Hey Lily, hope you're doing ok...

January has a way of separating us all.

Leaves fall and land in different piles, branches recede, and the layers that appear around us to keep us warm prevent us from seeing one another.

But our time alone has a purpose. It is scary and overwhelming without ever making a noise.

There are times in my life when I long for it but never get there. Other times, all I want is to be around someone who can see me, isolated by the reality that sometimes we’re standing in a place only we can be.

If you’ve been following my work, you’ll know how much I love those common ailments of the human condition we’re all going to experience. This week is about one of those things that we all experience together, apart.

Isolation.

This is Lily’s story, glimpsed in the half-light: from a little girl’s unsure grin at a fading birthday party to a woman watching dawn paint the ocean’s horizon.

It’s a 10-minute read, 15 mins if you make some hot chocolate.

It’s neither neat nor conclusive.

Perhaps that’s where it’s truth is—a quiet thread that tugs at us beneath our daily chatter, revealing a tone we can only feel when our world goes still.

If you’d like some music in the background, I’ve prepared this:

Spotify playlist

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it for you.

First light (7)

The first time Lily felt truly alone, she was sitting on a patchy lawn in a suburb just outside Chicago, watching fireflies pulse against the humid night.

She was seven, maybe eight; the air clung to her arms, and her neighbor’s radio crackled faintly from the open garage.

She had just become aware of the filmy barrier between herself and everyone else—like the soft glow those tiny insects made from the leaves they floated around a few steps away.

Over time, Lily’s days became a tapestry of routine: riding her bike under leafy canopies, chatting half-heartedly with friends after school, and staying up late—partly for real talk, partly to cram for exams.

But beneath these suburban rhythms, a dreamlike restlessness tugged at her.

She was drawn to hushed corners—diner booths in half-light or empty playgrounds at twilight—where she’d scribble half-finished poems on receipts, convinced life’s deeper meaning flickered somewhere between neon signs and empty parking lots.

She’d sometimes wonder if that intangible distance was the shape of loneliness—what Irvin Yalom might term isolation.

Before she knew any words for it, it was simply her silent companion. Over the years, she grazed upon the ideas of Kierkegaard and Rollo May, who claimed a kind of solitude was woven into our very nature.

She gradually saw how we so often guard our hearts—maybe not out of fear, but because we don’t know how else to protect ourselves.

But, Lily’s life isn’t an unbroken string of existential woes.

She knew how to look for sparks in odd places: the glow of a roadside motel sign at dusk, the hush where a shallow creek met a worn footbridge, the surprising brightness when sunlight hit a puddle after rain.

She stumbled into heartbreak and made her share of mistakes, each one carving fresh space in her art and her mind.

Bit by bit, she stitched together an understanding of solitude’s allure—and the subtle way it can clutch at us, refusing to let go.

Dusk (8)

A lazy breeze ruffled the pastel streamers hanging from her grandfather’s old oak. Lily watched her cousins squeal as they chased one another around the yard.

She hovered near a makeshift table stacked with plastic cups, holding a slice of cake she had no appetite for.

Something in the late-summer sky—streaked with peach and gold—felt too magical, too distant as if she was stuck in the shadows while the world was painted with light.

The party should have warmed her—familiar relatives, the smell of hot dogs charring, the gentle pop of a stray firework in the next yard.

But an odd hush pressed against her chest, the same hush she noticed whenever she tuned into the laughter of others.

Years later, she’d learn about the quiet cracks in our connections, how we can drift away from the chorus of voices without quite knowing why.

John Bowlby highlighted children’s longing for secure attachment, while John Cacioppo mapped the physiological toll of loneliness on young minds.

But none of those names were on Lily’s radar that day; she only felt a soft, unspoken ache under all the noise.

Her mother beckoned her for a photo, and Lily forced a smile she hoped might look real.

The camera froze her small silhouette against a haze of balloons, her grin faltering at the edges.

She caught sight of her cousin Mara—just a year older—beaming as she ran by, cheeks flushed with excitement. Mara glanced at Lily and paused, eyes questioning.

In that fleeting glance, Lily saw a spark of concern, but before she could react, Mara darted off chasing another giggle.

