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Andrei Tarkovsky’s Message to the Young: “Learn to Be Alone” (2015)

349 points by vo2maxer 7y ago

telegrammae 7y ago
He definitely meant a different type of healthy solitude, rather than the one on which newspapers and studies report when they assert loneliness and isolation among young people is at an all-time high.
- Stierlitz 7y ago
  > He definitely meant a different type of healthy solitude, rather than the one on which newspapers and studies report when they assert loneliness and isolation among young people is at an all-time high. Maybe it's because people spend too much time exchanging msgs in forums such as this, instead of having meaningfull exchanges with real people. Even walking down the street, they have their noses buried in a device.
  - giornogiovanna 7y ago
    > Maybe it's because people spend too much time exchanging msgs in forums such as this, instead of having meaningfull exchanges with real people. What does "meaningfull" mean? For example, I learn a lot more from fora such as Hacker News, so I'd argue that in-person interactions tend to be less meaningful.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >What does "meaningfull" mean? Meaningful means more according to several hundred millennia of evolution as social animals that need actual proximity. It means the person on the other end of the conversation will come to your house and help you when you're sad, desperate, sick, and not just be some alias in some other city/country who'll forget all about you just after you've stopped chatting (or give total priority to his real world friends and family). It means common shared friendship building experiences - not just the sharing, via talk, of experiences each had in isolation in a totally different place, in another context. It means having you back and you having theirs, which is rarely if ever the case from people in forums. And a few other things besides.
      - mapcars 7y ago
        >the person on the other end of the conversation will come to your house and help you when you're sad, desperate, sick People really have to grow out of this. This is what in my understanding learning being alone exactly is about. Once you are sad, desperate, sick you have to come out of it as quick as possible with what is available to you. It is your responsibility before yourself and the world, like taking shower or brushing your teeth. I say to grow out - because as children most of us learned the trick to pretend sad to get attention and it developed into all sorts of manipulations. When you don't get what you want, for whatever reasons - that is just it, to become sad or joyful is your reaction, it just shows your level of maturity in this world. Children would cry to get attention, grown-ups would keep going. But you can cry for attention only if there are people around you. If you stay alone you will quickly realize all bullshit you are creating and stop it, because anyway it has no effect. In this way being alone is a powerful way to bring one down to reality. And parents use it sometimes when they feel kids are crying to manipulate - they ignore it all-together. This is relevant to I would say 90% of mental issues, of course in case of physical sickness you need to see a doctor, not someone to calm you down, but someone to fix your body.
        coldtea 7y ago
        >People really have to grow out of this. Actually, they should grow to the opposite direction. They're not "rebellious teenagers" who "don't need nobody". And delivery food + home alone, with "relations" mainly on the web is not a lifestyle. That's how you end with this: https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/loneliness-epidemic-consequences https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/loneliness-epidemic-c... https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-loneliness-epidemic-is-so-bad-world-leaders-have-been-forced-to-intervene https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-loneliness-epidemic-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2019/05/03/millennials-and-the-loneliness-epidemic/#59cf3a047676 https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2019/05/03/millennials... And how people end up discovered dead in their apartment for weeks, with nobody caring earlier, and their pets having chewed on them... >Once you are sad, desperate, sick you have to come out of it as quick as possible with what is available to you. It is your responsibility before yourself and the world, like taking shower or brushing your teeth. If you mean people should stop abusing others when they don't need help, sure. If you mean it as stated above, that's as far removed from humanity as possible. Some loner animals, sure, they might do this. We built society and civilisation to do better than that.
  - moneytide1 7y ago
    The socially normalized buried nose produces an interesting effect when passing by someone in a hallway or sidewalk - the deferred acknowledgement: I rarely have my device out while walking in order to indicate that I am receptive to an approach. When I see an incoming buried nose, I assume they are too busy and keep my gaze past them as they are clearly not going to be available for a nod or pleasantry exchange. The thing is, after the acknowledgement window has passed and we are closing proximity, I perephrially see them look up at me at the very last second before passing. Not sure if it's just me misinterpreting social circumstances, or if there's a new standard of interaction that I need to figure out.
