It’s ok to be lonely, even in NYC. In fact, it might even be good for you. The city has a pulse that would suggest Tachycardia, and with so much stimulation, over time your brain feels abnormal if it isn’t processing something visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, vestibular, and/or tactile all at once. Those synapses are busy.
I’ve been a Chicago native for a decade but have visited NYC twice in the last year. I flew to NYC this time to see Spiritualized perform their epic album, Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating in Space at Radio City Music Hall. Surely, this is an album not without it’s share of lonely, frantic, and, desperate moments. What I soon found myself challenged to do while I was there, however, was to actually photograph loneliness. It’s a cliché to think of how one can be lonely in a crowded room. Well, expand that into the most massively packed room of all time. How can one be lonely there? It almost seems wrong to be lonely with such a paucity of space and when so many things are happening all of the time.
I don’t think it’s uncommon to experience a purely Hypothalamic Flight vs. Fight response when confronted with the onslaught of NYC over-stimulation at first. I usually fly home after a couple of days and have to detox a bit from the sensory overload when I get back to Chicago. This time, I decided to fight it and in my five day stay, I adventurously looked for signs of solitude, desolation and the alone person wherever I could. We’ve all seen the thousands of photos of crowded NYC streets. I searched to find the exact opposite instead.
If you asked 10 random strangers to identify positive and negative attributes, I’m quite certain most would think of lonely and loneliness as a negative. It would fit in with anxious, depressed, and angry. Polar opposites are considered to be adjectives like happy, satisfied, and secure. What would loneliness look like if it could transcend the abstract and morph into a human form? Would it be ugly? Obese? Sickly? Bald? The way we’d imagine it says much about ourselves as people.
Loneliness is threatening and dangerous because it forces us to do something we might be good at avoiding: spending time with ourselves. It’s all too easy to forget what we’re really like, and come to terms with the thoughts we have and all of our possible inadequacies when we are replacing introspection with constant actions around others. Yet, we’re not meant as human beings to always be so complacent. We should be challenged to self evaluate and hold our own selves hostage. Without solitude and isolation, we wouldn’t know the actual value of companionship. It’s painful but life isn’t always meant to be joyful. It provokes anxiety yet complacency won’t lead to any revolutions. When we are lonely, for better or worse, we find out what we are really like. All of the heartache is worth this discovery.
I’ve spent the last month sitting in quiet places like this one, reading and re-reading stories about drinkers, screamers, and criers. Seven years of driving a taxi in Chicago has to be whittled down to some hundred-odd pages with illustrations thrown in.
Porkchop will sidle up next to me on the couch and look up, hoping for a walk. He takes any stirring, whether a trip to the bathroom or just the mere shifting of weight, as a hopeful sign. He tenses, ready to leap to the floor and dash toward the sliding doors leading to the back yard.
Between the plant and the armchair, an absorbent pad is laid out, where he’ll relieve himself when left alone at the house. It never happens when we’re there to watch, perhaps he does it when he does to protest being neglected.
Forming chaotic cab stories into a coherent whole in this peaceful place makes me feel that much further from their action; though some of the episodes occurred only months ago. To have this time and distance to look at all that has happened is a rare blessing.
I’ll have to get up now and take Porkchop for that walk he’s been waiting for…