There will always be a place for words of reassurance.Thank you for this. And even though the pandemic is maybe, possibly, hopefully on its way out, Davis and Dorfman's film seems likely to resonate long beyond the confines of this particular crisis. How to Be at Home is heartfelt and utterly sincere, an unselfconscious offering of a sort that takes courage and confidence to release into the world. Here, the book is a source of comfort, beauty, and wisdom, and Dorfman puts it to an ingenious range of uses in the course of the film. Instead, Dorfman draws her animation on the pages of a book, one of the escapes that took on increased importance, especially in the early days of the pandemic. The new one didn't have the luxury of inhabiting those spaces. The original was a journey through the places one can go while still being alone. The poem has changed for the times, and the video has, too. But also hopeful, resilient, and full of strength. As honest as it is, though, there isn't so much as a syllable in it that sounds defeated. It doesn't sugar-coat the hardship of loneliness or the mental toll of living in a situation of extreme, almost unprecedented ambiguity. Like its predecessor, How to Be At Home is a work of radical empathy.

Fortunately for all of us, the National Film Board of Canada commissioned her to update it for our COVID-infected times, partnering once again with filmmaker and animator Andrea Dorfman for the video.

This pandemic-induced state is very different in character from the kind of alone Davis wrote on a decade ago. Rather than being seen as a refuge for outcasts, isolation became a default state for essentially everyone who didn't already live with a partner, roommate, or family. Solitude took on a very different context in 2020. The poem and its accompanying video were a paean to the pleasures of being alone-alone in crowds, alone in nature, alone wherever you want to be. Tanya Davis wrote the poem 'How to Be Alone' in 2010, back when solitude was seen as something of a fallen state by a society that thrives on social gatherings and measures people's worth by their relationship status.

Andrea dorfman how to be alone