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Singletons. If you fancy eating out this Sunday, don’t bother. Restaurants everywhere will be dispensing with their normal menus and serving overpriced, five-course dinners to twosomes, many of whom will be joined at hip and lip. Yes, Valentine’s Day approaches, and with it the grim stench of solitude for all us unattached people. No wonder they call it VD.

But what if we stopped believing the endless hype churned out by ad agencies and dating websites? What if we consider that being by ourselves can actually be enjoyable?

Beyond the Marketing Campaign

One-person homes are now more common than ever, comprising 27% of US households and 29% of UK households. Still, the media message blares forth: Happiness comes not only from having a long-term partner, but also by continually surrounding yourself with a fabulous array of friends. Sites like Facebook and Twitter make it virtually impossible to entirely escape other humans.

With these thoughts in mind, I join 21 others for the simply titled How To Be Alone workshop at London’s School of Life. The School of Life includes a new bookshop and social enterprise with the aim of teaching attendees “all the things you never learned at school” through lectures, discussions, meals and trips, all of which delve voraciously into philosophy, art and psychology.

Photo by Jurijus Azanovas

No One Wants To Be Stuck Alone With A Boiled Egg

Leading the session is Naomi Alderman, award-winning novelist and a convert to single living after years of feeling terrified of being alone. Once she left her door always unlocked so she could always come home to friends (or burglars). Now she appreciates the delights of solitude espoused by such luminary loners as the 19th century writer Thoreau, who spent two years by himself in a Massachusetts forest, discovering he has “never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude”.

In medieval Britain, almost every village had either a hermit — usually male and living out in the sticks — or a recluse, generally female and stationed at the edge of a neighborhood. Quiet and content in their stillness, these lone dwellers were considered deeply wise and often divine.

But, explains Naomi, this changed in the 1500s with the closing of the monasteries and the rise of Protestantism. Seen as a relic of Catholicism, hermits were now eyed with suspicion and linked to dark forces. To a degree, this stigma still continues today, with solitary individuals frequently viewed as weirdos, even serial killers in the making.

Thankfully, no one at the workshop appears notably murderous, and when Naomi asks us to form small groups for discussion, it seems we solo types have a lot to say. One woman imagines that everyone else in London is having a ball while she is “stuck at home with a boiled egg.” Another confesses to frequently telling her friends she is busy, when in fact she just wants an evening to herself doing nothing.

Being Alone Vs Being Lonely

Everyone agrees that being alone and being lonely are entirely different things. One is forced upon us. The other is a choice. If you spend Saturday night alone watching a DVD because that’s what you want. Great! If it’s because you’ve had no other offers. Not so great.

Photo by Only Sequel

Naomi encourages us to contemplate the potential benefits of solitude: creativity, inner peace and an increased affinity with nature. She then suggests activities for improving our ability to be alone, including meditation, gardening, and visiting a restaurant by ourselves. There are several protests over this last one. Apparently a table for one still serves as the icon for alone-without-choice.

Naomi also emphasizes the importance of making new friends and proposes numerous ways of doing so in order to spend at least some of our time with others:

“Knowing that you can do solitude and socializing makes each one better.”

Indeed, as with so much of life, the answer lies in balance. There’ will be times when aloneness, as Californian author Anneli Rufus puts it, provides “just what we need, the way tuna need the sea”, and isolation can be truly splendid. There will also be those times we need the comfort and stimulation of other human beings around us.

As we shuffle out the School of Life’s cosy lecture room, a number of us decide to move onto the pub, but we won’t forget what we learned tonight. We are independent spirits. This weekend, we won’t give a monkey’s what those couples are doing as we head to our favorite restaurant with a single-seat table to people watch or read a book or simply enjoy the meal as we dine alone
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COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Embrace the solo spirit with Michaela Lola’s Solo Travel: 6 Reasons to Wander Alone

Feature photo by Foxtongue. Photo above by kevin.j.

