Many varieties of creative work require a great deal of solitude. Some like software, writing, composing, and art, are often done without an audience when performing.

It's possible to do any creative act collaboratively. But, I've been realizing lately how important it is to intentionally find time for synchronized movement.

The move towards working from home, collaborating with people online, and the flexibility to live and work anywhere is undoubtedly a net positive. It's just that we have to be really intentional about carving out time for connection. Not just being around people, but finding activities where you are "marching in step" with other people.

We are literally wired for it. Jonathan Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis explores the energizing feeling we get from being in synch:

...rituals that involve repetitive movement and chanting, particularly when they are performed by many people at the same time, help to set up "resonance patterns" in the brains of the participants that make this mystical state more likely to happen.

Oliver Burkeman poses the unique position we're in at this moment in time. Amidst asynchronous work as a writer, he highlights the impact of even ordinary synchronized activity:

I've felt it as a member of a community choir, when the sharp and flat tones of amateur voices combine into a perfection that few of the singers involved could attain on their own... For that matter, I've felt it in settings that are even more mundane—working my monthly shift at the food cooperative, for example, slinging boxes of carts and broccoli onto the conveyor belt, in time with other workers I barely know but whit whom, for a few hours, I share a bond that feels deeper than the one I have with some of my real friends. For a while, it's as if we're participating in the communal rhythms of a monastery, in which the synchronized hours of prayer and labor impart coherence and a sense of shared purpose to the day.

Both books above reference Keeping Together in Time by William McNeill, a whole exploration on synchronized movement across human history.

For men in particular, who seem to have a knack for distancing themselves in their relationships (guilty as charged), those moments of connection happen in spaces that require coordination. Here's James Hollis on the subject in Under Saturn's Shadow:

There are few things more rewarding than for a shortstop, deep in the hole, to turn and throw the ball toward second, and see the second baseman intersect base and ball at the exact moment. This is less about practice than about the integration of spirit, the communion of soul. Perhaps this rare sense of oneness is possible in part because the outer challenge occasions a transcendence of the individual ego to serve the joint purpose...

No matter what, true solitude is required and desired. Nourishment is given, soil is enriched, and roots take hold in solitude. And still, it's a dance.

This morning, I was talking with Miranda about a music workshop from high school. In reminiscing, I came across this passage from The Musician's Soul by choral conductor James Jordan. This touches on that dance quite nicely:

Few of us are fortunate enough to be able to understand the rich alchemy that happens when there is a balance between true solitude and true community in one's musical interactions and one's life interactions. Most of us exist as a wild pendulum that swings almost uncontrollably between loneliness and the crowd. This dynamic inertia manifests itself in the music we make, or rather the music we try to make. As musicians, we constantly and dynamically exist in the atmosphere of a larger community. That large community can be defined as small as one or extended to hundreds. The relationship with an accompanist is community. The relationship with an audience is a community....Human beings communicating directly with one another through 'great things' speak powerfully and with one voice. A musician's soul can be explored individually, but it can only grow and deepen through the nourishment of connectedness at every moment. Without the lifeline between souls, there is no art, and more importantly, perhaps, no real life or living.

Join a cycling class! Make time for pair programingm! Go to a swing dance class! Take up accordion lessons! Especially if you work remotely, find ways to return to the hive and move together.

For creatives, carve out a part of your practice that requires being in the room with other people and creating together. For me, it's playing in a community concert band. For artists, it could be something as simple as painting in a class together.

At the end of the day, we create to be a part of something larger than ourselves. Contributing to a scene, a creative lineage, an industry, a craft, a culture. What could enhance that more than creating in true community?

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Because love is the saddest thing when it goes away~

As the crisp autumn air starts to roll in. 🍂

Fond memories of wandering quiet streets late at night. 🌙

A love letter to burning CDs in the 2000s. Inspired by some soup of punk.

Details here!