    - pferde 7y ago
      I don't think you are misinterpreting anything. I think those glances are part of survival instinct, assessing whether the moving object they registered out of the corner of their eyes (you), that is getting near them, is dangerous or if it can be safely ignored.
  - CaptArmchair 7y ago
    I think that's a symptom. Not a cause. A lot has to do with how cultures perceive individuals and individuality. Traditionally, individuality has always been seen as something "bad". ingroup/outgroup, cultural norms to abide by, etc. etc. Sociology, anthropology,... there are entire research domains devoted to these questions. The interesting part is how society has evolved over the past 200, 100 and 50 years. Industrialisation, mass media, the information age,... have all stripped away the traditional tribal or clan-like way of living which has kept us alive for hundreds of thousands of years. Over the past 50 years, individual consumerism and producerism have come to dominate our societal framework. So, we are taught to look at relationships as affordances that help us to advance in a materialistic world; rather then to look at the deep intangible value they embody. And we are also taught that emotions are only really valid if they are useful or contributing to our well-being. What I hear from younger people is this notion of suffering from social anxiety. I'm sure that's a real thing. It's not easy to approach another human being and try and befriend them; and it's harder as we become older. But building meaningful relationships is also a learned skill which takes tons of time. And the journey starts first and foremost with learning to befriend yourself through self-aware kindness, compassion and empathy. For one, it starts by not beating yourself up over stuff you don't control. Or trying to adhere to an irealistic ideal. And it also consists of calling out those who push ideals that nobody can ever hope to attain. (Yeah, sure, Elon does great stuff. But neither you nor I are like Elon. You do you, go for it if you want to give it a shot, but who are you to judge what I do with my life?). The problem with social media is that they tie into our innate urge to connect with others; but at the same time push this idea that we all need to have our separate, successful materialistic lives. It's a disparity that only enhances the anxiety that's already there. And the only good way to deal with it is to wean yourself from your device as best as you can.
    - Hoasi 7y ago
      > It's not easy to approach another human being and try and befriend them; and it's harder as we become older. Anecdotal, and not to dismiss that reality, but I find the opposite to be true. It is easy to befriend people, with no strings attached. We have a lot in common with almost everybody.
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
- dang 7y ago
  Perhaps experiencing solitude as something other than isolation is part of the learning process he was advising.
- namirez 7y ago
  I think the difference between "alone" and "lonely" is usually clear and he is talking about being alone.
- mjevans 7y ago
  It's about CHOICE Like so many things, when you have a choice partaking an experience is positive; or else you'd go do something else. Voluntary is to Forced as Alone is to Lonely
jamesrcole 7y ago
I spent a fair bit of time alone, and bored, while growing up (I was born in the late 70s, so this was primarily in the 80s). I felt it helped me to get comfortable with my own thoughts and to be able to think for myself. It is of course difficult, on the basis of memory and introspection, to tell how much it helped in that regard. I'm not saying that being alone will help someone get comfortable with their thoughts and be able to think for themselves. It just seems like it can be conducive to that.
myth_drannon 7y ago
I like Criswell's take on Tarkovsky - https://youtu.be/ak6rI-j07QU https://youtu.be/ak6rI-j07QU
mellowdream 7y ago
Stalker is still the most beautiful film I've ever seen. I took a film class in college and fell asleep when we were watching it (embarrassing, but the professor was wholly understanding) - I watched it 3 or 4 times later the same week on my own. But it's also the film that's been hardest for me to understand. I "get it" the least of all, I'm still not sure what it's about - it's an otherworldly experience, though. With Stalker I turn to Fellini - I don't like the idea of "understanding" a film. I don't believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn't. If you are moved by it, you don't need to have it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it. That's why I don't think my films are misunderstood when they are accepted for different reasons. Every person has his own fund of experiences and emotions which he brings to bear on every new experience-whether it is to his view of a film or to a love affair; and it is simply the combination of the film with the reality already existing in each person which creates the final impression of unity. As I was saying, this is the way the spectator participates in the process of creation. This diversity of reaction doesn't mean that the objective reality of the film has been misunderstood. Anyway, there is no objective reality in my films, any more than there is in life.
- nrp 7y ago
