I wrote this, in praise of solitude www.thetimes.com/comment/colu... - ThreadSky

j-amesmarriott.bsky.social • 38 days ago

I wrote this, in praise of solitude

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/sociability-is-vital-but-true-solitude-is-precious-3v5s7nndg

Comments

mjk71.bsky.social•38 days ago

All you need to know on solitude is there in JK's Desolation Angels

mjk71.bsky.social•38 days ago

'Many's the time I thought I'd die of boredom or jump off the mountain,'

groovydegroovy.bsky.social•38 days ago

I'm a big fan of solitude, but don't tell my wife.

hackblackburn.bsky.social•36 days ago

And you wrote this before the telethon!

j-amesmarriott.bsky.social•36 days ago

😂

countrywol.bsky.social•38 days ago

Your employer is about to go to court, unless it pays off the accuser, for invalidating someone's solitude. Are you being wilfully stupid or have you just misplaced your brain?

Or am I being tin-hatted?

Whatever, just remember who is paying you for these little De Bottonish flights of fancy.

bendorgrosvenor.bsky.social•38 days ago

V good. Reminds me of Kant's enthusiasm for 'thoughtful taciturnity', as a route to sublimity.

j-amesmarriott.bsky.social•36 days ago

thank you! great phrase... funnily enough I'm reading Roger Scruton's Very Brief Introduction to Kant at the moment. Lots of confusing stuff about synthetic and analytic truth. Need more solitude maybe...

robertsaunders.bsky.social•32 days ago

This is a lovely piece of writing - thank you.

I thought a lot about solitude during lockdown, and tried setting a series of poems on this theme to music.

I'm no composer, but it kept me sane. Here's a ropey recording of Emily Dickinson's "Solitude of Space".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6lPe7q1HC0

j-amesmarriott.bsky.social•28 days ago

this is so good! You composed it and it's you singing?? I'm very impressed

robertsaunders.bsky.social•28 days ago

Thank you! That's lovely to hear. Yes, me on both fronts. It was recorded on a freezing day in the snow, with a very kind pianist I had met 10 minutes earlier, so was all slightly madcap. But nice to have a record.

neilfisher81.bsky.social•38 days ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkyC1lvLnzE

john-self.bsky.social•38 days ago

What Larkin poem is that closing line from? I didn't know it!

j-amesmarriott.bsky.social•38 days ago

Best Society! Uncollected and unpublished in his lifetime I think. From my memory quite an early one... Has a line about "the gas fire breathes" that gets reused in Vers de Societé

john-self.bsky.social•38 days ago

Thanks, yes just found it in the Collected. And indeed, interesting to contrast it to Vers de Societé (one of my favourite Larkins) and the latter's more modulated view of solitude - or more fearful view, I suppose.

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