Olivia Laing

feeling of the singing of the real world, as one is driven by loneliness and silence from the habitable world.

Privacy has been breached, but it doesn’t make the woman any less alone, exposed in her burning chamber.

commitments to tether me in place

swift apprehension of loneliness

marvellous things have emerged from the lonely city: things forged in loneliness, but also things that function to redeem it.

I found myself adrift, stunned by the swift arrival and even swifter departure of everything I thought I lacked.

I didn’t cry often, but once I couldn’t get the blinds closed and then I did. It seemed too awful, I suppose, the idea that anyone could peer over and get a glimpse of me, eating cereal standing up or combing over emails, my face illuminated by the laptop’s glare.

The revelation of loneliness, the omnipresent, unanswerable feeling that I was in a state of lack, that I didn’t have what people were supposed to, and that this was down to some grave and no doubt externally unmistakable failing in my person: all this had quickened lately, the unwelcome consequence of being so summarily dismissed.

Under normal circumstances, I don’t suppose any of this would have provoked more than idle curiosity, but that autumn wasn’t normal. Almost as soon as I arrived, I was aware of a gathering anxiety around the question of visibility. I wanted to be seen, taken in and accepted, the way one is by a lover’s approving gaze. At the same time I felt dangerously exposed, wary of judgement, particularly in situations where being alone felt awkward or wrong, where I was surrounded by couples or groups.

In the absence of love, I found myself clinging hopelessly to the city itself: the repeating tapestry of psychics and bodegas, the bump and grind of traffic,