And yes: any given day might see me beset by the captious voices of conscience, duty or desperation, chiding me just as my real family, friends and colleagues might; but the postman only rang every few days, no one else called unannounced; while, in that airy, fluid era before we all got caught up in nets and webs, you’d only to unplug the landline to avoid any and all deadlines. The voices would fall silent as I combed the beach, assembling teetering towers of interestingly shaped stones, sea-scoured driftwood and sand-blasted chunks of green bottle glass. Absorbed in this pointless task, I soon enough forgot that I was an I at all: released from the prison of ego, seconds swelled into an enduring and crystalline present – one in which the being-that-was-me would luxuriate for hours.
And then, at the end of the short afternoon’s rambling, combing and sea-wrack sculpting, to return to the isolated house would be – paradoxically – like regaining civilisation. A truly civilised civilisation, for here there were no disputes about what to eat, where to sit or what to do. Entering an empty room, there was no now – and no need, therefore – to be me in it. A chicken would be roasted in the Aga, a bottle of red wine would be uncorked. The live radio broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in New York would be put on, and eating and drinking would commence. With the captious voice of reflective self-consciousness reduced to a mere murmur, this was a state of the profoundest, most sensual absorption: the chicken tasted ineffably chickeny, and the prelude to Tristan und Isolde sounded more transcendently ethereal than ever before – or since. And best of all, there was absolutely no possibility of being interrupted – the evening stretched ahead, velvety and smooth, free from the abrasion of any other psyche.
That was then – but it remains, also, now. For if I ever desire to recapture the fierce rapture of that luxurious solitude, I’ve only to switch off the devices – decouple from time, and the people who insist on being on it. I’ve only to sink into something that’s emphatically not myself – as someone might lower themselves gingerly into a hammock – to return to that strangely comforting realm.