  It’s worth reading the source material “Roadside Picnic” if you haven’t yet. It’s very different from the film in a way that I think lets you appreciate what Tarkovsky did with it even more. Roadside Picnic is also the incredibly rare example of the book, the movie (Stalker), and the video game (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) each being able to stand on their own merits. This is probably in part because they are so different thematically.
  - trhway 7y ago
    >It’s worth reading the source material “Roadside Picnic” if you haven’t yet. It’s very different from the film add to that the original movie script by the Strugatski brothers which stands on its own and is different from the book as well as from the movie.
  - omnimus 7y ago
_hardwaregeek 7y ago
Solo traveling is where I learned how to be alone. Turns out, I don't mind hanging out with myself. Not an insane revelation, but an important one. Yet when I try to convince people to solo travel, I encounter so much hemming and hawing, so much resistance. I suppose there's a safety aspect. I'm male and can't speak about traveling as a woman or trans-man. But I do meet many female travelers. And I don't know significantly more guys who solo travel. I'd imagine there's a fear of loneliness, of homesickness, of paralysis in face of being so untethered. Which, yes, can happen. It comes in waves. Some days I'd be horribly, terribly lonely. Some days I'd do almost nothing. It always passed. Anybody who has the time, the money, the temptation to travel alone should do it. Which is often less than people imagine. Flights have gotten incredibly cheap. Hostels are acceptable for a few weeks. Food can be bought on the street or prepared from grocery stores. Every country, every city has low income people, and they still eat. The lifestyle certainly suits the young more than the old. So then why do so many of my young friends delay traveling? Why are they so resistant to the idea of slowing down their education a little to see the world? I know, I know. They need the money. But I do have friends who aren't stuck in a hyper-competitive race to optimize their earnings by age 25. Who are fortunate to take the luxury of a break. I shouldn't care this much. Yet I can't help but find it so odd that people require someone else to be with them while traveling. If I had to find a travel partner with the same time off, similar goals with traveling and who I wouldn't murder after a week or two, I'd probably be stuck at home.
- moneywoes 7y ago
  Where did you go? Any wild stories
- telesilla 7y ago
  100% agree with you on solo travelling: I am not daunted in any way by the idea of days-long-trips alone with my thoughts, a notebook and my kindle. In fact, often I'll seek out long-distance travel by train over flying precisely to experience some alone-time. I have travelled extensively alone as a woman - there is a safety aspect regardless of gender. It has its own benefits as well as the obvious downsides. For example I found home-stays or BnBs that more easily accepted a solo female and I was welcomed into many family's lives.
deleted 7y ago
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ak39 7y ago
Here is a poem by William Wordsworth that has always reminded me of what I thought Tarkovsky is trying to tell me ("The World is Too Much with Us"): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45564/the-world-is-too-much-with-us https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45564/the-world-is-to... (Copying and pasting multi-line text on HN is an exercise in horror.)
newnewpdro 7y ago
One of my favorite effects of spending extended periods in solitude is how much more I appreciate being around people afterwards. It's akin to how nice a hot shower feels after spending a week backpacking in the wilderness.
- Lutzb 7y ago
  I can relate to this so much. Spending time alone feels like recharging my social battery. There is a weird contradiction I enjoy being around people, but at the same time long to be alone and enjoy the solitude. Now with kids, social obligations and a plethora of distractions these moments alone get fewer and fewer by the day.
dijit 7y ago
The problem with being very comfortable being alone is that there’s not actually a lot of opportunity for it once you have a family, then it’s quite stifling and builds frustration over time. I guess like everything, healthy moderation is needed. But when you’re truly comfortable being alone for long periods of time it’s like opium- and I don’t mean that in a sardonic way; it’s addictive, peaceful, free and makes you start to resent lack of control. At least in my single user experience.
- mrexroad 7y ago
  I find camping/hiking a good outlet
- iapsngh 7y ago
  Yes, it can be stifling at times when you yearn to be alone and have other pressing/family needs. I try to work out my priorities in time and 'am able to clearly communicate with my spouse and children that I need some time out to think/sort/do stuff. Luckily it works most of the time.
acqq 7y ago
BTW: Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky, Russian filmmaker, writer, and film theorist. (1932 – 1986) The title about his message is from 2015, but he must have said that three decades earlier.
iapsngh 7y ago
> "Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself." This is something that has helped me a lot. Some of the best creative ideas and stuff I came up as a young person were due to my spending this time on self-learning and trying to do something or the other. Learnt never to get bored just being with myself. And to this day whenever I am alone, either I put myself in a learning/exploring/thinking mode; or I work on doing something creative/practical. There's no passive mode. I think the key to not getting bored alone and spend this 'me time' in some meaningful way is to actively engage oneself instead of passively passing the time.
