Burrowing in for the Long Winter I (Stages of Solitude)

We can begin to sketch out this path by considering the following quotes:

https://deepmeditationtherapy.blogspot.com

the door to the teenage bedroom is always closed as it is the first space we learn to expand into. within those limits we extend consciousness beyond the skull walls. it is a training programme.

http://www.bretschneider.xyz/the-death-of-maryanne-amacher

Until recently one could take a unique solace, that alone on a hill in upstate New York a mad thinker was hard at work manufacturing sounds never heard before, and wild futuristic theories previously unthunk. One didn’t need to know what exactly the sonic research was, how the madness manifested specifically, or the current state of the musical art; all one needed to know was that the visceral imagination would go on plodding sans distraction, and that some sort of abstract formulation of auditory utopia was in the making.

To my mind, these passages are closely related.

First--both reference the same kind of activity--a kind that's very difficult to describe straightforwardly due to how abstract it is. For now, I'll refer to it as exploratory progress: a process of learning and creating without a textbook or manual to guide you, a process entailing regular and fruitful expeditions into the unknown. (For our purposes, this concept centers around the creation of art and music, but perhaps it could extend to other subjects as well.)

Second--both cases involve a withdrawal from the outside world. There’s no literal exploration of terrain involved, as it's all from within the safe confines of home. There's no meeting new people, either.

The difference between the quotes above is conveyed in the phrase "training programme". The activity described in the latter is the grownup version of that described in the former. No longer the teenage bedroom, but, in Scheider's words, the hill in upstate New York. The master’s study. The eccentric relative's attic. Dumbledore's office, with its inscrutable instruments and old portraits.

---

I won't go into much detail about the idea of the teenage bedroom--after all, it's Luka's term, not mine--but for me the basic notion is as follows.

It’s a matter of discovering a new way to spend time, and then making this new way of spending time a habit. It turns out that you don’t have to spend every minute either hanging out with friends, passively consuming media, working, or studying for a test. This is the stage where you discover that there’s another option, which is “exploratory progress”.

Most likely, you will not be particularly focused or ambitious at this stage. Since you aren't attached to any prior expectations (internal or external), there isn't yet any pressure to be those things. You don't have to be Descartes, systematically constructing his pyramid of knowledge from the ground up. It's unlikely that you will accomplish any specific goals of lasting significance.

In the case of music, the teenage bedroom stage could entail making a lot of music, but it also could entail simply listening to music and thinking about it. Consider Juan Atkins’ recollection of how the Belleville three listened to music in their teenage years: “we used to sit back and philosophize . . . half the shit we thought about the artist never even fucking thought about!” Even if they weren't practicing their craft in the most literal sense, they were learning and being creative. So you can make exploratory progress without (yet) producing anything tangible.

As a stage of development, the teenage bedroom is less analogous to making progress along the path, more to gradually figuring out that the path exists.

---

We can already get some sense of how the master’s study is different. It is everything the teenage bedroom couldn’t be: focused, ambitious, learned. At this point the foundations / path are firmly established (though perhaps still subject to scrutiny and modification). The task is making progress on top of them.

Solitude figures into each stage, but for differing reasons. The teenage bedroom is a place of solitude because you can only discover the new way of spending time it offers if you’re alone (or with a very small group of friends). The master’s study is also a place of solitude, but for a different reason: no one else could make the same kind of progress. They don’t have the same arcane, specialized knowledge, and you’ve already progressed far enough that it’s clear that the vision beckoning you is unique.

You don’t have to stop thinking, but at this point thoughts aren’t enough. You need to produce concrete evidence that you’ve been doing more with your time than, you know, endlessly rewatching Sniper Special Ops or something. You need to make your progress real so that it won’t all die with you. And if that’s the goal, wouldn’t you want to realize it to the fullest, least compromised extent that you can manage?

---

With two stages of our path identified, we might now ask how one graduates from the first to the second. In order to answer this, I think that an additional stage must be introduced.