Back in 1859, an inventive young Frenchman called Jules Leotard began larking about with poles, ropes and rings suspended above his parents’ swimming pool. After several months of crashing and splashing, he’d perfected his new art, and on November 12th he performed the world’s first flying trapeze act at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris.

His party trick − which involved leaping between three trapeze bars and somersaulting in mid-air − drew hoards of admirers worldwide. Female fans turned giddy at the sight of him, with several allegedly proposing marriage. At London’s Alhambra Theatre he swung directly over a gasping party of banqueters, sporting a skin-tight, one-piece garment which he’d designed himself to allow free movement − and a big eyeful of muscle. The “leotard” was born.

A Young Man With His Mother’s Blessing

Photo by Stephan Silver

Fast forward nearly 100 years, and “flying” had become a global phenomenon. Safety nets were introduced in the 1870s, and the sport was no longer regarded as a purely male pastime. Where previously it was all about strength, women performers brought a new emphasis on grace and posture − and a few more sequins to the leotards, which were now worn by both sexes.

In the early 1950s, a boy from Boston ran off − “with his mother’s blessing” − to join the circus. Entranced by the unique aroma of “the popcorn, the peanuts, the elephants”, and a certain “charming young lady trapeze artist” named La Norma, 15-year-old Tony Steele asked for a job at Gil Gray’s circus in Gainesville, Texas, having taught himself on swings and mattresses at his local YMCA.

Of his debut performance, “the first thing I remember is ‘oh, ahhhh, eeeee!’” Like Leotard, he had all the girls screaming. By 1962, the shrieks were louder than ever, with Tony’s death-defying three-and-a-half somersault breaking world records (until then, only a triple had been seen), and catapulting him to the top of his profession.

Tony Steele Today: Still Doing It

Though a little greyer, he still performs and teaches today, and feels “a divine calling to pass on everything I know before it disappears”. It’s a joy to talk to this impish 73-year-old, who can still manage a double somersault, and believes no one’s too old to start learning: “Trapeze will extend your life and make you feel happier. Many of my students are middle-aged women whose husbands tell them ‘You’re crazy.’ By the end of the classes they are addicted, and telling their husbands ‘Shove off and mind your own business.’”

Photo by Stephan Silver

Tony’s top tip for anyone wanting to celebrate the 150th anniversary is the new Festif show, running till March 2010 at Paris’s Cirque d’Hiver, formerly the Cirque Napoleon, where Leotard debuted his original flying feat. Anton Von Ostendorf, of world-famous headlining act the Bull Dancers, will transform into flying trapeze’s founding father, complete with moustache and nineteenth century airs and graces.

Or you could go one better, and try trapeze yourself.

I took a course of lessons at the Pavilion Theatre in Brighton, my hometown. (And no, I didn’t wear a leotard.)

Don’t live in Brighton, there are plenty of other places you can go to learn the lovely art of trapeze: You can find schools in London, California, New York, Sydney Australia, France and Hamburg, Germany.

Club Med also hosts trapeze classes for adults and children at 21 sites across the world:

So When I Do This, What Will I Learn?

This was “static trapeze” − you need considerable experience before attempting the flying kind − but nevertheless, there was very little keeping still. After mastering basic moves the “pike” and “hock” for ascending and descending the bar, we progressed to the “bird’s nest”, the “star” and the “mermaid”. Later came my favorite, the “spider”, where from standing, you jump your feet around the ropes, lower yourself, let go your hands and drop, arachnid-like, to a dangling position below.

It may be some time before I’m summoned to the Big Top − the only gasps I got were when my classmates saw me plummet head-downwards from a poorly secured “ankle hang” − and the bruises the ropes give an inexperienced newbie are far from glamorous. But the thrill of using every sinew of my body, watching the world from upside down, and being the performer, rather than merely the spectator, of an age-old circus act, had me eagerly hanging on for more.

I can’t wait to try flying trapeze, with its daredevil moves − “death somersault” and “reverse suicide” here I come! But for now, I’m delighted to be on the trapeze at all. As Tony tells me, “It’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on”.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Have you tried your hand (or foot or leg) at the trapeze? Tell us where, when and how it was.