jffhn 7y ago
Reminds me of a complementarity I sometimes see between being in society, which allows to share, collaborate, etc., and being in solitude, which allows to think, contemplate, etc., and of a south american indigenous tribe I forgot the name of, where the elders somehow transcend this opposition: for important deliberations, they gather in a dark hut and whisper their views, for those who speak not to be identified, as if they formed a single mind. I would appreciate if anyone could remind me the name of this tribe.
pjmorris 7y ago
My wife looked at me like I had three heads the first time I said that I'd seen many films alone and that I enjoyed doing so. For her, movies are a social event, something enjoyed with friends. I'm not opposed to that and enjoy it as well, but it's not where I started. There was a phase early in my adult life, before I learned how to make friends, where I'd go see most movies on my own, and I enjoyed it greatly. I got to think through my own reactions and come to my own terms with the films without having to filter through other people's thoughts and without having to filter what I watched on the behalf of the group. At this point in life, most movie watching for me is social, but there are some that I still make a point of seeing on my own. There's a wonderful place for sharing, but there's a wonderful place for solitude as well. Cheers to you wherever you are on that spectrum.
jamesakirk 7y ago
I discovered Tarkovsky only last year. I didn't "get" him until the death of my father. Roiling in ineffable grief, I struggled to find meaning, to sum up the arc of my father's life. The experience had (and still has) a timeless, absurd quality to it. Tarkovsky's films seem to exist in a different type of time orthogonal to our own, and the experience of engaging with them is difficult to describe. They are both powerful and ineffable. From his writings, he could be mistaken for a practitioner of Zen. I would like to share my favorite Tarkovsky quote: "Everybody asks me what things mean in my films. This is terrible! An artist doesn't have to answer for his meanings. I don't think so deeply about my work - I don't know what my symbols may represent. What matters to me is that they arouse feelings, any feelings you like, based on whatever your inner response might be. If you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens. Thinking during a film interferes with your experience of it. Take a watch into pieces, it doesn't work. Similarly with a work of art, there's no way it can be analyzed without destroying it."
- pm90 7y ago
  That is quite a beautiful quote! I suspect we search for meanings and interpretations mostly to communicate what we feel to others we may try to share the experience with, although it seems that the best way to do this might just be to be honest about it and describe the feeing rather than the interpretation. (Also, I’m sorry for your loss. Losing a parent seems un fathomable to me although I know it will happen to me too).
- papito 7y ago
  Well, he is asking us to be shallow, but going down that route is also dangerous if you go too far. Then you can end up like a certain current president of the United States. "I try to step back and remember my first shallow reaction. The day I realized it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience."
  - jamesakirk 7y ago
    There is a difference between awareness and judgement. What Tarkovsky is asking you to do is shut down your judgement to gain awareness. In the words of Alan Watts "You must go out of your mind to come to your senses." If by shallow you mean bringing your awareness to something other than your thoughts, you are correct. Gaining awareness of emotions is the first step in understanding how thoughts and conditions induce emotional states. This understanding facilitates ownership of one's own emotional responses. Harsh self-judgement shuts down this process, which is why narcissists are incapable of self-reflection. I think you have it backwards.
danielrk 7y ago
Knowing how to be alone and being social is not a rigid dichotomy. I think it’s clear what Tarkovsky means: that there is immense value in self-discovery. I’ve heard similar sentiments from other great artists. Grothendieck famously attributed his mathematical confidence to a long period of solitude in his youth where he independently recreated some major results. The late Harold Bloom used to say that reading is ultimately a solitary endeavor—that its purpose is to learn to have a conversation with yourself. However I think for reflective people there is a “danger” on the side of being too entangled in this conversation. Socialization can start to seem banal and unambitious in comparison. But I’ve found that this just suggests that you haven’t found people who aren’t in the habit of talking with themselves. I find this story apropos: There was a screening at the Yale Humanities Center of Tarkovsky’s “Ivan’s Childhood” that my roommate wanted to take me to when we were undergrads. I only reluctantly agreed—it was freezing outside and I had been cooped up in my room wrestling with a statistical mechanics problem set. Frankly I didn’t feel like we got along. But my decision to go became the beginning of one of the deepest friendships I continue to have and my endlessly enriching relationship with film and literature.

