We live alone

What could be more devastating than the realization that we die alone? Well, try this for size: WE LIVE ALONE!

A year or two ago I came to the conclusion not only that I don't really understand other people, but that such an understanding is impossible. Sure, people have a lot in common. We share many of the same experiences (of love, heartbreak, illness, loss, and so on). But how we deal with these experiences and how they affect our lives and our relationships with others varies greatly from individual to individual. Of course life would be boring if this weren't the case and we were all the same. But the fact that we're all so different can be alienating. But it doesn't have to be.

Near the end of a 1986 interview recorded at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco, Keith Jarrett was asked by a member of the audience, "Do you ever get lonely?"

"No," he replied, "because you see when you accept being alone, loneliness doesn’t exist. Loneliness is not knowing you're alone…and every once in a while wondering…if you are or not…and then thinking it's bad."

The interview is long, and it sheds a lot of light on Keith Jarrett the person. Be warned, though, that the music he plays from time to time during the interview (tapes of overdubbed improvised pieces that would eventually be released on the double album Spirits 1 & 2), while beautiful, isn't typical Keith Jarrett music (if there is such a thing). For a start, there's very little piano playing. Instead he plays a selection of other instruments - a total of 18, in fact, including flutes, recorders, and drums of various kinds.

Also, at times during the interview he comes across as rather "difficult", although I wouldn't go as far as one member of the Keith Jarrett Yahoo Group who, after listening to it, commented, "When he speaks, he's a halfwit and a windbag." After all, as I mentioned when I wrote about the Charles Bukowski documentary, Born Into This, personality flaws in artists don't concern me as long as the art they produce moves me. And that's something Keith Jarrett's music does in spades.

Distance walked today: 9.7km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 39km
Days left until departure: 84