Someone recently asked me what I feared most. Not wanting to answer, I asked him back. He said drowning. I said loneliness. I’m also totally afraid of serial killers (to the point where I often refuse to sleep with my windows open in my un-air-conditioned apartment in July). But that’s an irrational fear. Very few people succumb to a grizzly death at the hands of John Wayne Gacy Jr. wannabes. Everyone’s lonely. All the time. Loneliness is the human condition. We’re obsessed with patching it up like a bike tire that just keeps deflating. We fill it with endless happy hour cocktails, late-night conversations, romantic relationships, meaningless sex. As someone much more adorable than me once said:
But more and more we’re suffering
Not nobody, not a thousand beers
Will keep us from feeling so all alone
Yesterday a friend sent me the following IM about my least favorite New York Times Column:
Anna: oh my god
you have to read modern love
you know i always hate it
hate it
but i love this one
and i’m almost in tears
Me too, Anna. Maybe we’re not alone. Maybe it’s possible to love someone even when they’re shitting in your bed. Maybe we’re all so lucky we should just shut the fuck up and skip through winter and into spring.
Then, this morning, another friend wrote something really pretty about sleeplessness and happiness and misery and a song I really like. And I couldn’t sleep the night before. And it was like, across an ocean, someone just knew that. And all of a sudden I wasn’t so lonely. I don’t believe in signs. But maybe I believe in looking for them. Maybe the only way we aren’t so lonely is if we continue to believe in fairytales, in illusions…
I’m in love with illusions
So saw me in half
I’m in love with tricks
So pull another rabbit out of your hat
since i’m drinking wine with debord and despite the fact that i know that you will know my ip and be able to creep me (i am also fearful of random murder), and despite the fact that i broke a bowl trying to leave this post — i must say that alienation is the human condition. we are lonely because we are alienated. maybe they are the same thing, maybe not…it’s hard to tell.
maybe alienation is the disease and loneliness the symptom. well, i don’t think we can do anything about our alienation but maybe (just maybe!) if we drink wine together tonight we can help ease that loneliness.
p.s. it’s a good thing i’m not a serial killer because i also know where you live.