Who are you when no one is looking at you?

Christopher Knight went to the woods in Maine and stayed there for 27 years, never talking to another person. Of that time, he said: “I lost my identity. With no audience, no one to perform for, I was just there. There was no need to define myself; I became irrelevant. The moon was the minute hand, the seasons the hour hand. I didn’t even have a name. I never felt lonely. To put it romantically: I was completely free.”

But, now that he has to interact with other people, it’s clear that he’s ba...