Forgive the Pedantry

A few days ago when I was talking to one of my friends who is studying abroad in China, he mentioned how he finally understands what I mean when I say that it's very easy to feel alone in the city. I told him about a quote that has stuck with me since tenth grade, from the story that inspired the (horrible) movie AI. The story is called Super Toys Last All Summer Long, by Brian Aldiss. The quote reads: "She remained alone. An overcrowded world is the ideal place in which to be lonely."

That quote has been etched in my memory since then. For its aesthetic value to begin with, really. It's a very well-balanced sentence. If you cut it down the middle, say, through "ideal," it seems to weight the same on each side. And it just seems like such a paradox. The world is overcrowded, so one ought to be able to find plenty of people to be friends with, or to be in love with. And yet, the sheer amount of life is so crushingly overwhelming sometimes that it just increases any feelings of loneliness one might feel.

Early sociologists who studied the effects of the city on humanity in general came to the conclusion that city life is unnatural. They felt that the constant stimulation, the barrage of people, noise, sights, smells forces people to retreat inside themselves. But by cutting themselves off from the intense stimuli coming at them from all directions, they are also cutting themselves off from other human beings. The danger in this is that it can soon lead to antisocial behavior and anomie, causing the eventual breakdown of society.

I never really bought into that theory of how City Life affects people. I don't think that the city is naturally a corrupting force, any more than I believe life in the mountains or the country side is naturally cleansing. Since humans first came to be, they have been forming groups, families, tribes. I think there's something to be said for the fact that as soon as humans discovered agriculture, they started settling down in large (relatively large) groups. Humans in general have always needed and indeed sought out the company of humans. So it follows that if anything at all could be considered "natural," it would be life in the city.

And yet, whether city life is natural or unnatural, it can be very easy to be lonely here. I think it has a little more to do with ennui than anomie, however. The loneliness is not of the antisocial sort. It leans more towards the self-pitying and even the self-indulgent. After all, when one reflects on how many people there actually are in the city, one tends to start questioning his or her own self-worth.

I've been listening to a lot of Satie lately. Erik Satie was a French composer from the early 20th century, a contemporary of Debussy and Ravel. He's very well known for his use of repetition and stark, almost perplexing simplicity. Whenever I start to feel lonely or sorry for myself I put either his Gymnopedies or his Gnossienes on. Played on solo piano with no accompaniment, the melodies are haunting but hummable. At first it seems like there's almost nothing to them, but as they progress one comes to the realization that their hollowness, their other-worldly quality is the truly spectacular aspect of the pieces. In the thread-bareness of the melody lies something more comforting than a down blanket. In their loneliness lies complete perfection.