Isolation...

Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment distinguished by living in single cells with little or no meaningful contact to other inmates....

You can have too much of a good thing so it’s nice to have the opportunity to get away from the rat race from time to time and put your feet up for a while...

there’s more to life than running around working for the Yankee dollar and putting up with a unhinged , recalcitrant society....

So Now, finally, a peaceful, monastic life beckons with the opportunity for hours of self-reflection, meditation and splendid isolation in your very own temple, far away from the maddening crowd in perfect seclusion.

 "The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind," 

A quote by old Albert Einsteinium, the crazy-haired hippy that developed a few of his theories without the help of his annoying friends and neighbours and lived alone only in a world of his own ideas as a cloistered genius inventing mad stuff and texting crap like E=M C 🔨 from a little shed at the bottom of his garden...

Or What about

Robert John Maudsley (born 26 June 1953) a hapless loner and a British serial killer responsible for the murders of four people. Most of the time he stayed in a cell alone which was fine for him for ages but then when they told him he could come out he started carving up and chewing off bits of his fellow inmates making him unpopular and getting the the stigma name of ‘Hannibal the cannibal’...

Or maybe

Terence Hardy Waite CBE (born 31 May 1939) who is an English humanitarian and author that proved that a bit of isolation didn’t hurt anyone and even gave him chance to eat spiders and write a few books in peace and quiet while not having to worry about setting the alarm to get up in the morning to catch the bus to work...

Then there was Pablo Picasso, the lazy-arse Spanish slacker that reckoned that 

“Without great solitude no serious work is possible”  but he probably never had a days work in him according to his absinthe supping mate and poet, Jimmy Sabartés...

Meanwhile...

At the other side of the world a local Japanese Buddhist philosopher, educator, author, peace advocate and seaweed farmer was heard to say “No one can live entirely on their own, nor can any country or society exist in isolation”  that was after a few too many rice wines in the local pub by Daisaku Ikeda as a word of warning to the West!

...but we all seem to be managing......

and we are all stuck inside now but some more of our fellow humans chose this solitary life style. 

Take for instance:-

The peculiar Dorothy Paget(1906-1960) who inherited most things from birth except her looks. She was a horse breeder, gambler and chain smoking millionaire who on the other hand enjoyed very much being a shapeless, bad tempered lump of a 

woman who regularly relieved herself in a horse box and was perfectly happy with being virtual recluse.

Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett (6 January 1946 – 7 July 2006) was an English singer, songwriter, and musician with a little known rock band Pink Floyd who buggered off after taking LSD on the bus and spent then rest of his life without speaking to a sole...(just to clarify here, not the flat, bottom feeding sea fish...but then again he was a bit loopy so may well have had a deep, meaningful chat to a fish....)...I know I would!

I digress....

So what about Blanche Monnier?

...often known in France as la Séquestrée de Poitiers (roughly, "The Confined Woman of Poitiers.”) She didn’t see any daylight for 25years! 

Admittedly that wasn’t her own choice as she had been kept prisoner by her disapproving mother but that’s bye-la-bye....

Or

Christopher Knight, the US North Pond Hermit and burglar who lived without human contact for 27 years deep in the woods and was as happy as Larry until he got captured by a nosey game warden and got shoved in the clink allowing time for him to focus on his mental health issues...

Or

Greta Garbo born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson;^[18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American film actress liked a bit of detachment as did Jerome David Salinger (/ˈsælɪndʒər/; January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010) who was an American writer best known for his novel The Catcher in the Rye which was a popular story with kids about a confused and disillusioned teenage rebel who was searching for the truth and rails against the “phoniness” of the adult world....kids, eh???? 

What do they know?

iSolation...A condition of detachment or separation caused by using an iPod with headphones?

Try it here to listen to my blog track ‘Isolation’ by Therapy? From 1994.