solitude
Retreated from the world and found something there.
A Little Patch of Yellow Wall
Marcel Proust wrote most of his novel in a cork-lined bedroom he fumigated five times a day with a hallucinogenic nightshade powder.
The Baron in the Bath
On rainy mornings, a Georgian peer walked miles to the sea to swim while his liveried footman, on the peer's orders, rode dry in the empty carriage behind him.
Up to His Neck
He walked into the North Sea at night until the water reached his neck, and sang psalms until dawn.
The Hermit Who Kept Office Hours
What kind of hermit hires two armed guards, then hands out gin to two hundred children through the bars of his window?
The Rope
What do you call a woman who wouldn't cross the lawn for Emerson, but rigged a rope from her window for children she refused to greet at the door?
Ten Hours, Ten Seconds
He calculated that ten hours of punching holes produced ten seconds of music, and he kept punching for forty years.
The Bait Camp Visionary
How does a shrimp seller who couldn't swim, living alone on a sandspit reachable only by boat, end up on Betty Parsons's walls beside Pollock and Rothko?
The Philosopher Who Took His Own Medicine
What happens when a philosopher who hated water contracts a disease made of it?
The Soot and the Spit
What does a self-taught artist do when the family finally retires the wood stove and his only source of ink disappears?
The Composer Found Under His Coat Stand
What does a man do for twenty-five years after walking offstage at the Paris Conservatoire in disgust?
The Man Who Drew the Curtains
He sailed to Tahiti, India, and Japan in 1920 and never left his cabin — so what exactly was he doing in there?
A House for Foss
A Victorian poet built a second house identical to his first, same rooms, same floor plan, so his cat wouldn't feel disoriented.