As dusk settled and relatives began saying their goodbyes, Lily wandered indoors, the leftover balloons dragging behind her.

Their reflection in the hallway mirror seemed oddly deflated—light from the kitchen fell across their surface, highlighting every crease.

A dog barking from the street broke the hush, and Lily wondered why she felt hollow on a day that was supposed to be hers.

Maybe “happy” existed like a lantern she couldn’t quite reach, its glow just beyond her fingertips.

That night, as she slid beneath the covers, the echoes of small talk clung to her thoughts.

At the foot of the bed, the balloon swayed in faint resignation, worn out by its performance, acknowledging in here, that it didn’t need to pretend to float anymore.

She clicked off the lamp and studied the shifting shadows on the ceiling, searching for a moment that could belong to her.

As the light drifted away she began to think about the sunset, fireflies dancing, and whether anyone else knew that a party could be the loneliest place of all.

Mirrors (16)

Lily never enjoyed the rush between classes—those chaotic five minutes of lockers slamming and voices swelling like a rising tide.

She gravitated toward quieter transitions: early mornings when her footsteps resonated in empty halls, or late afternoons when the fluorescent lights hummed softly above deserted corridors.

Recently, she’d offered to organize the debate club’s materials, thankful for solitude in the classroom once the bustle died down.

One day, as she wiped chalk dust from desks, she noticed the stark glow of overhead lights turning each surface into a mild glare.

In the window’s reflection, she saw herself—uniform cardigan rumpled, hair in a loose ponytail, eyes that looked too tired for sixteen.

For a split second, she recognized her own shape, and then doubt slipped in—Who am I, really? The reflection felt like a stranger.

Looking back, Lily realized that was the year she sensed an emptiness creeping in, as though she acted for others more than for herself.

She joined the debate team and student council because her school counselor said it would pad her college applications.

Her selfies with friends were polished enough to gather likes online, yet she felt a faint sting of dissonance each time she hit “post.”

Would they still like me, she wondered, if I let them see the quieter layers?

Carl Rogers termed it incongruence—the rift between our real self and the self we show the world.

Meanwhile, Erik Erikson believed adolescence was when our identity could solidify or fracture.

Lily, unaware of these theories, only knew she liked to paint alone in the art room more than she liked faking smiles for the yearbook camera.

One afternoon, she passed a row of trophies in the gym lobby—shiny medals behind glass.

The hush of the corridor slowed her pulse, inviting her to pause. She studied her reflection among the trophies, and a question pulsed through her mind:

Are these just mirrors too? Surfaces reflecting who she was supposed to be, never who she might actually become.

The hallways slowly emptied. Lily slipped away from the crowd, finding refuge in the art room.

Her hands found a deep-blue acrylic and let it spill across fresh paper, painting a half-formed face that seemed to vibrate with raw color.

At least here, under the static hum of fluorescent light, she could be honest without words.

It was just her, the brush, and the gentle shift of light across wet paint.

Dawn (26)

A series of sleepless nights led Lily to pile a duffel bag into her aging sedan and leave her Chicago apartment behind.

She was due at the studio the next morning, half-finished freelance designs waiting on her laptop, and a social calendar that felt more like an obligation than a joy.

She drove east under a ceiling of stars, searching for a place where she could breathe outside her neatly managed life.

She arrived at a deserted stretch of the North Carolina Outer Banks just before first light, ankles sinking into damp sand as she stepped from the car.

A swirl of pale orange and violet peeked over the horizon, and Lily noticed how the new light touched everything around her—gentle and insistent.

It skimmed the surface of the ocean and glinted off broken shells. She shivered, feeling an electric sense of aliveness, yet also a deep sense of solitude.

In retrospect, Lily recognized this dawn as a pivotal moment—when her outward composure no longer suppressed the loneliness gathering within.

Kierkegaard or Rollo May might call it confronting the enormity of one’s own existence.

Lily didn’t think of philosophers; she just felt the vastness of an ocean pressing against her, forcing her to acknowledge what she’d been pushing aside.

She lowered herself to the sand, wrapping her arms around her knees. The waves rolled in a patient rhythm, each crest catching the early sun in glints of gold.

She recalled an earlier self—standing by a birthday cake she didn’t touch, glimpsing a tired reflection in a window.

