From the age of about fourteen I became painfully aware of the shallowness of nearly-all of life - of human interaction; of literature, music and art; and especially of human aspirations. Thus I became a spontaneous 'romantic'.
I recognised the shallowness innately, by my boredom at the triviality of nearly-everything - but also in contrast to what I sometimes encountered in my reading, listening, and experience of landscapes and architecture. The clearest example was Lord of the Rings, which I read at this time - a world of exactly the depth I craved.
But the bulk and average of human interaction was by far the most frustrating shallowness. Even people who had composed deep literature or deep music; when I saw them interviewed on television would witter-away in the most superficial and glib fashion.
I wanted to be serious and earnest most of the time; but almost everybody else hated that kind of thing, and kept interaction rigorously a matter of small talk - with a permanent, reflexive under-cutting facetiousness added, especially when 'intellectuals' were involved.
(This facetiousness is a particular sin of English people.)
There were a few people with whom I could sometimes have what I termed a 'deep' conversation; and I would travel literally the length and breadth of the country to have such conversations - so starved was I.
And this has never really gone away. Nowadays - because of my family - I do not need general human interaction with the intensity and hunger of my adolescence; but I would - now as then - much rather be alone than engaged in the kind of (as it seems to me) chit-chat that constitutes pretty much the entirety of life for almost everyone*.
*Except when interspersed with emotionally incontinent sessions of shouting and weeping. If novels/ movies and TV are any guide; the pinnacle of human desire is to have a life consisting entirely of witty banter interspersed with sexual psychodrama.
