Loneliness and Artistry
The Lonely City by Olivia Laing explores the relationship between isolation and creativity. In the book, she dives into the works of Edward Hopper and others, framing loneliness with wisdom.
What does it feel like to yearn for a conversation with a barista, only to find yourself tongue-tied and incapable of conversation? How does it feel like to live in a city of eight and a half million, only to find yourself… alone?
You can reach out or you can hide; you can lurk and you can reveal yourself, curated and refined. – Olivia Laing, The Lonely City
In Olivia Laing’s book, she explores the topic of loneliness in her life. It is a somber but sober exploration of how loneliness fuels world-renowned artists to incredible levels of creativity. She relates the art with the artist, noting that they exhibited their human condition with creativity. She concludes her book by exploring how social media is playing a potent role in combating this modern human condition – how social media offers the promise of pain-free human connection.
Both spaces offer up a complicated set of possibilities, an alluring oscillation between the dyad of hidden and seen. – Olivia Laing. The Lonely City
Her brilliantly fluid commentary on social media touches on how the ‘hyper-acceleration’ of digital culture has transformed human contact. She asserts that social media has allowed us to wallow alone in the comfort of our couch while luxuriating ourselves in the presence of others.
That’s the dream of replication: infinite attention, infinite regard. – Olivia Laing, The Lonely City
She paralleled social media to the dream of television – the ability to reach thousands of eyeballs, all in an instant, and be a minor celebrity. Anyone can set up a YouTube account nowadays and hand out makeup advice or dish out cooking videos. While we are all caught up in our little screen, craving for the likes and followers, we separate ourselves from reality, from the real issues affecting society. From poverty. From climate change. From geopolitical tensions.
If I tore myself away from my computer and looked out of my window what I was confronted by instead were the screens of Times Square: a giant watch, Gordon Ramsay’s craggy face, magnified to a hundred times the size of life – Olivia Laing, The Lonely City
Referencing Sontag, she wonders if AIDS had a part to play in this. Referencing Wojnarowicz’s graphic novel, 7 miles a second, she wonders if city wealth has segregated the rich and the poor.
What is it about the pain of others? Easier to pretend that it doesn’t exist. – Olivia Laing, The Lonely City
The Lonely City is a refreshing and poignant insight into being lonely, into the construct of loneliness. But more than that, it highlights the problems that we face today. Are we too self-obsessed to empathize with others? What causes loneliness? Is it the concrete city walls and towering skyscrapers? Is it the ever-pervasive digital walls, giving us the facade of human connection? Or is it the painfully air-tight walls, the ones that we are erecting around ourselves?