Hi all! No tech or education today — it’s a sort of personal/media essay on absence. I have a mix of personal and professional contacts on here so if you’re purely here for the professional stuff feel free to skip.
In the song Nobody by Mitski, she talks about being lonely, the planet Venus, global warming, etc — and then she launches into this pretty weird chorus:
Nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody.
That's it.
The story goes that Mitski is touring, and there's a break in the tour because it's Christmas. But due to the scheduling of her tour she's on the wrong side of the world from everyone she knows. If she booked a plane home she'd only have to get another plane back to put her in the right place to re-start her tour. So she decides to spend Christmas alone in Malaysia, where she spent a lot of her childhood but now knows nobody and nobody knows her. She settles down in a tiny flat in Kuala Lumpur, looking forward to having some time away from everyone, to finally be alone and decompress.
I find the next part of this story quite funny. To explain why, I'll tell you a story about me. A few years back I was in a pretty awful relationship with someone I really liked (if you know the Kay lore — we'd just had a physical fight at Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland). I was working a job where a lot of people were reliant on me and I was struggling to keep up. My family situation was in an acute phase where people would just show up at my door and demand to see me. So I felt like I was sinking under the pressure of all of these people and their endless demands for my time and energy, none of which felt unreasonable to them — but to me it just felt unbearable.
To remedy this, I decided to spend only a short amount of time with my family at Christmas and then maybe a week or two alone in my flat in London. Back then, I couldn't be alone for more than a day or two before I started to crack, and I figured this was the time to figure that out. And I did — I broke through all that fear and anxiety and discovered what felt to me like a totally revelatory new way to be alone. Like I was literally crying with relief. In the new year I told all my friends about it and how everything would be different now.
Then lockdown came. What fantastic timing, I thought. Not only did I recently learn how to be alone, I can now actually enjoy the fruits of solitude — no one is going to be expecting I hang out, or go into work, or travel to see them or anything. I can just fully be myself. I had this image that I was living in some remote cottage somewhere, calm, serene, alone — but still in London.
Now, in Mitski's story — well, you've seen the lyrics right? The way she tells it, a few days later she's on her floor just crying, feeling so alone, repeating to herself "Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody." She opens the windows just to hear the sounds of people. She's feeling this intense... something and there's nothing she can do about it.
That's what happens when you get arrogant. You think, these people are cramping me, I'm just going to get away from all of them. And then the soft creature who lives inside you wakes up and starts slamming your heart on the table until you get the idea that you are a fucking social animal. Like, obviously you need a reminder of how things work around here! I'm running the show.
I took a little longer than Mitski to figure this out. I'd gotten better at calming myself down, but I could slowly feel my energy sapping away, week by week. You might be imagining, if you don't know me that well, that I figured out that human relationships are really important, not just instrumentally to keep the mind working but as part of life, but I'm not that smart. It took about a year of me talking with my therapist about, if I know I love being alone, why do I keep sabotaging my solitude by e.g. going on dates, having a very social job, writing newsletters, etc. I had no explanation for why I would do these things, just that I got this horrible feeling that maybe I was going to gradually slow down and stop moving and... not die, but like... turn to stone.
I eventually acknowledged the yearning for connection in my own heart, but I'm still not totally comfortable with it. When I was thinking about it just now, a word came to mind — cowboy. The fantasy of the cowboy is of the powerful isolated man, making his way in a hostile world, trusting no one. If he needs to kill, he kills. If he needs to love, he loves without attachment.1 When you learn about the cowboy fantasy you start seeing it everywhere — Rick from Casablanca, Villanelle from Killing Eve, John Wick from John Wick, Batman from Batman, Elon Musk from the movie we all seem to live in now, etc.
But the thing about cowboys, the exciting thing — is when they show tenderness. That brings the tension. Batman has Robin, Villanelle has Eve, Rick has Ilsa. Sometimes when you get under their skin, you discover they were fighting for love all along. But it's not just love, it's one of love's most peculiar, most powerful forms — absence.
I watched Café Müller yesterday, or a film of it. It's one of those pieces of art I always talk about but haven't actually seen. I mostly think about the set, which is what you can see above. I wonder what you see in it.
Since we're on ‘biographical interpretations’ — here's some information about the choreographer — Pina Bausch. Bausch was born in 1940 in Germany. Her parents ran a restaurant and hotel. Her city, Solingen, was bombed heavily during the war. This piece, Café Müller, was inspired by her experience of growing up in that restaurant, amongst the patrons and guests.
Here's what I see. Imagine you ran a restaurant, and almost everyone went away to fight a war. A great many died. Those who return are irreparably scarred and now live in bombed-out homes. You bought all these tables and chairs when the city was alive with people. Now there aren't enough people left to fill them. Each chair is a ghost — standing in for someone who didn't make it back. Some dancers in the show charge around, running into them, knocking them over, while others numbly stand them back up. They can't bear to get rid of them, but they can't quite acknowledge them either. To do so would mean facing up to where those people have gone.
Bausch worked with her dancers in sort of an unusual way. Mostly people who make performances think about roles — a policeman for example — and then they have people play those roles. But for Bausch, if you change the dancer you change the whole thing. They're not 'playing themselves' exactly, it's more that they just are themselves.
