18 April 2011

"How To Be Alone"

A very charming and nicely designed four-minute video, well worth a view.
 "A video by filmaker, Andrea Dorfman, and poet/singer/songwriter, Tanya Davis.  Davis wrote the beautiful poem and performed in the video which Dorfman directed, shot, animated by hand and edited. The video was shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia and was produced by Bravo!FACT... This video was shot on a Panasonic HVX 200 and the animation was hand drawn+painted and then scanned into Adobe After Effects, exported as QTs and edited on FCP."
The text begins like this...
If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.
... and is continued at the YouTube link in the "show more" pulldown section.

If you start likinig it, switch to fullscreen.

5 comments:

  1. Love this! Very talented and great words of wisdom :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. This poem (to me at least) seems to evoke a sense of wonder at having discovered the value of "alone time". I can't help but think of the whole Mars/Venus thing, as in "men need their cave time". As a martian, everything the author says in this poem just seems natural to me, I need and value alone time. This sounds like someone who has just broken the addiction of having to have company and discovered the beauty of being alone.

    "You're only lonely if you don't like who you're alone with." Anon. (or was it Wayne Dyer?)

    Lovely poem and thought-provoking post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. this is great. thanks for posting it.

    as someone who's spent much of their adult life 'alone' (i.e. single), it's refreshing to see independence and solitude portrayed in a positive light.

    too often, we are pitied or looked down upon for 'failing' to be in a relationship, yet few think to turn the issue on its head and question how functional those people are who cannot exist on their own. who would rather be dependent and sacrifice their own needs/wants in order to avoid being alone or perceived as failures. there may be more of these people out there than we might want to believe.

    i don't want to be alone, but i choose being single over compromising myself for a sub-par relationship.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I saw this about a year ago and loved it then. I enjoyed it again, and thank you for that.

    ReplyDelete