(inspiring music) (inspiring music fades down) - Jonathan, one of the many things that I'm grateful to the college for, in addition to, you know, allowing me to read things I probably would never have read, is that there's always someone to talk to about something that's on my mind because we have a common ground and we're working on similar things.

So I just discovered, chatting with you the other day, that we're both working, in our own ways, on a question of great interest to me, the question of solitude.

I happen to be working on Thoreau's "Walden."

You probably don't know this about me, but I am a long time Thoreauvian In fact, in my youth, took off, took a leave of absence from college to go to Concord and to study with a group of Thoreauvians.

I even spent, you know, a summer living in a replica of his hut.

To this day, I sometimes think that was the life for me, but here I am at the college, surrounded by people, people that always share something with me.

So I'm working on that question in "Walden," and I discovered you're working on it too, in a preceptorial with different authors, Goethe, Rousseau and Somerset Maugham.

So how did those three come together for you?

- Well, the idea of solitude would be the common denominator.

The preceptorial is broadly on Rousseau's "Reveries of a Solitary Walker," which frames the idea of someone first being rejected by society and later embracing the solitude for the sake of some kind of insight into his own existence, what he calls the sensation of existence, or the pure experience of being.

- He gets that in solitude.

- Yes.

- He discovers it in solitude?

- Through the activity of what he calls reverie, which is a kind of aimless drifting in thought.

But we see this embodied in different ways in the novels, the Goethe novel, "The Sorrows of Young Werther" where we have a artist who has left his customary home and frenetic activity of society in the city, and has gone into a kind of country retreat for the sake of pursuing his art.

- [Louis] Which is what?

- Painting.

- [Louis] Painting.

- And that meets with some consternation and eventually a kind of horror.

"The Moon and Sixpence" is an artist who has mysteriously departed from society.

Well, he's not an artist when he leaves society, but he leaves society for the sake of becoming an artist.

And that is an astonishing story of a kind of triumph, but also it's calamity and disaster all at once.

So all three of them explore this idea of solitude in different ways.

- So I'm interested with Rousseau.

"Reveries of a Solitary Walker."

Now, Thoreau wrote essays on walking, and he loved to go on the pond, lie down in a canoe and just let it drift and think or dream or have a reverie.

But I mean, how important is the walking that is the body for experiencing that moment of one's existence?

- It's an interesting question because he does entitle the book, "Solitary Walker," and the structure of the book is based on walking.

There aren't chapters.

There are walks, first walk, second walk, third walk.

So that seems to be a crucial component of it, at least structurally.

In fact, some of the reveries are just, as you described.

There's even one where it's explicitly lying on his back in a canoe, which is a daily exercise that he'll do just drift out into the lake.

- Well, that's eerily similar.

- Yeah.

- I wonder if Thoreau read that.

- And he speaks of, once his body is floating, then the undulations of the water take the place of inner motions and his thoughts become detached.

He's still thinking thoughts, but they're just floating by and they're not connected to each other, and he just observes them, lets them go where they will.

And, eventually he's overcome with this, what he calls the a deliciousness, the deliciousness of reverie, where his whole being is now just adrift and he's no longer thinking about any particular thing or wishing for any particular thing.

He's just experiencing existence in a immediate sense.

- Is it verbal?

- I don't think so.

I don't think so.

I mean, another important aspect of this is reflecting on the reverie and recording it.

And this is verbal.

- Yeah, of course.

- He somehow gotta write it down.

- [Louis] Yeah.

- So that becomes a question of if these reveries are so self-contained and delightful in themselves, why would they need to be written down and recorded as he does?

- Yeah, I sometimes wonder about this, that we at the college have our seminars and tutorials in a sedentary mode as we're doing now, but if walking or if some kind of motion is a stimulant to self-discovery towards the experience of reality itself, maybe we should do more of that.

Maybe we should move around, walk and talk 'cause that would be hard with a large group.

But I have gone on walks with colleagues nearby, and for some length, and have found it quite conducive to talking.

Yeah, there's something about the legs in motion or about being out there, you know, under the sky and with a larger horizon, and even not having to, you know, direct your gaze at the other person, but it's just the logos, the voice, while you can be, you know, looking at something else.

- Yes, I think there's good evidence that even just Aristotle thought of philosophy as times a peripatetic activity, something that involved motion and walking about.

Different traditions of meditation include walking meditations.

There's something in particular that becomes available through that kind of motion.

Rousseau is explicit about this in some way, in that, in one of the Reveries, this is the fifth walk, he says that utter stillness is dejection is an emblem of death and can push one into just abject melancholy.

Whereas frenetic motion is disruptive of any sense of self.

So there's this in-between, which is a kind of stillness with regular motion.

So, walking could be that, or just the flow of water can be that where something essential becomes available.

- Yeah, motion as life.

