The Empty Friend in the Room
There’s someone who never leaves you alone if you’re a creative.
They’re always there. Wherever you turn, wherever you look, you’ll find them waiting for you.
If you’re an artist, a writer, a musician…if you’re anyone who has some measure of an inventive idea, then you’re constantly followed by your worst-best friend.
I think you know exactly whom I’m talking about:
Loneliness.
I’ve been noticing the bastard a lot lately. He plops down beside me at the end of the night, after I’ve done everything I’ve needed to do (or haven’t). He talks to me without speaking and summons a sense of loss and disconnection that really eats away at everything. He reminds me that, no matter how much I try, I’m always alone with whatever it is that causes imaginary worlds to flood my perception.
This sounds like crazy talk.
But I think a lot of you understand.
When you create for a living, you ultimately have to confront a difficult truth: no one cares about what you’re making until you’ve made it. No matter how good the idea is, no matter how promising, no one can share your vision until it’s complete. And then you have to confront another truth: everyone is going to bring their own experiences to what you’ve made. So even then, you’ll always be alone with your original vision.
That’s a tough pill to swallow. It creates a sense of separation between you and others—even those close to you. You’re alone with a river of visions and ideas that leaves you stranded on a shore no one else can cross.
At my lowest, I get overwhelmed with a sense of longing, wishing just one person can dream with me. But then I have to remind myself of something: loneliness is an asshole. And, as such, loneliness can make me—and you—and asshole.
Look, it’s a strange and beautiful thing that we do. When it comes down to it, we make things up and hope that people will enjoy what we make up. But we can’t—we cannot—expect others to understand. We can’t force them into our world. We have to accept that the only way we may share the deepest part of ourselves is by creating something, working hard on it, finishing it, and putting it out there.
That’s it. That’s the recipe.
Beyond that, we have to meet people halfway. We have to find other things that move us, other things we care about. Things that we may join others in, so that then we may feel some semblance of connection.
Sports, hobbies, current events, social movements, gaming, I don’t care what it is. In order to be a complete human being, we cannot only be our art.
And, ironically enough, that will make us better artists. We have to be observers, but we also have to be experiencers. We have to participate in the human experience in order to understand it, interpret it, and shape it into something others haven’t thought of.
Most of all, we have to connect. We have to show our loved ones that we care about their lives, their worlds.
Otherwise, we’re left with loneliness.
And loneliness is not a real friend.