Solitude??

As a writer, solitude does have its place for me - like when my energy is low and the insistence of the “sound and fury” around me erodes my concentration like an over-wound propeller cavitating, and “I can’t get no satisfaction.” Then, to capture anything I can build the current story on, I have to put on a hoodie and hide under the stairs behind the vacuum cleaner with the spiders.

But when I do have energy, the cacophony of other people’s lives and their consumings and goings and their barking dogs and outlandish costumery and petty conflicts, their exaggerated senses of affront, their own effrontery, the beautiful, precious courtesies they lavish on a stranger, and their lonely eyes all remind of the battle going inside each human person; all of that tumult lifts, feeds, amplifies my imagination to function like a high-capacity pump, leaving me after two hours tops, pretty much fried. But after this hyper-focused state, I - never, never, never - crawl ashore without having been rescued by originality.