349 points by vo2maxer 7y ago

He definitely meant a different type of healthy solitude, rather than the one on which newspapers and studies report when they assert loneliness and isolation among young people is at an all-time high.

Stierlitz 7y ago
> He definitely meant a different type of healthy solitude, rather than the one on which newspapers and studies report when they assert loneliness and isolation among young people is at an all-time high. Maybe it's because people spend too much time exchanging msgs in forums such as this, instead of having meaningfull exchanges with real people. Even walking down the street, they have their noses buried in a device.
- giornogiovanna 7y ago
  > Maybe it's because people spend too much time exchanging msgs in forums such as this, instead of having meaningfull exchanges with real people. What does "meaningfull" mean? For example, I learn a lot more from fora such as Hacker News, so I'd argue that in-person interactions tend to be less meaningful.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >What does "meaningfull" mean? Meaningful means more according to several hundred millennia of evolution as social animals that need actual proximity. It means the person on the other end of the conversation will come to your house and help you when you're sad, desperate, sick, and not just be some alias in some other city/country who'll forget all about you just after you've stopped chatting (or give total priority to his real world friends and family). It means common shared friendship building experiences - not just the sharing, via talk, of experiences each had in isolation in a totally different place, in another context. It means having you back and you having theirs, which is rarely if ever the case from people in forums. And a few other things besides.
    - mapcars 7y ago
      >the person on the other end of the conversation will come to your house and help you when you're sad, desperate, sick People really have to grow out of this. This is what in my understanding learning being alone exactly is about. Once you are sad, desperate, sick you have to come out of it as quick as possible with what is available to you. It is your responsibility before yourself and the world, like taking shower or brushing your teeth. I say to grow out - because as children most of us learned the trick to pretend sad to get attention and it developed into all sorts of manipulations. When you don't get what you want, for whatever reasons - that is just it, to become sad or joyful is your reaction, it just shows your level of maturity in this world. Children would cry to get attention, grown-ups would keep going. But you can cry for attention only if there are people around you. If you stay alone you will quickly realize all bullshit you are creating and stop it, because anyway it has no effect. In this way being alone is a powerful way to bring one down to reality. And parents use it sometimes when they feel kids are crying to manipulate - they ignore it all-together. This is relevant to I would say 90% of mental issues, of course in case of physical sickness you need to see a doctor, not someone to calm you down, but someone to fix your body.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        >People really have to grow out of this. Actually, they should grow to the opposite direction. They're not "rebellious teenagers" who "don't need nobody". And delivery food + home alone, with "relations" mainly on the web is not a lifestyle. That's how you end with this: https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/loneliness-epidemic-consequences https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/loneliness-epidemic-c... https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-loneliness-epidemic-is-so-bad-world-leaders-have-been-forced-to-intervene https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-loneliness-epidemic-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2019/05/03/millennials-and-the-loneliness-epidemic/#59cf3a047676 https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2019/05/03/millennials... And how people end up discovered dead in their apartment for weeks, with nobody caring earlier, and their pets having chewed on them... >Once you are sad, desperate, sick you have to come out of it as quick as possible with what is available to you. It is your responsibility before yourself and the world, like taking shower or brushing your teeth. If you mean people should stop abusing others when they don't need help, sure. If you mean it as stated above, that's as far removed from humanity as possible. Some loner animals, sure, they might do this. We built society and civilisation to do better than that.
- moneytide1 7y ago
  The socially normalized buried nose produces an interesting effect when passing by someone in a hallway or sidewalk - the deferred acknowledgement: I rarely have my device out while walking in order to indicate that I am receptive to an approach. When I see an incoming buried nose, I assume they are too busy and keep my gaze past them as they are clearly not going to be available for a nod or pleasantry exchange. The thing is, after the acknowledgement window has passed and we are closing proximity, I perephrially see them look up at me at the very last second before passing. Not sure if it's just me misinterpreting social circumstances, or if there's a new standard of interaction that I need to figure out.
  - pferde 7y ago
    I don't think you are misinterpreting anything. I think those glances are part of survival instinct, assessing whether the moving object they registered out of the corner of their eyes (you), that is getting near them, is dangerous or if it can be safely ignored.
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  I think that's a symptom. Not a cause. A lot has to do with how cultures perceive individuals and individuality. Traditionally, individuality has always been seen as something "bad". ingroup/outgroup, cultural norms to abide by, etc. etc. Sociology, anthropology,... there are entire research domains devoted to these questions. The interesting part is how society has evolved over the past 200, 100 and 50 years. Industrialisation, mass media, the information age,... have all stripped away the traditional tribal or clan-like way of living which has kept us alive for hundreds of thousands of years. Over the past 50 years, individual consumerism and producerism have come to dominate our societal framework. So, we are taught to look at relationships as affordances that help us to advance in a materialistic world; rather then to look at the deep intangible value they embody. And we are also taught that emotions are only really valid if they are useful or contributing to our well-being. What I hear from younger people is this notion of suffering from social anxiety. I'm sure that's a real thing. It's not easy to approach another human being and try and befriend them; and it's harder as we become older. But building meaningful relationships is also a learned skill which takes tons of time. And the journey starts first and foremost with learning to befriend yourself through self-aware kindness, compassion and empathy. For one, it starts by not beating yourself up over stuff you don't control. Or trying to adhere to an irealistic ideal. And it also consists of calling out those who push ideals that nobody can ever hope to attain. (Yeah, sure, Elon does great stuff. But neither you nor I are like Elon. You do you, go for it if you want to give it a shot, but who are you to judge what I do with my life?). The problem with social media is that they tie into our innate urge to connect with others; but at the same time push this idea that we all need to have our separate, successful materialistic lives. It's a disparity that only enhances the anxiety that's already there. And the only good way to deal with it is to wean yourself from your device as best as you can.
  - Hoasi 7y ago
    > It's not easy to approach another human being and try and befriend them; and it's harder as we become older. Anecdotal, and not to dismiss that reality, but I find the opposite to be true. It is easy to befriend people, with no strings attached. We have a lot in common with almost everybody.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
dang 7y ago
Perhaps experiencing solitude as something other than isolation is part of the learning process he was advising.
namirez 7y ago
I think the difference between "alone" and "lonely" is usually clear and he is talking about being alone.
mjevans 7y ago
It's about CHOICE Like so many things, when you have a choice partaking an experience is positive; or else you'd go do something else. Voluntary is to Forced as Alone is to Lonely

