news, sites, and pages of interest about hermits and solitude
Tokyo Lens presents “24Hours with a Japanese Hermit in a Hidden Village” posted to YouTube (see below). Norm Nakamura (“Tokyo Lens”) climbs a lush green mountain to visit with the hermit. We learn the hermit’s story, about a little-known phantom village — and bears.
URL: https://youtu.be/z4Bze9T27kw
In May 2022, the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival presented the play “Hermit,” a nonverbal mime performance. The Festival has posted a one-minute trailer and this description:
“There is a square. Is it a house? There is sound. What happens inside? A lid opens. Is there something inside? What is inside? Who is inside?
Hermit is an original, visual, funny and moving performance about being alone and coming home.
With a background in music theatre and modern mime, Simone de Jong creates work based around music, movement and imagination, with performances which appeal to the multiple senses of its young audience, in a secretive way.”
On Being features the poem/film “How to Be Alone” by the Irish-born poet Pádraig Ó Tuama. A small short piece reflecting on the topic of self and world.
“How to Be Alone” by Pádraig Ó Tuama, A Poetry Film by Leo G Franchi.
More information on the Youtube page, including links to On Being.
ABC/RN (Australi anBroadcasting Corporation/Radio News) offers a profile of women hermits in New York City and beyond in its article: “A secret society of ‘Hermettes’ is reclaiming and celebrating female aloneness.” From the opening paragraphs:
“Risa Mickenberg lives in a stylish New York City apartment, but she prefers to call the dwelling something else: Her “cave”.
Despite being in close proximity to around eight million other people, Ms Mickenberg shuns many social connections and relationships. Instead, she enjoys time in her cave or experiencing the world outside alone.
And she’s not the only one living like this. Ms Mickenberg is the founder of “Hermettes”, a secret society of like-minded women who are reclaiming and celebrating female aloneness.”
URL: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-11/hermettes-secret-society-risa-mickenberg/101212682
An article in the Panama City Herald titled “Meet Teddy, the St. Andrews Hermit” describes the Norway-born Theodore Tollefsen (1882-1954). He fished as a young man, sailing the world, settling in 1906 on the northeast Florida gulf coast to live on his boat from fishing. The 1929 hurriane reached this part of Florida and destroyed his boat, but Teddy remained in the vicinity, rebuilding his life, gradually more separate from town and populace by natural and artificial causeways. He became a hermit.