- Yeah, life is not frozen.

It undulates.

- Yeah, I mean that's the other interesting thing.

The sense of being in motion, but not necessarily being, you know, on target towards some end.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You could think of circular motion as being like this.

This motion, which goes nowhere.

- Of course one could walk by oneself.

So what are other people for in our lives as self knowers or in our lives as painters or poets or in your case music 'cause you are a musician?

What role do they play?

- Well, it's, I think we have to be careful and even the way the question is framed, I wouldn't want to say people are for something.

- Sounds too utilitarian?

- Yeah, maybe there makes it almost sound like other people are instrumental to something else.

- They might be.

- [Jonathan] Yes.

- For an artist in particular, - It might be, I just wouldn't wanna prejudice the question by, you know, saying they are for something from the get get-go.

It could be, just to go from the other extreme, that we are communal beings that we only are fully ourselves in society or in families or in tribes, in cities.

Maybe that's what the human is.

This would be Aristotle's view, I think.

But if we're individuals fundamentally, which is a more modern idea, then maybe the deepest things are only available in solitude.

- So I would just, I leave this as, for me, it's just an open question.

I don't think there's any doubt that something is available in solitude that is not otherwise available or that is otherwise available.

I don't think it is.

I think the deepest kind of study and certainly the practice of music or the work of composition, and I imagine this is true for painters and poets as well, that kind of artistic poetic work is something that is for many, for most perhaps, primarily executed in solitude.

- [Louis] Yeah, yeah.

- One is in touch with something that is quiet and available in an interior way, not in a discursive way.

On the other hand, musical work, for example, is at some point necessarily communal.

Whether this's the solo performer who's performing for other people or the ensemble where not only is there an audience, but there are other musicians.

Even for the composer, if the work is to be performed, the composer works with musicians.

And this, it is another aspect of the artwork is translating it, communicating it, orchestrating it with human beings.

So it becomes communal one way or another.

There's no danger that it'll remain in solitude.

Similarly, even if it's true that the deepest philosophical insights happen in solitude...

It's got to be true.

At least maybe this is, I say "It's got to be," maybe that's more of an article of faith.

It seems to me that in dialogue, conversation, these ideas take on a character that is, whether or not is the deepest form, is necessary.

Private inner reflections might be delicious and wonderful, and perhaps there are spiritual implications that are important and crucial, but whatever is true, there's something powerful about putting them out into the world, having them challenged, refuted.

One's own thinking is stretched.

Other people join into it and maybe they too benefit from this kind of thinking.

So dialogue is crucial for philosophy.

- So I was thinking as you were saying all that, that even if we're just readers of a book that we do alone, but those are words, and we're thinking with words.

So we're having a kind of conversation.

That in itself is communal.

It's not strictly speaking solitary.

There are words coming from somewhere, calling up words in ourselves which want to go somewhere.

- You're you're thinking that the words themselves are something outside solitude.

- Yeah, in sofar as were verbal beings, unless, as you were saying earlier, the reverie is completely nonverbal and has some other purpose.

But you know, if we're reading, if we're thinking, if we're, well obviously talking to ourselves, even, then we're doing something that seems to me that is not, strictly speaking, solitary - That's interesting, yeah.

- It's got an audience, you know, a speaker and a listener.

- Even if that's internal.

- Yeah, even if we're not yet social, you know, we're not.

- So the word implies society.

- Yes, exactly.

The word implies a society.

So if we're verbally alone with ourselves, we're not really alone.

And I'm wondering if the artists in the books you're reading or in your own case are like that, that there's maybe some kind of doubleness going on all the time, insofar as one is, you know, involved in some sense of one's own existence, and that that's one thing.

But there's another part of oneself, which is listening to it and articulating it or getting ready to articulate it, recognizing that it's a source, you know, a creative source of something.

Poetry, music, dialogue, painting.

Does that make sense?

- It does.

And I think of it just in terms of Rousseau, again.

There is a doubleness in that he is writing these things down.

And not only the mechanical aspect of just writing it down, but there's even the reverie itself seems to toggle between this immediate experience of existence and being aware that there is an immediate experience of existence.

Those are two different things.

And there's the experience and then there's the awareness of the experience, which is already a doubleness.

Rousseau watching Rousseau have the experience.

- Yeah, watching oneself have the experience.

But could one add one other thing?

That it's with a sense of oneself as creative, so that, you know, the time in which one is doing this is itself a kind of material that's going to be sculpted or painted or verbalized, you know?

- Well, maybe could you say more about what you mean by creative?

- I mean, that one is making something out of this sense of being, a sense of existing, and the sense of being, out of the darkness itself, out of a sense that nothing is there until I do something with it.

- Yeah, so this becomes difficult to talk about in a straightforward way 'cause your clarification was helpful.

I do distinguish the creative component from the making component.