jamesrcole 7y ago

I spent a fair bit of time alone, and bored, while growing up (I was born in the late 70s, so this was primarily in the 80s). I felt it helped me to get comfortable with my own thoughts and to be able to think for myself. It is of course difficult, on the basis of memory and introspection, to tell how much it helped in that regard. I'm not saying that being alone will help someone get comfortable with their thoughts and be able to think for themselves. It just seems like it can be conducive to that.

myth_drannon 7y ago

I like Criswell's take on Tarkovsky - https://youtu.be/ak6rI-j07QU https://youtu.be/ak6rI-j07QU

mellowdream 7y ago

Stalker is still the most beautiful film I've ever seen. I took a film class in college and fell asleep when we were watching it (embarrassing, but the professor was wholly understanding) - I watched it 3 or 4 times later the same week on my own. But it's also the film that's been hardest for me to understand. I "get it" the least of all, I'm still not sure what it's about - it's an otherworldly experience, though. With Stalker I turn to Fellini - I don't like the idea of "understanding" a film. I don't believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn't. If you are moved by it, you don't need to have it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it. That's why I don't think my films are misunderstood when they are accepted for different reasons. Every person has his own fund of experiences and emotions which he brings to bear on every new experience-whether it is to his view of a film or to a love affair; and it is simply the combination of the film with the reality already existing in each person which creates the final impression of unity. As I was saying, this is the way the spectator participates in the process of creation. This diversity of reaction doesn't mean that the objective reality of the film has been misunderstood. Anyway, there is no objective reality in my films, any more than there is in life.

nrp 7y ago
It’s worth reading the source material “Roadside Picnic” if you haven’t yet. It’s very different from the film in a way that I think lets you appreciate what Tarkovsky did with it even more. Roadside Picnic is also the incredibly rare example of the book, the movie (Stalker), and the video game (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) each being able to stand on their own merits. This is probably in part because they are so different thematically.
- trhway 7y ago
  >It’s worth reading the source material “Roadside Picnic” if you haven’t yet. It’s very different from the film add to that the original movie script by the Strugatski brothers which stands on its own and is different from the book as well as from the movie.
- omnimus 7y ago

