Calling All Loners

photo: www.miamiherald.com

Loners, lone wolves, and people who are simply lonely - we get a bad rap. To be alone, to like being alone, is considered abnormal in a world coupled off. And an admission of loneliness bears an almost equivalent weight to revealing a mental illness: it sparks pity and discomfort on the end of the listener, a confession that seemingly strips oneself naked, leaves one vulnerable, labels one as pariah, and not like the rest.

We've all felt lonely at some point or another. Maybe it lasted a few minutes, maybe a few months, maybe years. But we've all felt that absolute, crushing emptiness of being separated from others, whether it be physically, emotionally, mentally, or a combination of all three.

The truth of this grey feeling, loneliness, why and how it arises, and how society perpetuates it, is the subject of Olivia Laing's nonfiction work The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone.

In a beautifully written, interwoven narrative, she moves between her own experiences with loneliness, while sharing her findings about famous artists and their relationships with loneliness, specifically Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, and Henry Darger.

Despite the connections and parallels she draws between these artists and their common themes of loneliness, she avoids the dangerous trope of artists needing to be damaged, lonely outsiders. No doubt, many artists are more introverted, enjoy time alone and get lonely, just like the rest of us. But to exclaim that art arises from such conditions and these conditions only, is something Laing consciously avoids.

She examines the artists, not just their personalities and dispositions, but their lives, and how the social environments they grew up in, and created for themselves, contributed to their sense of loneliness. Warhol, for instance, for all of his socialization and glitz, was lonely, often using his wigs, makeup, and technological devices (cameras, recorders, etc.) to form a barrier between his real self and the world. And Wojnarowicz, abused and abandoned as a child, carried those themes into adulthood and the AIDS epidemic that physically marked the "others" of society - mostly gay men and intravenous drug users - as separate from everyone else.

Laing ultimately concludes that loneliness is not a problem of the sole individual who experiences it, but a problem of a society that consistently perpetuates exclusion and ostracizes those who are different and unfamiliar.

"Loneliness...," she writes, "is a city...We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell."

And the only way to work through loneliness is to befriend one's self and others.

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A rare read for me, as I usually don't approach nonfiction. But creative, narrative nonfiction, especially when well-written, can be just as compelling, if not more so, than a novel.

Laing weaves personal narratives, loneliness, art, and society expertly, raising questions about the importance of human connection, why loneliness is perceived the way it is, and what it ultimately means to live in this world.

9/10 📕