On Writing, Art & Loneliness

Art is loneliness. I write because there’s no on near to read. It keeps me calm; it keeps me going.

Sometimes the intellectual in me likes to think otherwise. I reason with myself: Writing is a complex form of artistic expression, and therefore an intricate medium, meant to relay a meaningful message or agenda, a genius thought or idea. But it’s not. Writing (the act of art) is simply the breath between swimming strokes, the necessary overflow of silence from the mind, soul.

Art comes easily to man because loneliness comes easily to him (Adam soon lost his rib; even cavemen drew on walls). Writing has always come easily to me because my nature has always strayed away from human contact: I bristled as a child when a parent coddled me. I recoiled as an adolescent when a peer brushed against me. Even now, as an adult, I keep my hands, eyes and ears to myself. But it doesn’t bother me (anymore): I know that one must let the loneliness be. It is the way of art, the climb. No man can completely bear the burden of his brother. Each artist must carry a weight all his own—because that is the nature of this tree called life. It is the unavoidable, undeniable truth (as Yeats so perfectly put it, the perpetual virginity of the soul). 

Loneliness was made for art (why did God create man?). The more tears an artist keeps to himself, the more someone else will not shed alone. The more blood I bleed here, now (in silence, at home), the more I will have to give—on the page, and in life.

I have always kept my loneliness a secret because I have always known it is the one thing I must keep safe. It is the root of the root and the bud of the bud of this thing called writing—because it (loneliness, art) is the one thing each of we humans shares.