_hardwaregeek 7y ago

Solo traveling is where I learned how to be alone. Turns out, I don't mind hanging out with myself. Not an insane revelation, but an important one. Yet when I try to convince people to solo travel, I encounter so much hemming and hawing, so much resistance. I suppose there's a safety aspect. I'm male and can't speak about traveling as a woman or trans-man. But I do meet many female travelers. And I don't know significantly more guys who solo travel. I'd imagine there's a fear of loneliness, of homesickness, of paralysis in face of being so untethered. Which, yes, can happen. It comes in waves. Some days I'd be horribly, terribly lonely. Some days I'd do almost nothing. It always passed. Anybody who has the time, the money, the temptation to travel alone should do it. Which is often less than people imagine. Flights have gotten incredibly cheap. Hostels are acceptable for a few weeks. Food can be bought on the street or prepared from grocery stores. Every country, every city has low income people, and they still eat. The lifestyle certainly suits the young more than the old. So then why do so many of my young friends delay traveling? Why are they so resistant to the idea of slowing down their education a little to see the world? I know, I know. They need the money. But I do have friends who aren't stuck in a hyper-competitive race to optimize their earnings by age 25. Who are fortunate to take the luxury of a break. I shouldn't care this much. Yet I can't help but find it so odd that people require someone else to be with them while traveling. If I had to find a travel partner with the same time off, similar goals with traveling and who I wouldn't murder after a week or two, I'd probably be stuck at home.

moneywoes 7y ago
Where did you go? Any wild stories
telesilla 7y ago
100% agree with you on solo travelling: I am not daunted in any way by the idea of days-long-trips alone with my thoughts, a notebook and my kindle. In fact, often I'll seek out long-distance travel by train over flying precisely to experience some alone-time. I have travelled extensively alone as a woman - there is a safety aspect regardless of gender. It has its own benefits as well as the obvious downsides. For example I found home-stays or BnBs that more easily accepted a solo female and I was welcomed into many family's lives.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ak39 7y ago

Here is a poem by William Wordsworth that has always reminded me of what I thought Tarkovsky is trying to tell me ("The World is Too Much with Us"): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45564/the-world-is-too-much-with-us https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45564/the-world-is-to... (Copying and pasting multi-line text on HN is an exercise in horror.)

newnewpdro 7y ago

One of my favorite effects of spending extended periods in solitude is how much more I appreciate being around people afterwards. It's akin to how nice a hot shower feels after spending a week backpacking in the wilderness.

Lutzb 7y ago
I can relate to this so much. Spending time alone feels like recharging my social battery. There is a weird contradiction I enjoy being around people, but at the same time long to be alone and enjoy the solitude. Now with kids, social obligations and a plethora of distractions these moments alone get fewer and fewer by the day.

dijit 7y ago

The problem with being very comfortable being alone is that there’s not actually a lot of opportunity for it once you have a family, then it’s quite stifling and builds frustration over time. I guess like everything, healthy moderation is needed. But when you’re truly comfortable being alone for long periods of time it’s like opium- and I don’t mean that in a sardonic way; it’s addictive, peaceful, free and makes you start to resent lack of control. At least in my single user experience.

mrexroad 7y ago
I find camping/hiking a good outlet
iapsngh 7y ago
Yes, it can be stifling at times when you yearn to be alone and have other pressing/family needs. I try to work out my priorities in time and 'am able to clearly communicate with my spouse and children that I need some time out to think/sort/do stuff. Luckily it works most of the time.

acqq 7y ago

BTW: Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky, Russian filmmaker, writer, and film theorist. (1932 – 1986) The title about his message is from 2015, but he must have said that three decades earlier.

iapsngh 7y ago

> "Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself." This is something that has helped me a lot. Some of the best creative ideas and stuff I came up as a young person were due to my spending this time on self-learning and trying to do something or the other. Learnt never to get bored just being with myself. And to this day whenever I am alone, either I put myself in a learning/exploring/thinking mode; or I work on doing something creative/practical. There's no passive mode. I think the key to not getting bored alone and spend this 'me time' in some meaningful way is to actively engage oneself instead of passively passing the time.

