repercussions of loneliness, the scientists are emphasizing them at every turn. Even the human brain can’t function properly without other brains to interact with, or so we’re told.
Much of this is intuitive, but it makes one wonder a bit about the role the arts play in human consciousness, because both artists and scientists (closely linked, I believe) describe the joy of working singularly for many long hours that seem to evaporate when the focus is trained on one specific goal. There is no time I feel more connected or less lonely than when I’m writing, and I heard a young scientist say the same thing recently in an interview about the community of other scientists working on different projects in one location. Even though there were others all around, each one worked on something different and was completely wrapped up in their separate tasks. She also described the vanishing hours when she worked, and how being ‘one’ with the project seemed to be what made the whole. That’s a difficult thing to explain in terms of being totally connected in a universal way as opposed to literally. Continue Reading