So Bausch would sit down with a dancer and ask them questions. Here's one she asked, maybe for Café Müller — "What do you do, in order to be loved?" They responded with "stories and movements from their own lives and imaginations. With them, she would elaborate, cut, compile, and integrate the material into a dance."2 That process by itself is interesting but — that question! It's not "what do you do to express love" or "what do you do when you're in love" it's "What do you do, in order to be loved?"
Just think about that, yourself, for a moment. What do you do, in order to be loved?
I am always observing. I pay close attention to people because I love them so much, and I fear if I don't understand them well enough I will do something wrong and they will leave me. Well, that's not the whole truth — I also study them because I want them, and I want to be the exact person they want. (I asked someone once what it felt like to be looked at me, and they said "It's like being studied." — obviously that one didn't work out). But then that's not the whole truth either — I pay close attention to people because I desire them, I want to get inside them and wear their skin and feel what it is like to be a part of them. No, even that's not quite true... I also want to honour them, to pay the most honest, devoted, loving tribute to who they truly are. To recognise them and make them feel recognised.
So — for me, to love is to look. And sure enough in Café Müller there is a dancer who watches, who franticly moves the chairs out of the way as a woman crashes around the stage.
Last night I watched it properly. I was drifting in and out of focus, trying to figure out what I thought. My focus was on two dancers — to me they seem to be in love. They have these amazing repetitive movements, grasping each other tightly, clinging on, moving their hands to their sides, kissing, holding, dropping, falling, clinging, at one point slamming each other against the wall again and again. And it's very absorbing.
After a while a woman in this curly red wig and high heels comes onto the stage. She has this sort of fast nervous click-clacking walk as she moves around watching this couple. The couple separate, and after a while the red-haired woman approaches the man. She kisses him. He holds his head still for a moment, and then moves away. She click-clacks towards him and kisses him again. He holds his head there for a moment, and then moves away. She click-clacks towards him again... and eventually he leaves. She is rootless for some time.
(Does this feel repetitive? It is repetitive. Movement is repetitive. Intimacy is repetitive.)
And then, then — this must be, within ten minutes of the end of the performance — something happens and it strikes me. I'm watching this in the dark in my bed, and I sit straight up. A man — a dancer we've not seen before — enters the stage and he has the exact same nervous, click-clacking walk. You hear it immediately, it's the absolute mirror of hers. He enters and moves skittishly around the stage, eyes always on the red-headed woman, and then he leaves.
He's there for barely a minute of the whole forty-five-minute piece. But it was a complete transformation. It's the movement! I thought. It's been about the movement this whole time!
I still don't know what that means, what I learned. The words feel crude.
I'm not that interested in loneliness. There are far more interesting forms of absence. But to tell you about those I need to tell you about the loneliest I've ever been. I'll try to be brief.
I studied in Falmouth, a small university town in Cornwall. After I graduated everyone went on to the big cities to make their way in the world, and I stayed. I made new friends, with the year below me, and then they left too. After that, I had no one. I fell into loneliness, and into fear. Occasionally I mustered the courage to attend some of the same arts nights I went to before with my friends. I would lean, sweating, against the wall, trying to stick it out for at least a little while before I had to go outside and smoke. I find that period in my life really embarrassing because I know people like that are kind of repulsive. You can almost smell how desperate they are.
I decided to get on the dating apps, try to meet someone. I quickly swiped through all the people in Falmouth — it must have taken me a single evening — with no result. I'd get to know by face all the other weird losers who would occasionally delete and recreate their account. Some of them I'd run into on Falmouth high street where we’d do our best to avoid eye contact.
Out of sheer hopelessness I started to expand the search radius. Ten miles, twenty, fifty, a hundred. I'd hit a big city and there would be a few new people to look at and then they'd all be gone because, obviously, no one wanted to travel five hours for a date with some weird feminine-looking guy in a seaside town. My search radius got so large it came ashore in France, and I actually ended up matching with a Parisian who I met up with once and didn’t vibe with. I don't know what I was trying to achieve with this — but when you're lonely enough you'll do almost anything, and unlike Mitski I didn't know how to write Platinum-selling pop songs.
Pathetic right? Well fuck you! Eventually I expanded my search to 500 miles, hit Scotland, matched with someone called e, and now we've been together ten years. I was on that loneliness grindset the whole time!
In these past ten years with e I've had a lot of time to observe them. They're a linguist and for a while they were studying something called biased questions. You know what they are, don't you? ← That's an example of a biased question — it asks something, but it also kind of states it. It indicates some bias on behalf of the questioner. That makes sense right? I've always taken an interest in e's work because, well — as discussed — I like to study people I like.
So once I made them a playlist of songs with biased questions in the lyrics. There are some greats! Here's one:
I know you like me, I know you do.
That's why whenever I come around, she's all over you
And I know you want it, it's easy to see
And in the back of your mind
I know you should be fuckin' with meDon't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?
Don't cha? Don't cha?
