February 17, 2021
A sign reads, “Studio Closed Due To Covid” at the Trap Music Museum in Atlanta, Ga., 2020. (Photo by Paras Griffin / Getty Images)
Creativity blooms in solitude, or so we believe in our weakness for the trope of the artist as a singular figure tapping the magic well of inspiration to make works of art. James Joyce, in
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, said he needed only three things to be equipped to write: silence, exile, and cunning—the first, an attribute of solitude; the second, a means to achieve it; and the third, a tool for its exploitation.