How many times have we heard the complaint that cities are designed to be lonely? Streets and neighborhoods are gentrified to serve a certain segment of the population, and we mingle with people who are of a similar economic and social class to us. Those who are different—the desperately poor or the outrageously rich—are marginalized: we have no business in this life. On top of that, we are entrenched in our screens, where we can say a lot without actually speaking. The many levels of dissociation can be terrifying, especially when there is no way out in sight.
Olivia Laing’s groundbreaking work The Lonely City: The Adventures of the Art of Being Lonelypublished in 2016, is a forensic account of crippling urban loneliness. This was a time when social media was rising to prominence as an alternative to real human connection, and self-esteem was measured in likes, reshares, and comments. For Laing, loneliness is a condition that is “difficult to admit to”—the simulation of online validation doesn’t make it any easier to admit that you long for real human connection. Loneliness is taboo while pursuing seclusion, but even so, it is not a “totally worthless” experience, as Laing illustrates through the works and lives of American icons such as Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Henry Darger, and David Wojnarowicz.
The private in public
Quite simply, loneliness can be described as a state of being “overlooked,” “ignored,” “unseen,” “unappreciated,” and “unwanted.” The blame lies not only with the people we share the city with, but also with the way cities are planned and designed. Concrete jungles, impassable streets, and a greater focus on automation mean we rarely see human faces displaying a full range of emotions. Each person is assigned a role to keep the city running smoothly—we give a curt nod to the bus driver, politely greet the barista, and resolutely ignore the homeless. Perhaps that is why a person’s meltdown or anger is so unbearable. Who would want to admit their follies in public?
And yet some iconic works of art and writings like Hopper’s cityscapes (think of the Nighthawks), Andy Warhol’s desperate search for kinship with machines, Henry Darger’s run-down apartments filled with surreal artworks and David Wojnarowicz’s haunting memoir Close to the knives touch us so deeply. Why are city dwellers like us instinctively drawn to depictions of loneliness? The reason, Laing argues simply, is the desire to seen. Hopper denied throughout his life that he was fixated on American loneliness, and yet it has become the leitmotif of his art. It is a comfort to see other people caught in the everyday and not struggling to escape it – perhaps that is why a lonely woman staring out the window or a silent couple drinking coffee have fascinated us for so long. After being repeatedly asked about the intention of his art, he reluctantly admitted: “I probably unconsciously painted the loneliness of a big city.”
Unconsciously. Probably. He cleverly dismisses it as the providence of the subconscious. Hopper, a genius in his field, may not have believed he was depicting loneliness in his paintings, but his personal life actually indicates extended periods of unhappiness and discontent. The silence in his paintings seems ominous when one learns of his ongoing cruelty to his wife. Hopper, an artist herself, never stopped mocking and sometimes even actively insulting her craft until she finally retired and resigned herself to being something like Hopper’s secretary. He is often hailed as the messiah of the lonely, and it is incredible that he was responsible for alienating his own partner and causing her so much grief.
Machines as companions
Megastar Andy Warhol was not spared the mysteries of loneliness either. A popular avant-garde artist, he suffered from crippling loneliness and neglect for most of his life. Bullied at school for his appearance and his speech, Warhol’s loneliness as an adult was predetermined. Laing traces his life, from his time in hiding to his shooting by radical feminist Valerie Solanos, which left him physically and mentally fragile. Warhol’s mother, a “great” storyteller in Rutherian, struggles with words when she has to write or speak English. Language – the system people have invented to get to know each other – becomes a barrier when you are displaced or forced to adopt a different lifestyle. Perhaps it was by seeing his mother in this difficult situation that Warhol realized that Performance of machines. His favorite was a tape recorder that he called “my wife.” The desire to be seen and noticed became his favorite instrument of torture. The prints he made (an image reproduced in different colors), the wig he wore and his distinctive style of dress made him stand out and, on the other hand, hid him behind a figure. Who was Andy Warhol? An artist that everyone knew, but who carefully kept himself out of the crowd.
What is eccentric about Warhol is our reality today. Machines smaller than tape recorders have become appendages to the human body. In this context, the machine as a “wife” or a substitute for any close relationship is no longer absurd. Laing points out how the body can be a burden to the lonely. He makes us aware that we are trapped in our circumstances and that no amount of imagination can override the body’s permanence.
body and soul
Henry Darger, a janitor, was discovered as an artist after his death. Poverty and illness were his constant companions, as was his unhappy childhood of abuse and neglect. The paintings discovered often depicted children in happy, surreal settings. The enforced isolation of his childhood had a profound effect on Darger—he understood the importance of education and playtime perhaps better than anyone who had been granted both. Darger’s loneliness made him human. “…an equal chance to develop all that is in our minds and hearts,” he once wrote. The thought that a man of such profound goodness was banished from the general public due to suspicion of “mental illness” shows how loneliness is a problem of normative human attitudes.
The issues of sexuality and gender are even more confusing than those of the body. Laing recalls being raised by two lesbians, and therefore being an outsider in her childhood. As adults, they found the gender binary inadequate. They write, “I inhabited a space in the middle that didn’t exist, except that I was there.” Since then, however, Laing has asserted her identity as a nonbinary person.
In his memoirs Close to the knivesIn his book, David Wojnarowicz criticizes the neglect of the queer population of the American nation-state. AIDS, a deadly epidemic of its time, became the subject of his art and political activism. When he himself fell victim to the disease, he regretted having caught “a sick society” more than the virus. His anger was justified – an entire generation of queers was lost to medical neglect. Times Square, once home to “junkies,” “wimps,” and “whores,” has since been gentrified into a temple of consumerism. Within a few years, New York City’s robust underground culture was replaced by uncouth and vulgar displays of excess.
Wojnarowicz was a lifelong activist whose ashes were scattered during a protest march outside the White House, “the heart of America.” Even in death, he did not give up his fight. The loneliness created by urbanism and nation-states is perhaps the loneliness against which we are most defenseless. It is an actively constructed loneliness to maintain structures that benefit the rich and affluent few.
“Mortality is lonely,” Laing concludes, but life need not be. Modern man has tried to ward off loneliness with all sorts of inventions, including ones that have made him lonelier. The tug-of-war between going off the grid and enforced anonymity has occupied the best of us. So what is one to do? The answer to this quite modern question was given by philosophers who lived many thousands of years ago – making friends with oneself helps, one must accept kindness and solidarity and be generous, one must come to terms with the impermanence of the material world. But to do this one must also recognise that personal loneliness is a collective crisis – it is politically constructed. We must shed shame and resist malevolent forces that need our exclusion and isolation to thrive. To be heard and accepted is a basic human need, and accepting that we are lonelier than ever is the first step to healing.
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, Olivia Laing, Canongate Books.
