For three months, I sat in public spaces and watched people who were alone. Not lonely—alone. There's a difference.
The man at the coffee shop who reads the same pages of his book over and over, not absorbing words but using them as a shield.
The woman at the bar who orders one drink and makes it last two hours, watching the door each time it opens.
The teenager on the bench who scrolls through his phone with such intensity that you know he's not looking at anything—he's hiding from the space around him.
And me. Watching. Also alone. Also performing solitude for an audience of one.
The observation became the subject. I was not studying them. I was studying the act of observation itself—how attention shapes both observer and observed.
What I'm testing:
Whether solitude can be authentic when it's being performed. Where observation ends and projection begins.