LONELY PEOPLE: FROM HEMINGWAY TO AMERICA

The answer: lonely people.

The question: What does the band America have in common with Ernest Hemingway?

Their bond comes from both ends of male adulthood, young man to old man.

One sang about them, the other wrote about them.

By now baby boomers are both.

The song Lonely People is a sweet anthem of hope, to never give up until you try.

They don’t say how hard to try, it’s more about keep trying.

The feeling life has passed you by? Keep trying.

You’ll never amount to anything? Keep trying.

You’re lonely but you tried, you tried hard, you tried when things were good. When things were bad you kept trying; you tried until you got tired, then tried some more.

There’s something endearing about the singer’s face in this video.

He looks so vulnerable, but also gives off a menacing vibe of Jim Morrison, who may have had a vulnerable side too if you looked hard enough.

Dan Peek looks like a guy who had given up, but someone said ‘not so fast.’

He got married and he and his wife wrote Lonely People once they were out of the club, like a celebration.

Reading the comments on the video in the link is a look back in time, an unofficial history of an era.

The same happened with this link.

People responding to Lonely People fifty years out are just like the current listeners.

 

Growing up in one town and going to school with the same people offered insight into loneliness.

I thought, ‘How could anyone ever be lonely with this group.’

I asked my wife if she’d ever been lonely.

 

Me: Have you ever been lonely? Like life has passed you by?

Wife: No. Since I was eighteen I’ve always had a boyfriend, and when I didn’t in those brief times, I had my friends.

Me: Always had a boyfriend?

Wife: There weren’t  high standards for boyfriends where I grew up.

Me: How about husbands. Do you have high standards for them?

Wife: Not really.

Me:

 

Since I’m her only husband, I think she was making a joke?

Maybe?

Lol?

 

Clean And Well Lit

Like everyone except my wife, I knew loneliness once I left town, and to my surprise liked it.

I think I liked it. I told myself I liked it.

Maybe I liked it, but not as much as I remember?

Life had passed me by in the Army where I lived off base and worked 9-5 weekdays in a Civil Service clinic off Oregon Avenue in South Philly.

I was being all I could be by living in Center City Philadelphia and thinking about my hometown.

Why did I ever leave?

 

Life had passed me by when I moved to Brooklyn.

I was a twenty-five year old has-been, which is wrong thinking for anyone at any age.

You’re not a flop until you hear it from someone with authority, like your family.

I didn’t hear it from friends because I already knew it.

Everyone else was doing important things and I was playing my broken guitar in an apartment and doing clerk work on Wall Street.

Right about the time I resigned myself to a future of playing a guitar in my one man band, and taking the train to lower Manhattan and back, I got a reminder that I was still young.

It wasn’t a girl my lord in a flatbed Ford slowing down to take a look at me, but it was close, and I hopped in.

Maybe I was lonely, maybe not, but whatever it was eventually took its toll and she wasn’t a fan.

We agreed we’d make a mistake. I always agree when women say they’d made a mistake.

 

Her: This is a mistake.

Me: What did you say? I wasn’t listening.

Her: Our relationship is a mistake.

Me: Yes, I’d like a milkshake.

Her: We’re a mistake.

Me: Mistake? I’ll say. What were you thinking?

Her: You agree?

Me: All the way. After we breakup you can throw yourself at guys like the other women who broke up with me.

Her: What?

Me: The over/under on marriages for women who dump me is four.

Her: I’ll break the trend.

Me: I hope so, for your sake. It’s a a wild world.

Her: What’s that supposed to mean?

Me: It’s hard to get by on just a smile, girl.

 

Call it Cat Stevens counseling.

Here Comes Hemingway From 1933

This is the famous Hemingway short story, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, followed by study questions.

I’ve read this story as a young man and thought it over-rated; I read it as an old man and think it’s a study of depression.

Goodreads highlights it with quotes greater than the length of the story, which puts the short in short story at 1700 words.

It’s about three men: a young man, and old man, and one in between edging toward old.

The young man has no fear of time passing. He’s in his prime time with confidence, a wife, and a job.

The older man is without a wife and confidence, but he has a job.

The oldest of them just wants to die.

I said depressing, right?

Give it a read, just don’t get depressed. That’s an order. It’s one of the loneliest stories about lonely people whether they know it or not.

My take-away? Live in a clean, well-lighted place to avoid the bad mojo cooking up in your brain.

Or take your meds and live like a hoarder, just don’t leave too big a mess for others to clean up.

You know who those others are?

For every suicide there are hundreds of people left wondering why, maybe millions for Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain.

The old man had survived his own attempt a week earlier, saved by his caretaker.

He didn’t know of anyone who cared.

The older man understands why that might happen and wants to help.

The younger man is not concerned why an old man with plenty of money would want to kill himself.

These elements aren’t spoilers to the story, so give it a read.

I’ll start for you:

 

It was very late and everyone had left the café except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves

of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled

the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the

difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a

good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on

him.

“Last week he tried to commit suicide,” one waiter said.

“Why?”

“He was in despair.”

“What about?”

“Nothing.”

“How do you know it was nothing?”

“He has plenty of money.”

They sat together at a table that was close against the wall near the door of the café and looked at

the terrace where the tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the

tree that moved slightly in the wind.”

 

What that old man felt is what Neil Young felt:

 

PS: I’ve been first and last
Look at how the time goes past
But I’m all alone at last
Rolling home to you

 

PSS: Old man, take a look at my life, I’m a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes and you can tell that’s true

Remember, don’t give up until you drink from the silver cup.

Say hello to someone you’d like to see.

You never know until you try.

Hit it.