Alone But Not Lonely
Roger Ebert was my introduction to appreciating movies in a serious way. In college I looked to his Great Movies series for inspiration, guidance and insight as I was trying to learn more about movies. I would go to the library at Rutgers and sit on hard furniture and watch old movies in small viewing rooms. That’s how I saw Ikuru, Ran and Persona. I was always alone — not that I was lonely. In Ebert’s phrase, “I was a soloist.” Ebert’s rituals as a soloist were my favorite parts of his memoir, Life Itself (2011). In a chapter called “All By Myself Alone,” he writes about visiting foreign cities over and over again, haunting the same used bookstores and cafes and bars (though he stopped drinking in 1979) throughout his life. “Chaz (Ebert’s wife) says it is impossible to get me to do anything the first time, and then impossible to stop me from doing it over and over again,” he writes of his “compulsive repetition syndrome.” A long-time bachelor previous to his marriage, Ebert became accustomed to carving an independent space for himself to be alone among company — watching a movie being the most obvious example. But he also relates visiting Holly Bush pub in Hampstead, “where there are snug corners to ensconce myself. A corner is important. It provides privacy and an anchor and lets you exist independently of the room.” Ebert lost the ability to speak because of multiple failed surgeries to rebuild his face after cancer surgery. He’s become a prolific blogger and tweeter since then, while continuing to turn out his movie reviews. In a sense he’s been sentenced to that private corner permanently. During meals he can’t participate in conversation, but he can “sit at a table and vicariously enjoy” it. He says being a writer has allowed him to acclimate himself to living without speech, but his propensity for being alone without being lonely must help just as much. “I keep myself company,” he writes about being at social gatherings. “I don’t feel especially lonely by myself.” Speaking to Fresh Air recently, Sherry Turkle, clinical psychologist and author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, discussed technology’s impact on developing the “capacity for solitude.” “Children are getting these phones earlier and earlier. These are years when children need to develop this capacity for solitude, this capacity to feel complete playing alone. If you don’t have a capacity for solitude, you will always be lonely, and my concern is that the tethered child never really feels that sense that they are sort of OK unto themselves.” Ebert grew up in an era before smart phones. In high school he says he “read endlessly, often in class, always late at night.” Reading, for me, is key to being alone without being lonely but I think several absorbing activities can serve that purpose — drawing, for instance. Even after his marriage, Ebert continued to take pleasure in being by himself. Although he has shared his rituals in foreign cities with his wife, he writes, “Sometimes Chaz comes along on my rituals, but just as often I go alone. Sometime Chaz will say she’s going shopping, or visiting a friend, or just staying in the room and reading in bed. ‘Why don’t you go and touch your bases,’ she’ll ask me.”
Adam Grybowski appreciates garlic, The Last Waltz and swimming in raw sewage.