For some reason, that emptiness wasn’t hollow; it murmured that right now, being alone might be the only way to hear her heartbeat, the gentle pulse she’d long ignored.

A gull cawed overhead, and Lily shut her eyes. In the distance, she noticed a small fishing boat, its silhouette being swallowed by the red glow of the rising sun.

She wondered whether they felt the same tug of loneliness or maybe calm acceptance, or even both at once.

As she stood up, dusting off the clinging grains of sand from her clothes, she felt a surprising steadiness.

That soft hazy border wrapped around her solitude had softened just enough to allow the faint warmth of the morning light to slip in.

Ember (29)

For a few years after that dawn, Lily’s life swayed between flashes of excitement and raw confrontations with her own limitations.

She found a circle of fellow artists—including Mara, her cousin from childhood—who’d moved to the city.

They formed a loose collective, renting a small studio where they shared supplies and critiques.

Some days, Lily laughed with them into the early hours, energized by the creative spark they ignited together.

Other days, she slipped away, unsettled by how easily she could feel invisible in a group that adored her.

There were squabbles over petty things—missing brushes, an unpaid bill, a misunderstanding about who’d signed up for which gallery show.

Once, Lily and Mara clashed over a collaborative project that fizzled when Lily withdrew into herself, unsure if she could trust sharing her most vulnerable artwork.

Mara confronted her one evening, the studio’s overhead lamp flickering on her tense features: “You keep pulling away. Do you even want us here?”

Lily’s eyes brimmed with tears she couldn’t quite shed, and in that moment, she realized how her longing for solitude sometimes cut off the very closeness she craved.

Yet each storm blew past, leaving them a bit stronger or a bit bruised—usually both.

In these moments, Lily noticed how the light in the studio—whether warm or fluorescent—always clung to surfaces in unexpected ways, catching on scraps of canvas or the metal edges of paint tubes.

It became her way of seeing. The way clarity or comfort can land on us unexpectedly, illuminating pieces of ourselves we didn’t know were waiting in the dark.

Twilight (32)

Lily stood in a converted warehouse in Detroit’s Corktown— touching at the corners of the small plates of food she’d brought in for her first solo exhibition.

Strings of vintage bulbs glowed against brick walls, highlighting canvases propped in uneven rows.

The smell of fresh paint mingled with the faint aroma of coffee from a pop-up cart outside.

A small crowd wandered through, plastic cups of cheap wine in hand, nodding at her brushstrokes.

She’d once imagined this show as pure triumph.

But in the low hum of conversation, Lily found herself listening more to the subtle hush beneath everything, as though a deeper connection was a trembling note the world barely heard.

A friend waved her over, and Lily eased into a circle discussing where she finds her inspiration. As she began, she slowly watched to see if it was worth sharing where it really came from.

She answered their questions, occasionally glancing at the window where she caught a fleeting image of her own reflection— she looked calmer than she thought, but something about the isolated image that stared back hadn’t changed.

She spotted Mara in the crowd, wearing a comforting grin of encouragement. They exchanged a brief hug—tight, grateful—and Lily recalled the nights they’d stayed up painting, argued over nonsense, and made up in half-laughing apologies.

Here and there, the jangle of voices or the clink of glasses stirred Lily’s old tension, but it never fully overwhelmed her.

She caught her breath, noticing how the loft’s light slid across exposed brick, creating shapes that moved gently up the walls—an afterglow that reminded her of those childhood fireflies.

At one point, her gaze landed on a woman quietly contemplating a large canvas near the back.

Their eyes met, and something flickered—an unspoken recognition of kindred longing, perhaps.

Then someone called the woman’s name, and she turned away, leaving Lily with that familiar flutter: closeness, swiftly gone.

A detached observer might say Lily hovered between a desire to be seen and the instinct to remain guarded.

Abraham Maslow might talk of her longing for self-actualization, while Martin Buber might see in that brief, electric gaze the potential for an “I-Thou” moment.

But Lily, immersed in the swirl of voices and turning shadows, thought only of how belonging and solitude could merge in a single breath.

Eventually, she ambled to the makeshift bar for a plastic cup of red wine.

