I read a story many years ago about two writers, one of whom had something like a log cabin the woods. A getaway. He invited another writer for the weekend and the two men apparently spent three days together without saying a word to each other. The whole weekend may never have been recorded for posterity but for the fact that the invited author on leaving thanked his host and told him it was the best weekend he had ever had.
I would be the first to say writers can be strange and difficult people emotionally and intellectually, not always because they have better or clearer minds than other people. but the list of their friendships, their close friendships, is always different in many ways from the ordinary. The art form inspires a kinship, an emotional bond, that needs no explaining. Sometimes the bond doesn’t work – Gauguin and Van Gogh nearly killed each other, sometimes it is heart breaking as Keats’ friend had to watch him die; but the respect for the work feeds into respect for the person.
They say to truly love you must be friends first, but artists have friends who truly love their work. The most tragic artists in the world are those who do not have a single friend.