According to eccentric genius and master of daft Ivor Cutler (if you don’t know him, look him up) a good way to make a friend would be to wait for an unsuspecting person to pass by beneath your window and upend a bucket of whitewash over them, thus giving you the opportunity to invite them up for a bath (I picture this happening in a tenement in Glasgow, from where Ivor hailed). Sadly I couldn't find the song ‘How To Make A Friend’ online, nor the lyrics, but I remember crying with laughter when I first heard it on the John Peel Show in the 80s.
I live in a third floor flat so in theory I could take his advice, but I don’t overlook any public walkways so I’d basically end up with someone who lives in the flats and I already know most of them. But how do you make friends as you get older? And how do you find the right kind of friends? Because I don’t know about you but I’ve definitely got more choosy with age. Which I think you have to be - you don’t want to be spending what precious years you’ve got left with people who bore the tits off you or don’t listen to a word you say.
It’s not often you meet someone you really connect with - not in my case, anyway - and I suppose by the law of numbers, or whatever, you have to meet X number of new people before you get lucky. So it’s obvious then that you need to just go out and meet lots and lots of new people to increase the odds. But 1) that kinda sounds like hell to me and 2) who’s got time for that oh and 3) where, exactly?!?
I don’t have any neat answers, I just know that loneliness is a growing societal issue and also it’s surrounded by a significant degree of shame - people don’t like to admit that they’re lonely, maybe because it feels like a failure of some kind? Well, I’ll admit it here and now - I often feel lonely. I mean, being an artist isn’t a great start. And then there’s living alone. But I think it’s more than simply being with other people, because you can still feel lonely when you’re around others (that, I think, is even more painful than alone-loneliness).
I came across a quote by Carl Jung the other day - ‘loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself…’ That is absolutely it, I think. And in art there’s a bit of a paradox, because while you’re there on your own, painting away, you’re essentially working at communicating something important to you. Whilst not communicating with anyone! Maybe that’s a topic for another time….
This quote from Vincent Van Gogh spoke to me - “a great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke”. I sense that it comes from a dark place, there’s no hope or positivity here, and of course we know that Vincent was a deeply troubled man. But I think that feeling of not being truly seen is a big part of feeling lonely. I guess the upshot of that is that we have to be courageous, and allow ourselves to be seen, invite people into our world, allow ourselves to be vulnerable.
To my friends that are reading this, I love you.
