Not (Not) Lonely
Welcome to the first Special Projects mini-series.
Hello hello,
Today we’re launching the first-ever mini-series: Not (Not) Lonely. A small batch of newsletters about art, creativity, loneliness, and connection.
A few years ago, when I was in a reading rut, a friend of mine recommended a book by Olivia Laing called The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone.
I bought the book, tucked it into my backpack, and carried it around for months without reading a single word. I kept finding excuses not to open it, going for long walks or scrolling social media instead.
The truth? I was lonely. And I worried that reading about another female artist in New York City who was also lonely would break me open somehow.
Finally though, on a hot summer day, I picked it up. And once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. Laing is brilliant.
I love so many things about The Lonely City. I love how she uses the personal — her own heartbreak and isolation — as an entry point into art history and criticism of some of the best painters, photographers, graphic artists, and more. (And some of her lines are simply incredible. One of them is an epigraph for my novel, Loneliness & Company.)
But there’s a reason I’m bringing this book up now, in this letter, to help explain the first series. In The Lonely City, Laing studies some of the most iconic artists of our time to think about solitude, loneliness, and what feeling like an outsider does to someone; to their art.
In the next few newsletters, we’re going to look at those same themes, but on a micro-level with artists who are just starting off, or are currently in the thick of their careers.
There are some really amazing artists lined up from all different mediums, and I can’t wait to share their interviews with you.
Stay tuned,
Charlee
A few extra thoughts…
If a picture is worth a thousand words, here are two images to give you a vibe of what Not (Not) Lonely is about.
Olivia Laing writes about the artist Edward Hopper, a realist painter and printmaker, who lived in New York. I loved being introduced to his art — some of which I’d seen or heard of before — through her book. She writes:
That autumn, I kept coming back to Hopper’s images, drawn to them as if they were blueprints and I was a prisoner; as if they contained some vital clue about my state. Though I went with my eyes over dozens of rooms, I always returned to the same place: to the New York diner of Nighthawks, a painting that Joyce Carol Oates once described as “our most poignant, ceaselessly replicated romantic image of American loneliness”...
“Nighthawks” is such a great title for this painting; for the people of New York who are out and about at all times of night.
Somewhat related, I love this cover of the 2019 New Yorker magazine. While “Nighthawks” captures the on-the-ground view, this one is a birds-eye view. It’s called “Big City” by Pascal Campion.
