Solitude
(from an e-letter to R.D.)
Thankee very much, but I think I’ll avoid being famous for the nonce, taking a leaf out of the book just completed by the late, deeply lamented J.D. Salinger. I’ve been thinking a lot about “Catcher in the Rye” and it strikes me with great force just really how good a book it is. People talk all the time about art that “stands the test of time” and there’s no question in my mind that “Catcher” only gets better with the years. I have not read more than a few pages of it since I was a teenager and yet I can remember whole parts of it as if I read it yesterday (which is more than I can say for many of the books I’ve been reading). Sallinger had the whole fame’n'glory thing down absolutely right and, of course, his very avoidance of it only made the machine want to devour him all the more. There is NO way to produce anything of value outside of solitude and silence, the roaring din of the media, the hateful cacophany of the crowd can only serve to destroy whatever talent one has.
Everyday I become more withdrawn, less interested in social interaction of any sort. It has become an increasing burden to go through the social gestures and niceties that are part of this life I’ve made. I’m extremely selfish about my time alone. I suppose that’s because there seems so little of it. I can’t fathom nor accept the acceleration of time as one ages — it seems so damn unfair that just at the point when there is so much to do, there seems ever less time to do it. They say that work expands to fill the time available for its completion (Parkinson’s Law), but why o why does the time shrink with every new project, each new idea, every single day’s ambition? I’m filled with dread these days — thinking that my time is fast running out and there are so many things I still want to do, so many things left unfinished. I know that this is nothing unique to me, that most people feel this way no matter what their accomplishments or talents, but the very universality of the sentiment only makes it that much more bitter.
Funny thing is how much more ambitious I have become — there seem so many more things to learn and to experience. Most of the old passions have faded except the one that drives me to dream up new things, make new connections, find new ways to new places that I’ve never been to before. I’ve fucked up so many things in my life, but this one thing I’ve been true to always. I’ve never been scared to dream.
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