In the next four newsletters, including this one, I am sharing some old work which hasn’t been seen much. The following conversation-interview is from a project I called Cause & Effect which I conducted in 2015/16. The purpose of the project was to talk to people about loneliness—if and how they experienced it and how they dealt with it (interviewees were kept anonymous (but it turns out later (in other issues) that anonymity is not “the” solution to easing people’s comfort with having their story appear in print). More on this later when relevant. The output of the conversations was in the form of palm-sized zines. Appearing here is Issue 1 of 4 which was originally titled “hello?” I printed about 20 to 25 copies of each issue. While I sold some copies (Issue 1 & 2) at the 2015 Vancouver Art/Book Fair, mostly I distributed them myself by leaving them in public spaces as well as giving a few to friends to distribute wherever they wanted.
Two people speaking. My words are italicized, the interviewee’s aren’t.
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August 2015
we talked face to face, in person, live, in the flesh, I saw your face, your gestures, your body language…we talked
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cubicle | computers | lunchtime
“I was feeling restless…but I don’t know what I’m restless for exactly…I see all these people walking but I don’t want to go out introducing myself to strangers, I’m not extroverted that way…I’m sitting in my cubicle all day and then what?”
“At the end of the day you still need to feel connected…sometimes when you’re in the middle of a situation you can’t think clearly.”
“…sometimes I’ll go for a bike ride at sunset…but it’s still just me.”
“…it’s not a friendly environment, plus the work is not collaborative…I mean I help put a newspaper together but it’s still very…”
“You have your own tasks, you work at your computer, in your cubicle.”
“Yeah, and even then with my fellow researcher, she’s not terribly friendly, like she’s fine, we get along but she’s very negative and just wants to vent and when I try to talk about how I feel about my work-load, she’s not interested. It’s very much one way.”
“…I’m already thinking what I can do to fill up my lunchtime… ‘oh, ok, I’ll pick up that hold at the library, that’s a half hour walk, or what book to bring to read, I’d better make sure I bring something, so I’ve got something to do at lunch instead of just sitting there.”
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dogs | walking | hello?
“They’re not necessarily friendly because they have a dog. There’s a lot of people that don’t want to talk to you and you can tell by their behaviour that sometimes people are afraid to say ‘hello.’
Sometimes there’s another person walking with their dog, the dogs want to say ‘Hi,’ they need to smell each other, so I’m like ‘sure, yeah’ but sometimes people’s body language tells you like ‘uh, do I have to stop?’ They’re tense.
I’m healthier in my mind…before I wouldn’t have enjoyed going for walks on my own. It just isn’t the same. It’s depressing to go for a walk on your own…she takes my mind off myself.
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spontaneity | connection | permanence
“…I just want to bump into somebody that I kinda know and say ‘hey, do you want to grab a coffee?’ You just wish for something simple like that…”
“…it’s different from the spontaneity of my childhood… in my 30s and now in my 40s, most of my peer group are moms and frantic and not available…even when I lived in Montreal, it was weird. I was a block away from my friend Laura who I had known since high school, and then two blocks away was Tony who I had known since like after high school…and that was pretty spontaneous…“What are you doing Tony?”… “Oh, I’m gonna have a drink on my porch. You should come by.”
“…there’s that really good connection because sometimes you’ll hang out with someone and it will be OK, then other times same person, same friend…there’ll just be a topic, some sort of coming together of energies I guess too (if I can be new-agey) when you feel really inspired…”
“…being on my own in Montreal, if I was going out to the grocery store or whatever, for me it was a lonely city because I couldn’t understand half of the language…”
“Yeah, like what is going on…”
“Yeah, …it’s a lot different from vacationing or traveling and not knowing the language because you’re not permanently there, whereas there, these little things start to seep in.”
“Right, you can’t easily have little chats with people, like at the bus stop or standing in line at the grocery store.”
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the flavour of a city
“I’ve tried to fight against that idea that a place could be lonely. I think it’s more a combination of people at a certain time in their life. I don’t understand why people blame it on a place because it seems to me that it’s something that comes from within, that it self-perpetuates as well.”
“You have to look at how the city has changed. There’s a lot of rules in Vancouver, a lot of bylaws for things people cannot do. A lot of other places are more relaxed about things you can or cannot do in your backyard, your neighbourhood…in New Orleans for example…I went to the Ricky Lee Jones concert just last week at the Rio, it was really good…anyway, she was saying how she was living in LA…and she just felt lonely, everybody in their cars with no chance to say ‘hello.’ Her daughter had moved to New Orleans, so she decided to move there, she was lonely in LA. She recounted how in New Orleans you get out the house and people say hello or give you a nod if they’re on their bicycle. They’ll acknowledge you, which is something that people here have a hard time doing…here you’re invisible…so she was saying how in New Orleans people get together and walk in the middle of the street and play their instruments—with no permits. It’s part of the culture.
The city determines how you can behave. Montreal feels different too, right? I haven’t spent a lot of time there, I’ve only visited but I remember how you could bring your own bottle of wine to restaurants.”
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shared experience
“Yes, I was also thinking of late nights in Montreal when the heat and the humidity is so horrible. In the evening, there’s tons of people out in the parks, there’s kids having their ice cream at eleven at night, so excited to be up so late…I remember one night there was this guy reading a book under the streetlight and someone else by a bridge in the park playing his accordion…it was very European…people were out and about. Then there’s that shared experience ‘Oh, my God, it’s so fucking hot.’ ”
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/end of printed conversation/
The conversation continued, and we talked about rain & loneliness, helmet laws, bikes & speed, biking in Portland, government legislation, urban planning, uptight citizens, yelling in the city, negative energy and anger, and how these things might all be contributing to loneliness.
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Thank you for reading. Next week I’ll share Issue 2 from this project. And if you’d like to support my work, buy me a coffee? ~ Laura