Let's imagine some alternative lyrics. "Do you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" sounds almost needy, and "You wish your girlfriend was hot like me." sounds neutral and uncaring. It's the mixing of statement and question that adds the spice. I know you want me, you know you want me. You can't say no but you definitely can't say yes.
This form of biased question is called, I think, a 'high negative biased question'. It’s my favourite kind. These are questions that start with a kind of negation, like 'don't you', 'isn't it', 'aren't you going to', etc. They tell and ask, attack and defend, hide and reveal, at the same time. They can be very seductive.
But you do have to watch out for them. For example —
But don't forget it's me who put you where you are now
And I can put you back down too.Don't — don't you want me?
You know I can't believe it when I hear that you won't see me
Don't — don't you want me?
You know I don't believe you when you say that you don't need me
Alright Mr. Human League! Anger, denial, bargaining — it's all here, and just like in Don't Cha the question is manipulative. "I know you want me, just admit it." But this time it's more desperate, coming after a relationship rather than before. This biased question attempts to stamp one partner's reality over the other's and get her to accept it — fortunately without success.3
OK, I've been building up to this one.
And so you're back, from outer space
I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face
I should have changed that stupid lock
I should have made you leave your key
If I'd have known for just one second you'd be back to bother meGo on now, go, walk out the door
Just turn around now, 'cause you're not welcome anymore
Weren't you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye?
Did you think I'd crumble? Did you think I'd lay down and die?
deep breath OH NO NOT I... it’s irresistible. The song's beating heart is reversal, denial, absence — even hurt, there's a lot of hurt — but not loneliness.
It took all the strength I had not to fall apart
Just tryin' hard to mend the pieces of my broken heart
And I spent oh so many nights just feeling sorry for myself
I used to cry, but now I hold my head up high
And you see me, somebody new
This ‘somebody new’ is the power behind the song, right? The energy released by separation is being used to re-forge the self.
Here's another kind of absence, perhaps the first any of us encounters —
I find it quite painful to watch. A couple weeks ago e and I were watching Planet Earth III and there's a similar scene. A bird is looking after a brood of chicks and one of them gets lost. The baby chirps and chirps, but her parent can't hear her. It seems for a moment like she might be lost forever — but at last they locate each other and all is well.
So it's no wonder that absence is such a deep well of energy. The infant losing its parent must put every ounce of its meagre resources into crying out — or it will surely die. So long as there is still any hope, nothing can be held back. That feeling isn’t inevitable — life on earth took millions of years to devise that pain, intensify it, and properly channel it. We receive the refined version as a gift from our parents, cry our way through it, and then pass it on to our own children.
As we grow older we learn that absence is inevitable. Our caregivers are unreliable and ultimately we will have to grow up and get along mostly without them. The phrase ‘secure attachment’ is misleading because there is no security in attachment. Attachment means opening yourself up to confusion, tragedy, and loss. Secure attachment really means to feel secure in that insecurity — to know that you will survive. Each tearful separation from our parents is a little lesson. Eventually we learn to tolerate absence to the point where we can harness its energy for our own ends.
With that in mind, it's funny to imagine the lyrics of I Will Survive from a toddler’s perspective —
At first I was afraid, I was petrified
Kept thinkin' I could never live without you by my side
But then I spent so many nights thinkin' how you did me wrong
And I grew strong. And I learned how to get along!
I don't know how a baby feels, but I like to imagine that the frustrated anger of the toddler is the first in a series of cycles that propel us through life — attachment, separation, growth, attachment... — each of them intertwined with the cycles of our parents, friends, employers, lovers, communities, etc.
And in each cycle, absence is providing the most dramatic bursts of energy. Attachment can be transformative, but it is the missing that drives us hardest. It was loneliness that fuelled the catchiness of Mitski's Nobody, just like it was loneliness that made me search five hundred miles of dating profiles. A similar kind of twisted anguish behind The Human League's Don't You Want Me perhaps drove Elon Musk to buy Twitter and ban the word 'cis' to get back at his ex. It is yearning that powers both the sexual tension in Don't Cha, and the frustrated grasping for love in Café Müller.
Lack of something. Or someone.
I’m not a songwriter. I can’t transform pain into joy the way Mitski can. Probably you can’t either. And I hope, right now, that you don’t need to. But it’s comforting to know that each of us is a creature built not merely to tolerate a world of absence, heartbreak, and loss — but to absorb it, digest it, and transform it into something else.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus said “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.” — and it’s not just men. When they went into Chernobyl, decades after the disaster, you know what they found? Cancer-resistant wolves, and a fungus that eats radiation! Isn’t that fucking cool? You and I, we’re a part of that.
K
Mitski’s album for this track is titled Be the Cowboy. It comes from a mantra she has — be the cowboy you wish to see in the world. “What would a white guy say? What would a swaggering cowboy riding into town do in this situation?”
You can read more in the New Yorker’s The Afterlife of Pina Bausch.
Another song quite similar to this is Nothing Better by The Postal Service — they both centre around a biased question, and they both use a man and a woman vocalist arguing over reality. And, not that you asked, but another example of the 'exes argue over reality' genre — Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye. They kinda remind me of rap battles. Send me some more if you have any lmao I've got time.