She joked with an old friend about the flickering overhead light, the warm night beyond the loft’s doors, and the slightly off-kilter playlist.

A gentle current beneath their banter reminded Lily she didn’t have to prove herself. Her art spoke for her, unveiling corners of her psyche she couldn’t articulate in casual conversation.

She sipped her wine and surveyed the loft: the interplay of color on canvas, the dim reflections dancing across the floor, the hush of dusk creeping in through tall windows.

That old sense of solitude lingered, but it felt tender now, like a friend who gave her space to move forward or retreat.

She was no longer the uncertain child at a birthday, nor the teenager frozen by her own reflection, nor the drifting twenty-something who fled to an empty shore.

Tonight, solitude was something else: a companionable shade that allowed her to be both part of the crowd and distinct from it.

When the lights dimmed and guests began to filter out, Lily stood near the exit, watching them fade into the night.

Mara squeezed her arm in passing, murmuring, “So proud of you.” Lily thanked her, heart full yet still tinged with that quiet ache she’d never quite erase.

But maybe that ache was meant to be part of all this.

Shade (-)

Sometimes we catch ourselves at the edges of a party or drifting outside after the final chord, wondering if anyone else feels the strange mix of comfort and longing in that hush.

We might scrawl our impressions in a notebook, not naming them as loneliness but sensing how we oscillate between closeness and solitude.

In acknowledging that soft, half-lit space, we begin to share it, turning aloneness into a mutual recognition rather than a private void.

Like Lily, we all notice the layers of distance we navigate.

First comes the small, sharp pang in a crowd—an awareness that we’re not fully in step. Then there’s the uneasy glance in the mirror, questioning the face we see.

And deeper still is that raw understanding that no one can truly stand in our exact place. Unsettling as it is, it also stirs compassion for ourselves and for those we meet.

We might look to Yalom or May for words and structure, or simply let these emotions ebb and flow through our days.

By acknowledging them, we discover that facing our separateness side by side brings an intimacy we never expected.

There is no neat conclusion to isolation.

We’re forever learning about it—making new connections, stepping out of our comfort zones, and slipping into the shadows when we need quiet.

Perhaps our greatest tool as humans is to stay receptive to what we need at that moment, letting each brush with solitude remind us of the larger tapestry we’re creating.

Our questions, our confusions—they travel with us like constant companions, and each moment of loneliness can serve as a delicate bridge, linking us in ways too subtle to name.

What I’m Learning

This week I’m trying to get my head around building a team while making all this stuff.

I’ve been reading about art studios and looking at some artists I admire for their ability to make art with others.

If you’re in London, please visit Gagosian to see Takashi Murakami’s latest work.

Many people in art don’t believe in working with a team of painters. Equally, most of those people haven’t experienced just how good, good is.

Check it out here

You wouldn’t expect a car to be made by a single person, so why would we judge art in the same way.

The days of individual genius never existed, we are always a team.

What I’m Making

I’m working on the first of my major paintings for 2025, this piece is centered around the story of Orpheus - specifically his Lyre.

If you’re interested in how long humans have been trying to figure out any of what I’ve spoken about today, then I hope Lily’s story is a nice preamble for you to understand how I best communicate.
.

What I’m Preparing

There’s a giveaway on Thursday’s email

First come, first served.

Thanks for the support so far

Poets Corner

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

- Carl Sandburg (1916)

Afterglow (.)

Now and then, we might notice how light settles across a room at dawn, or how a lamp’s glow shimmers on a puddle after rain, hinting at unspoken depths in our everyday world.

Not a cure-all or a grand revelation, just a gentle acknowledgment that in stillness, something vital comes into focus—an ember of possibility in the quiet.

Maybe that’s all we truly need: to keep walking with open hearts, watching how light can land on unexpected surfaces, revealing corners of ourselves we’ve barely known.

We carry our hopes, our heartbreaks, and our flickering bonds with others, aware that closeness and distance will forever dance in shifting patterns.

If there’s a single thread that holds us, it might be the recognition that these half-hidden reflections—our joys, our aches—shape the richness of being alive.

We needn’t name or conquer them; they become part of how we step forward, each subtle glow leading us toward a horizon we share in the half-light of longing and acceptance.

Love you loads,

R