I am writing this column in the middle of a fierce winter storm. The heavy rainfall and tree limbs dancing in the strong gusts of wind perhaps mirror my mood. I hanker for solitude at this moment. I want to find the space for a little breathing room, to wander afield in my mind, and collect my thoughts around my artistic pursuit.
The Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgard writes about the pleasures of solitude in his four-part volume of letters to his unborn daughter. The four books follow the seasons. Toward the end of “Autumn,” when the first freeze occurs, his thoughts turn to a recollection of his father, who lived a solitary life, removed from the bustle of family and friends, absorbed in his stamp collection, and listening to the radio in the basement.
Knausgard writes: “I often do as he did, close the door behind me and be alone. I know why I do it, it is good to be alone, for a few hours to be exempt from all the complicated bonds, all the conflicts, great and small, all the demands and expectations, wills and desires that build up between people and which after only a short time become so densely intertwined that the room for reflection and for action are both restricted.”
The artist demands solitude, on some level or another. This yearning feels especially pressing at this time of year. We have come out of a period of togetherness, celebrating the holiday season with loved ones. Although the revelry has been wonderful, we instinctively search out something more solitary as winter comes upon us full force. As Knausgard says – it is time to close the door. We aspire to a closer communion with ourselves that cannot be reached in the midst of togetherness.
I was talking to a friend earlier in the week. She was about to embark on her first twenty-one-day meditation retreat, called a sesshin in the Zen Buddhist tradition. She was wondering what she was going to discover along the way, or even if she could endure the rigors of long-haul meditation. And she is exactly right – it is rigorous.
It is hard to believe that just sitting still on a cushion can be so taxing. But it is true. There is nothing to distract us from our own mind in this situation. We must confront myriad thoughts, concerns, and worries as we sit still. In this moment, the mind feels darned powerful.
But if you sit still for long enough, then something strange begins to emerge from this engagement with the mind. What was once myriad thoughts can be observed to encompass only maybe eight to ten notions that keep cycling through your awareness. We go through moments of anger and frustration, as we search for some escape from this repetition. The mind continues to grind out these thoughts. It will not give up its primacy so easily.
The frustration and anger, though, ultimately give way to boredom. We have gained enough experience sitting on the cushion to anticipate the very next thought in the cycle. One after another, the very same notions appear and then disappear, only to return a few minutes later. And, perhaps miraculously, some space opens between those thoughts. We can see beyond them, to an unmoving emptiness that is an attractive counterpoint to the endless revolution of harried thought.
The hope behind meditation is that it offers the opportunity to disengage the mind from the consciousness behind it, and then ultimately, even to see beyond consciousness itself, to get in touch with the still center at the heart of each of us.
I don’t pretend to have ever gotten that far along. On occasion, I might have been able to catch a glimmer of that still emptiness, but my mind kept battling for center stage. I never quite reached that point of equanimity, where one could just simply notice one of those thoughts appear and then disappear, to be replaced with another one. I still attached importance to them, as something to wrestle with. I have yet to reach a point of total absorption with that emptiness. Which, I guess, would be kind of like staring at enlightenment in the face.
As artists, we search out those very same moments of complete absorption. We want our work to provide the same kind of detachment from the endless cycle of concerns and worries that clatter through our heads. This liberation only occurs through practicing solitude. We need moments of reverie, in which the mind can unspool just enough so that we can see beyond the thread of thought. This is the place of true inspiration.
Find a quiet place for yourself this winter and embrace the stillness.
