Legend Of The Loner Artist

Artists thrive best in solitude or is it that solitude thrives best in company?

- Meera Rajagopalan

' There is one more movie about a loner artist: Mother! That’s how it’s written; it’s not a comment on the movie, which would feature six more letters. In the movie, a poet and his wife move to a home in the midst of nowhere. Odd occurrences aside, there was one thing that I took back with me after the movie: artists must want solitude.

I rejoiced, for I had recently decided I would disclose my profession to [certain deserving] people, confidently stating, ‘I am a writer’ rather than the self-effacing ‘I dabble in fiction’ as if it were a whimsical pursuit unworthy of serious consideration. By the way, you apparently only have to declare yourself one, to be considered a writer. Thank God this does not apply to [real] professions, or imagine how doctored we would be. We already are over-engineered, so that’s OK.