And this may play right into the idea that you're exploring here.

So for one, what is the actual creative moment.

That's sort of ineffable.

- Maybe divine, even.

Maybe Godlike.

- Yeah, this would be more of the deeply solitary experience.

You know, maybe there's a certain state in which this becomes available.

It's the kind of thing that you can't make happen.

You can put the sails up, but you can't make the wind blow.

So you cultivate a sense of preparedness for it.

Then that can happen, maybe, if you're lucky.

But that's not the artwork.

That's just what people might call the inspiration.

Where do these things come from?

That's hard to say.

- [Louis] Who knows?

- But once that's there and somehow in the body and the flesh, then there's the aspect of craft, of making.

Now, whereas that first thing, that inspiration is sort of profoundly solitary.

The making is sort of, you know, solitary in a mundane sort of way is, you know, you need not to be disturbed, but not because of, it's not the same thing.

It's the more content.

- It's a work.

- Yeah.

You're busy, you know, and there's something you have to do.

There's a process and yeah.

- Well, that makes me wonder also, again, about the doubleness that is, as a human being, one has to live in the world as well.

One has to feed oneself.

One has to house oneself, clothe oneself, provide energy and warmth, maybe take care of family, you know, fulfill one's civil duties, all these things.

And this was very much by the way, part of Thoreau's concern in writing "Walden" 'cause people were asking him questions when he was living out there in the woods about each of those things.

What do you eat?

You know, how do you stay warm?

And are you lonely?

And are you afraid of, you know, what happens in the night?

All these things.

And he answered them one by one.

But I mean, I'm interested in hearing a little bit about how you satisfy those needs and concerns, all those practical matters.

You're a family man, as I am.

So there's a lot of solitary work that has to be done as a tutor or as a musician, alongside all of these other things that call upon us, just as embodied human beings.

So do you end up, how do we do it?

You know, it's kind of impossible.

- Yeah.

Well, so this is sort of a particular idiosyncratic answer that's relevant to both of us as tutors.

I suppose there's some version of this that applies to other professions, occupations.

So I don't mean this as anything universal, but so how can one be a tutor and be a human being at the same time?

And you're right, not possible, but there's, one can approximate one or the other.

I think there's a certain purist sort of tutor where I think the idea is the life of the tutor is essentially a monastic life.

And, my sense is that was more true in the mid 20th century, maybe the late 20th century.

Less true now.

But yet there's some sense in which this is held on.

And I honor that.

It's not the life for me.

So there's gotta be a different way.

In my case, the approach was to take things in stages.

When I first came to the college, I was single.

I was a musician, a composer before I went into graduate studies that prepared me for this.

I set that aside.

So for a period, I was a tutor and only a tutor.

And this was necessary to do this kind of work.

It takes years to go through the program, and learn these things that you've never studied before.

Yeah.

Immersing yourself in the work.

- Yeah.

That's part of what I meant by it's impossible.

- Yeah.

- It becomes doubly so when then you try to live a human life on top of it with family.

- [Jonathan] Yeah, a fully human life, yeah.

- So you did it, you sort of staged it.

- Yes, there was seven years of being a tutor and only a tutor.

Then I brought back music in an elementary way.

I just relearned took a new approach to performance and composition.

I took on a new teacher to help me find a new way.

And that was a slow process, just starting over again.

- But have you ever wondered about wanting to chuck one or more of those, and just give yourself, entirely, wholly, completely to one thing?

- Yes, yes.

- Just to be the best you can at that one thing.

Make it perfect.

- Well, that's the a phrase by the way, in a poem by Yates that has stuck with me a long time.

It's called "The choice."

I'll just tell you the first two lines.

"The intellect of man is forced to choose, perfection of the life or of the work."

And he goes on to describe the consequences of choosing the latter, the work, perfection of work, in his case, work of a poet 'cause he gave up family life for that.

But you know, it's a respectable, is it not, a respectable position that he's taking?

You must choose - Respectable.

Tricky word, I think.

- [Louis] Serious.

- It's serious, yes.

And maybe even honorable.

- Maybe if you're that talented, necessary.

- Perhaps necessary.

I understand.

And, this is the third book in the preceptorial that I just described, the Somerset Maugham, "The Moon and Sixthpence.

So here is a middle class man, very successful, a wife, two children.

And in his mid forties, he vanishes, abandons his family.

People are appalled.

People are amazed.

People are bewildered.

And they assume he's run off with a woman.

People figure out that he's in Paris.

He's left England, has gone to Paris.

They assume he's run off with a woman.

Our narrator tracks down this man, whose name is Strickland, and figures that there is no woman.

That's not it at all.

He's suddenly had an epiphany that he must paint and he's never painted before.

So he has a shabby attic apartment.

He's found a teacher.

And he's teaching himself, and working with a teacher, to paint.

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