How To Be Alone

A video by fiilmaker, Andrea Dorfman, and poet/singer/songwriter, Tanya Davis.

Davis wrote the beautiful poem and performed in the video which Dorfman directed, shot, animated by hand and edited. The video was shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia and was produced by Bravo!FACT http://www.bravofact.com/

For more information on Tanya, go to http://www.tanyadavis.ca or visit her facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/p... You can purchase her first two CDs Make A List and Gorgeous Morning on iTunes and look out for her third CD which will be released in the fall!

For more information on Andrea Dorfman, visit her facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Andrea-... or http://www.andreadorfman.com

This video was shot on a Panasonic HVX 200 and the animation was hand drawn+painted and then scanned into Adobe After Effects, exported as QTs and edited on FCP.

HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya Davis

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.

There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in (guitar stroke).

And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously (electric guitar plucking) based on your avoid being alone principals.

The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because, they're probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself

Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It's okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be releived, keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach.

And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that communitie's not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.

you could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

• Category

  Film & Animation

[totogirl0]

This made me cry, it's so beautiful. I'm 16 and I just feel so alone sometimes. I don't have a group of friends and I've been told that I'm rather forgettable. I don't know why, and I've always felt very badly about it. I thought I was alone, and that loneliness is something to be ashamed of because no one likes me. Upon listening to you, I realize that's wrong. And thank you so much for proving me wrong. I will start looking for things that make me happy instead of trying to make people happy.

[MuffinJowest]

So many keep commenting as if she is saying to "be alone." I think she's trying to just say that is OKAY to "be alone." Embrace it if you must be alone. Y'know? Like - how to make the best of being alone, not so much promoting solitude as saying "It's not all that bad to be by yourself."

[LestradTheStrange]

being alone is bad... you have been given a life... live it (atleast im trying to get there)

[Jose Alba]

This is awesome. I wrote about loneliness and its a lot more depressing than this while motivating. But this is just great.

[Arielthellamacorn]

This is so beautiful. True art in its most amazing, natural form. Thank you for this.

[Applerizi]

I do like being alone, but as well im very outogoing what im kinda accpetinhg is to being single forever

[freaklatino13]

U are awesome

[fadusysko]

it seems like this video went over your head YOLO.

[Micala Carey]

I'll be your friend!

[pearlsandglitterxoxo]

Hey, I'm 16 and in the same situation, just remember to take care of yourself physically and mentally and maybe get a dog and start a hobby? I personally find comfort in north nodes in astrology as then I feel I have some sort of purpose but you should just find the little things that make you happy and just do it :)

[Darren Aldous]

Very inspiring. I was afraid of being alone. A few listens of these words and I soon won't be.

[jeffrey doty]

I have recently discovered the magical words that make loneliness seem more a inner peace and self discovery than any voices and help from people who can listen and steal money from your life. Steal the hours out of your day! thank you!

I have a friend which has been struggling and I always like having something to tell them. but I don't till now. I really want to send them these words of loneliness to help her out of depression and anyone else who comes along.

can I use this in a letter?