Nothing good comes from the hermit lifestyle

I spent my freshman year in my room. Eating greasy sandwiches from the downstairs cafeteria, getting fat and smoking cigarettes. When my roommate was around, I stared at him suspiciously as if the whip were about to come down. I had virtually no contact with the outside world, and it stayed that way, right through classes, through the weekends and until I finally withered away in paranoia and stomach cramps.\nI can't really remember anything specifically about this period of my life, besides watching lots of television and yelling at my roommate when he failed to bring me home dinner. Suffice it to say, my first stint at Indiana University was a short one. The holes in my stomach have since healed, and I get out of the house every once in a while now to buy groceries and records.\nIn my circle of friends, the hermit life is seen as a very chivalrous thing, the ultimate sacrifice to artifice. Virtually everyone I know who fathoms himself creative believes he is disturbed or screwed in some way and must engage in some form of slow suicide, either by drug ingestion or by pure, antisocial antics.\nA fellow I know lives in a high rise in Chicago. He dropped out of art school after two years, feeling that he was misunderstood and couldn't bear the wrath of these trained artists. These days he spends his days working in a bagel joint and sitting in his flat reading Dostoevsky at night. Having a conversation with the guy now is like talking to Marlon Brando's character from "Last Tango In Paris." \nLately his e-mails have taken on a Charles Manson quality. He talks about women a lot. He believes he has a chance with the girls who pass him on the street each day because they don't seem horrified by the sight of him. Once he said he had a old girlfriend up at his place for the night. The next day, after she left, he said he couldn't get her smell out of the place so he was thinking about moving.\nIt is possible he actually believes he is the Underground Man: "I am a sick man … I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased … My liver is bad, well then -- let it get worse."\nAnother buddy of mine lives out in the woods in a small bungalow. He was once a fine musician and composer. Nowadays, he mostly watches "Cosby" and "Home Improvement" reruns. Once in a while, he'll pick up his guitar and mess around. Usually, though, he ends up playing the theme to the original Zelda.\nHe was never besieged by some enormous disappointment; he just seemed to pack it in. He takes his parents' money up his nose and must weigh around 115 pounds now. The last time I saw him, he told me, "Long ago I had stopped being surprised by anything. Pain took on dull, decaying senses. Once upon a time, I had been so upset and self-loathing that my head was ripped apart with the feeling of 1001 machetes. It may have been the best night of my life. Everything now, I see coming a mile away."\n"Heavy, man," I said. "Maybe you ought to go get yourself some McDonald's or go to a class." He just looked at me like I could not possibly understand his privatized situation. \nThe thing that is important to note about these figures is that they are not getting anything done. In their time and their own way, they once represented to me the achievement that was possible by my peers. They are now getting exponentially deeper inside themselves. Bill Clinton said on Letterman the other night, "Once you're in the hole, why keep digging?" \nI find it hard to think of any sort of creativity that comes out of this lifestyle that can be sustained over more than a short period of time. Time and time again, a good book, album, painting or personality is the direct result of overcoming the diversities of life. The key is movement -- what my friends are doing cannot be determined motion. \nSo stay home if you want to, it makes no difference to me, really. I don't like competition, and I get claustrophobic on campus. I advise you, though, not to give credence to the ideology of the tortured artist. People have been killing themselves for years; it's hackneyed and pretentious now.