jffhn 7y ago

Reminds me of a complementarity I sometimes see between being in society, which allows to share, collaborate, etc., and being in solitude, which allows to think, contemplate, etc., and of a south american indigenous tribe I forgot the name of, where the elders somehow transcend this opposition: for important deliberations, they gather in a dark hut and whisper their views, for those who speak not to be identified, as if they formed a single mind. I would appreciate if anyone could remind me the name of this tribe.

pjmorris 7y ago

My wife looked at me like I had three heads the first time I said that I'd seen many films alone and that I enjoyed doing so. For her, movies are a social event, something enjoyed with friends. I'm not opposed to that and enjoy it as well, but it's not where I started. There was a phase early in my adult life, before I learned how to make friends, where I'd go see most movies on my own, and I enjoyed it greatly. I got to think through my own reactions and come to my own terms with the films without having to filter through other people's thoughts and without having to filter what I watched on the behalf of the group. At this point in life, most movie watching for me is social, but there are some that I still make a point of seeing on my own. There's a wonderful place for sharing, but there's a wonderful place for solitude as well. Cheers to you wherever you are on that spectrum.

jamesakirk 7y ago

I discovered Tarkovsky only last year. I didn't "get" him until the death of my father. Roiling in ineffable grief, I struggled to find meaning, to sum up the arc of my father's life. The experience had (and still has) a timeless, absurd quality to it. Tarkovsky's films seem to exist in a different type of time orthogonal to our own, and the experience of engaging with them is difficult to describe. They are both powerful and ineffable. From his writings, he could be mistaken for a practitioner of Zen. I would like to share my favorite Tarkovsky quote: "Everybody asks me what things mean in my films. This is terrible! An artist doesn't have to answer for his meanings. I don't think so deeply about my work - I don't know what my symbols may represent. What matters to me is that they arouse feelings, any feelings you like, based on whatever your inner response might be. If you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens. Thinking during a film interferes with your experience of it. Take a watch into pieces, it doesn't work. Similarly with a work of art, there's no way it can be analyzed without destroying it."

pm90 7y ago
That is quite a beautiful quote! I suspect we search for meanings and interpretations mostly to communicate what we feel to others we may try to share the experience with, although it seems that the best way to do this might just be to be honest about it and describe the feeing rather than the interpretation. (Also, I’m sorry for your loss. Losing a parent seems un fathomable to me although I know it will happen to me too).
papito 7y ago
Well, he is asking us to be shallow, but going down that route is also dangerous if you go too far. Then you can end up like a certain current president of the United States. "I try to step back and remember my first shallow reaction. The day I realized it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience."
- jamesakirk 7y ago
  There is a difference between awareness and judgement. What Tarkovsky is asking you to do is shut down your judgement to gain awareness. In the words of Alan Watts "You must go out of your mind to come to your senses." If by shallow you mean bringing your awareness to something other than your thoughts, you are correct. Gaining awareness of emotions is the first step in understanding how thoughts and conditions induce emotional states. This understanding facilitates ownership of one's own emotional responses. Harsh self-judgement shuts down this process, which is why narcissists are incapable of self-reflection. I think you have it backwards.

danielrk 7y ago

Knowing how to be alone and being social is not a rigid dichotomy. I think it’s clear what Tarkovsky means: that there is immense value in self-discovery. I’ve heard similar sentiments from other great artists. Grothendieck famously attributed his mathematical confidence to a long period of solitude in his youth where he independently recreated some major results. The late Harold Bloom used to say that reading is ultimately a solitary endeavor—that its purpose is to learn to have a conversation with yourself. However I think for reflective people there is a “danger” on the side of being too entangled in this conversation. Socialization can start to seem banal and unambitious in comparison. But I’ve found that this just suggests that you haven’t found people who aren’t in the habit of talking with themselves. I find this story apropos: There was a screening at the Yale Humanities Center of Tarkovsky’s “Ivan’s Childhood” that my roommate wanted to take me to when we were undergrads. I only reluctantly agreed—it was freezing outside and I had been cooped up in my room wrestling with a statistical mechanics problem set. Frankly I didn’t feel like we got along. But my decision to go became the beginning of one of the deepest friendships I continue to have and my endlessly enriching relationship with film and literature.