LONELY PEOPLE: WHERE DO THEY ALL COME FROM

Lonely people come from the same place you come from.

How can that be?

They didn’t seem lonely. Why would they be lonely?

As if you need to ask.

People feel lonely when they think life has passed them by.

This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don’t give up until you drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky

This is for all the single people
Thinking that love has left them dry
Don’t give up until you drink from the silver cup
You never know until you try

The band America explained it years ago, but I think they got it wrong.

“Don’t give up until you drink from the silver cup and ride that highway in the sky.”

They’re talking about death, right? Don’t give up unless you’re dead sounds like good advice.

But I’ve known lonely people who seem to enjoy themselves alone. Is that normal, or do they live in a dream?

If people who need people are the luckiest people in the world, according to Barbra Streisand, where does everyone else fit in?

Apparently they don’t.

Lonely People Are Waiting To Die?

People living a life different than you aren’t on a death march.

It’s just different.

I’ve met people who lived in the same apartment building their entire lives. 

They lived with their family in Queens, NY.

They’d never leave the block if they didn’t have to. Is that loyalty, or short vision?

Either way, I envied them because they knew what to expect, knew where to go, and how to get back.

City life is like that. It’s home. Maybe not your idea of home, but that’s short sighted.

Imagine living in an apartment on a sweltering day. The parking lot below your window radiates heat.

I knew a woman who had an apartment just like that. On hot days so miserable that people just sweated it out, she put on her bikini and hit the ‘asphalt beach.’

She was not a lonely person.

This Is What Lonely Looks Like

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

Who hasn’t seen Ms Rigby? And who knew she was so lonely?

Maybe we’re all lonely souls, but some work it out better than others.

Then you hear, “But how do you really feel?”

The four people in the picture are museum people. They are in the field, this time in SE Portland, picking up a large cabinet from an old Chinese store in Portland that sold traditional medical remedies.

They are history museum people, a lonely bunch by trade. Nothing is more isolating than history, and meeting people from the past who make you feel like you’re not doing nearly enough with your life.

If that’s you, then you’re in good company. Pop music has you covered from the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby to, America’s Lonely People, to Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence.

“The words on the prophets are written on the subway walls
In tenement halls”
And whispered in the sound of silence.”

I’m no prophet but I’ve been writing words on this blog, not subway walls or tenement halls. The work is the same.

And the sound of silence can be deafening.

Writers are more used to it than others.

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

And life goes on.

Next man, or woman, up.

All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

If you are one of the lonely people, write it out.

Start by leaving a comment. I’ll be here.