Loneliness Is Expensive

Season 4, #3: And not very fun. A dash of Daytalking turns that around

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

—Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

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DAYTALKING FEELS IMPOSSIBLE THESE days, no doubt.

So, you might be asking, what the heck is “Daytalking”?

Oh, that’s easy to define but damn hard to get—and, much less, keep. It’s connected to relationships—just like human interaction and restaurant meals are doing for me post-pandemic (more on that in a sec). You see, Daytalking was something I’d stumbled across after I’d written a post to my old WordPress blog called “Up on the Roof.” (You can go check it out if you’d like to read it first and then stop back here. I’ll wait.)

It was a distinct feature of my young life but I wasn’t alone in expressing it. All my closest friends (and some lovers) understood its weight and power (and not ironically its levity) when we were Daytalking.

So is Daytalking just “conversation”?

Well, it’s more than that, actually. In truth, it often doesn’t involve words at all. Distilled down, it’s a sense of “being-togetherness.” There’s a deep joy in that feeling, a gratitude for the silent exchange of energy, and, well, a good dose of humor.

Yup … goofing around is a big part of Daytalking.

Two people getting their recommended daily requirement of Daytalking, and, well, a good dose of laughter, too (photo by by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash).

Since the pandemic, I’ve been 100% remote with working, which has kept me solvent, but I’m going a bit stir-crazy. I miss people. I’ve nearly forgotten the joys of chatter and conversation, of play and interaction. I’m home around the clock, so…I get out as much as I can. I have meals in restaurants, which unfortunately has become expensive. It’s not so much the food and drink (although there is that) but the genial noise of the patrons, the chats with servers and bartenders, the catching up with local news and where everyone is at. It’s the dopamine hit of social interaction that I’m actually getting—all from going out.

Not everyone understands the pleasures of Daytalking. Still, some do.

While reading drummer Phil Lancaster’s memoir about his early touring life with David Bowie (at the time he knew him, Davy Jones), I was taken aback (but not entirely surprised) that Phil and David like to do their own form of Daytalking.

Lancaster recounts their humorous exchanges in his book At the Birth of Bowie: Life with the Man Who Became a Legend (John Blake Publishing, 2019):

Humour was and remained to be, as far as I could tell, a big part of [David Bowie’s] make-up. It certainly is that way for me. A sense of humour, especially if you’re like-minded, is a great way of getting on with people. Dave was always quick to laugh and that could be infectious…

Once, Dave and I made up a language—one with absolutely no rules, just complete gibberish, and pretended to hold a conversation in which each of us understood the other… ‘I went down the dell’ (spoken in a silly, warbly voice) was one of David’s favourite recurring lines when we were acting out as kids. Long journeys could take on daft themes like this to pass the time. And we did a lot of travelling.

On reflection, I’m pretty sure some of this daft made-up language came from Tony Newley’s Gurney Slade, a rather surreal TV character that Newley himself devised. The Strange World of Gurney Slade [see clip in notes below], as it was called, was a terrific series broadcast around 1960. It made a big impression on me, mainly because it was so unusual, so out there. It was actually a bit too advanced for its time, as it confused most who watched it, but I loved it and I know David did too. It’s sad that it’s kind of forgotten in TV history now, but you can be sure that most of the Pythons, for example, were in part inspired by this series.

Lancaster goes on to mention other inspirations for the Daytalking he and David Bowie enjoyed, including Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s Not Only … But Also TV series where Cook would attempt to make Moore break out of character and laugh. Lancaster recalls the rejuvenating rush that he and Bowie got when they tried to mimic that style:

Dave and I certainly did our best to create the same vibe in our own little world, as we flitted from town to town in the night. We often had adrenalin to spare while returning home from our latest ballroom engagement, and acting like Bill and Ben or Pete and Dud helped us to wind down. We should have called it The Strange World of Phil and Dave (Phil and Dave sounding a bit like Pete and Dud—I’m not trying to grab star billing here). I wish we had recorded some of these comedy moments. When Dave started to laugh it was totally infectious. He could set the whole ambulance off when he got going, and there were times when our uncontrolled laughter would physically hurt too. They were some of the best times we had.

So, you see? Daytalking can physically hurt you but you’ll still feel better for doing it.

When I found Gurney Slade on YouTube, I was pleased to see in Episode 1 probably the very “nonsense” Phil and Dave engaged in. I can almost hear it now, with Bowie’s opening salvo: “I went down the dell!” and Lancaster’s probable follow-up: “Did you now? Whatcha see there?” “There I encountered a minkey.” “A minkey? Surely you mean monkey!” “No, ’twas a minkey since I hadn’t a hanky to spare!”

Who knows what they said, but the resulting convulsion by laughter and the pure emotional release is what Daytalking represents in real life.

Looking at my own situation—right here, right now—I’m feeling anxiety as I write this since my mind is jumping ahead to getting out and about in the world. It helps to have a plan, so this might be a good time to try an experiment. Ahead of what I’m about to do (visit some artists’ open house this afternoon and have lunch out) I’m also returning some DVDs and CDs to the local library and I intend to ask about their community education programs while I’m there (my library has an excellent media section and is attached to the neighborhood community center). If successful, I’ll get a class schedule and see if they have a membership fee (most community centers in the Upper Midwest do not, but they do charge for classes).

This, I hope, does two—wait, no—three things: 1) it gets me outside of my quiet and lonely apartment; 2) I can learn about taking a physical exercise course, pickleball, or other activity where I move my body and meet new people; and 3) get curious about local artists’ work—also meeting new people and learning what they’re into.

That seems like a solid plan and not particularly expensive (except for lunch out), and even if all doesn’t go well I’ll report back here and share what I’ve learned.

Meanwhile, enjoy the videos below and check out Gentle Creative’s newsletter on the idea of Chronic Play. I found it timely just as I was getting ready to send out this newsletter (Cali’s bullet point on “Have mini-adventures. It might not be possible to take a lot of time off but maybe a day or half-day trip to somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit,” really resonated with a newsletter I sent two years ago, about Fascination Excursions):

Do You Like The Idea Of Chronic Play?

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Notes

The Strange World of Gurney Slade clip:

Moore, Sellers, and Cook clip: