You Need to Isolate Yourself in Order to Make Art

Isn’t it strange how isolating adulthood is? Suddenly, everyone is busy and suddenly, you and your friends have conflicting schedules.

One day your friends are fifteen minutes away asking if you want to go to McDonald’s at 9 PM for no reason, and then suddenly they live in a different country with different weather and different timezones. And with the things that’s currently happening in the world it seems like its conspiring for me to stop procrastinating. To start writing and start making art. Both of which I’ve somehow been putting off for almost five years now.

I’m starting to believe that the universe is making it personal. Cause what do you mean I cant go out with my friends anymore because they’re living in a different country? What do you mean I’m currently in a long distance relationship for more than a year now? What do you mean my out of the country trip was moved to my birthday that I have no other option but to cancel it?

Lately, I’ve been wondering if life has been trying to isolate me on purpose. I imagine life telling me: “So. Are you gonna write now or what?”

Or maybe I’m just reading too much into everything. Acting like I’m some tortured artist just because most of the people I love are currently out of reach. I always find a way to romanticize everything that goes wrong in my life until it starts to become meaningful. Maybe that’s just my coping mechanism.

And the thing is, I don’t even hate being alone. I actually think solitude might be the perfect environment for making art. When you’re alone long enough, you start noticing strange things. Memories arrive out of order. Half of my memories feel less like memories and more like scenes waiting for narration. You notice beauty in ordinary places too. Shadows on walls. Strangers on public transport. The version of yourself that only appears when nobody’s watching. Somehow all of it starts becoming material.

I think isolation gives you space to find inspiration again. Artists probably need moments like that. Isolation removes witnesses. And without witnesses, you start becoming honest in strange directions and you start writing things you wouldn’t say out loud.

If I were to suggest the perfect place to isolate yourself, I’ll choose a cemetery. What’s more isolating than spending time with the dead?

The last time I went to a cemetery, I accidentally read a name on a gravestone and immediately thought, that would make such a good name for a character in a book. That feels like the most writer thing imaginable. Standing among the dead and still finding inspiration. Cemeteries are peaceful. Just stories finishing and other stories beginning somewhere else.

I think art is really just evidence that someone paid attention. Maybe art doesn’t come from suffering as much as it comes from noticing. Proof that someone looked at life long enough for it to leave a mark on them.

And apparently I looked at life long enough to accidentally turn this into something philosophical again 😭 Someone pointed that out to me before, and I think they were right. I guess that’s just my writing style now. HAHA