Lonely

Loneliness can be a grieving over the loss of your life while you live it, a life that may seem not to be a true or whole one because of what it lacks. The loss might be of someone you love but can’t have, or a camaraderie you had with others before all went their separate ways. In the latter case, those that never had the camaraderie might scoff at the loneliness of those who did—they had it at least, and have it still in their memories. But this loneliness is real, too, even if the grief of it is tempered by having had it once. 

Song has the capacity to get at the grief of loneliness. 

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die?
Like me, he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome, I could cry

Hank Williams

The words captures the sadness and longing of loneliness even without the mournful voice of Hank Williams, who struggled with chronic pain, alcoholism, prescription drug abuse, and promoters and fans he alienated by missing concert dates, before checking out at age 29 from heart failure. What part all these had in this song, I don’t know, but Hank Williams knew loneliness. 

Only the lonely
Know the heartaches I’ve been through
Only the lonely
Know I cry and cry for you

Roy Orbison

The words aren’t as powerful as Williams’s. You need to hear the passion in Orbison’s voice, and it doesn’t hurt to see him deliver the song in his thick dark glasses and dyed black hair, a guy you just know was not popular in high school, and who remembers that. Only the Lonely could be the anthem of loneliness, sung in a bar with others over a few drinks. But Orbison’s voice is too personal for that, and hearing the song drunk would tip it over into the maudlin in your brew-addled mind. 

Don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there

Bob Dylan

‘Loneliness’ or ‘lonesome’ is never mentioned, but these two lines that close the song must be among the loneliest ever written. Someone could be nearby, even praying, just too softly to hear, and it’s not dark yet, but these qualifiers only enhance the song’s loneliness. If Dylan made it clear no one was nearby and darkness had fallen there would be, not loneliness, but utter desolation that has left loneliness behind. 

These songs have an audience other than their listeners. He doesn’t say it, but Williams is singing to the robin, too, who like him knows how to weep. Orbison claims all the lonely as his company, whether they hear the song or not. And Dylan imagines a person, in prayer, likely confronting his own darkness, who may or may not be there. 

Nicholas Kristof wrote recently in the New York Times about what he calls the ‘epidemic’ of loneliness in America, but the efforts he cites to combat loneliness are social to the core: government and public-private efforts such as group litter pickups, nature walks, community dinners, and songwriting workshops. (The last is already being done in New Haven at Musical Intervention (https://musicalintervention.com/). The song workshops have music covered, but let’s remember the power of song for the others, and for all, let’s not exclude the lonesome songs and voices. They’re beautiful, they bring us together in our apartness, and they soothe the grief of our loneliness.