Digging through the latest survey of the Sociological Research Center (CIS) On social trends, in a specific section where affective ties are discussed, a very revealing piece of information appears: 81.3% of the Spaniards consulted consider that within a decade there will be more loneliness and isolation than now. Eight out of ten people predict that there will be more isolation. It is a very high, very high and disconcerting percentage in the era of hyperconnectivity. As there is no room for nuances in a survey, it is understood that the question asks about uncomfortable solitude, the one that hurts. That loneliness that “advances, cold as ice and translucent as glass, and locks those who suffer it into an abyss,” he writes. Olivia Laing in ‘The lonely city: adventures in the art of being alone’, a very opportune reading, by the way, to reflect on a matter with more layers than an onion. In the CIS survey, 70% of those consulted predict that, ten years from now, there will also be more social and economic differences than now, resulting in a tremendous combination: loneliness and empty pockets.
Laing’s essay devotes quite a few pages to the American Edward Hopper, the painter of urban solitude—lobbies, hotel rooms, soulless gas stations—, and specifically the painting he painted in 1942 under the title ‘Nighthawks’; that is, ‘The night owls’ or ‘Night owls’. you know, that 24 hour cafeteria where three strangers, two men in gray suits and a woman in red speed up the night sitting at a cold bar, served by a waiter who seems elusive, with a little hat like for serving ice cream. The four of them seem submerged in an aquarium, among veins of jade, a sickly pale green.
‘The day after’
Related news
Just last week, @albertopons, who knows a lot about art and good taste, discovered me on Instagram at painter Jose Manuel Ballester, Specifically, a collection where he revisits classic paintings, emptying them of all human presence. She has done it with ‘The raft of the Medusa’, of Gericault, with ‘Las Meninas’, by Velázquez, and with ‘El 3 de mayo de 1808’, by Goya, among other works. But, believe me, where the effect of abandonment is devastating is in the painting of the North American, which Ballester baptizes as ‘The day after. Empty Nighthawks’ (Edward Hopper, 1942). Without those ‘night hawks’, so alone and self-absorbed, the cafeteria becomes a truly inhospitable, freezing place, with a morgue light.
Solitude can be pleasant, creative, comfortable. It is necessary to experience it to find one’s own essence because it is right within it, in its very center, where we distinguish the voices of others. Being alone allows you to discover the healing power of the other, Even if it’s at a bar.