I’ve always loved being alone.
I’ve never really believed in the concept of loneliness. I can miss specific people, I can even miss everyone, but conceptually, I’ve never understood loneliness to be anything other than a symptom of depression. In fact, for me, loneliness is usually one of the first signs that I’m headed for a depressive period.
I’m still in Johannesburg, and because I have no one to isolate with I’ve spent the last four-and-a-half months alone. In that time I generally leave the house about once a week, and that’s to go to the grocery store. The whole affair usually takes less than an hour.
The rest of the time I’m left trying to all of my feelings into categories. The crippling nostalgia, the wanderlust, the surprising lack of horniness, the heart palpitations, and yes, even the loneliness – are these things a result of depression? Stress? Anxiety?
I have no fucking clue. I’ve always just called it the blues.
But why the fuck do we say that?
I tried looking it up, and while I couldn’t figure it out definitively, the consensus seems to be that no one can figure it out. If you’re looking for a laugh, you can read what is possibly the most polite internet fight in history about the etymology of the phrase. People made some truly hilarious suggestions that are worth a read, like one about dead captains on returning British naval ships or about how the Greek god Zeus was fabled to make it rain when he was sad.
If you’re anything like me then you’re constantly looking for something to alleviate your blues. I’m pretty bad at this: my coping mechanisms seem to exacerbate depression, so you probably shouldn’t take my advice on the matter. Thankfully, Beyoncé’s new film Black is King introduced me to a fucking cool new guru for these exact situations.
“If you have been cooped up for far too long in a very high tower in a dangerously low state,” warns Yrsa Daley-Ward in her poem Mental Health. She knows all the perfect urban, witchy tricks to try and jar you from your funk.
“Crack open a window,” she begs, “even in the rain. Even in the snow. Listen to the church bells outside. Know that however many times they chime is half the number of changes you have to make.”
So now I open the windows while I make my lists. And I try to match the music to my mood like it’s a spell.
Approximately a million years ago I made a playlist for my niece on her birthday. For literally no reason, I put three songs right in the middle of it who’s titles all contained the word ‘blue.’ It was nearly fifteen years ago so it’s hard for me to remember exactly why I did this, but from what I can recall it was basically a coincidence.
I always thought I’d make a full playlist of it one day. You know: like the Blue Album, but bluer.
Now With More Blue.
Oh, the three original songs in the playlist?
Thankfully, I have this information stored in a post from April 3rd, 2006 on my old blog, because I could only remember two of them.
They were: Blue Diamonds by The Long Winters, Blueside by Rooney, and Blue Star by Los Halos.
Maybe it’s good that it took until now, because this feels like the perfect time for this playlist.
Don’t worry, it’s short. About 45 minutes. I used it for my morning routine, maybe you’d like to, too.
Of the original three inspiration songs, two of them made it onto this little quarantine soundtrack. The last one is sadly unavailable on Spotify, but if you’re curious, Sammevouz still has a Bandcamp account so you can listen to it here. In fact, go listen to that whole fucking album, it’s so great: way back in 2005, I was listening to Leaving Va. when I crossed the Bay Bridge into the city in my baby-blue vintage Volvo when I moved to San Francisco.
Oh, and that blog post from 2006? Here’s how it ended:
“So there you go. Today is also my anniversary. I’ve lived in San Francisco a whole year today. Last year when I finally got here, the first thing I did was call my niece and wish her happy birthday.”
Ha. Remember traveling?
Despite the need to really tuck in these days, my visa is expired, and I do gotta get out of South Africa. I’ve bought a few plane tickets in the last couple of weeks, and hopefully someday soon one of these planes will actually take off. My next attempt is a week from today, and I’ve hung all my hopes on this airplane like it will be the thing that fixes my whole life.
Cross your fingers for me, because the last time my flight got canceled I spent the entire day in bed.
And if, like me, you’ve been getting down on yourself because you’ve relented to having the blues during quarantine, maybe it would help to remember how valuable blue can be. Historically, blue pigment, and by extension, purple, was by far the MOST EXPENSIVE COLOR to produce in Europe.
And if everything goes as planned then I should be gazing at a ton of that hyper-expensive, traditionally made blue pigment by next week. If my plane actually takes off, then I’ll be living within walking distance of the Blue Mosque by next Tuesday afternoon. I’ve never been, but it got its nickname from the thousands of blue tiles that line its interior.
Apparently the city is so covered in the color blue that the French once named a shade of blue after the people who live there: turquoise.
It’s not the first time I’ve moved somewhere that I’ve never been – that’s exactly how it went down when I moved to Brooklyn in 2011 – But this is not at all what I thought my life would look this year. But I guess it’s a strategic place for a nomad to wait out a pandemic: where better for someone like me to go and be sad than a city that literally straddles two continents?
Maybe it’s easier to be less lonely in the middle of the world.
xoxo–M