Douglas Coupland, the author of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and populariser of the word McJob – to mean unskilled work, product of the transformation from industrial to postindustrial labour – suffered loneliness when he was a young man, influencing his later novel Eleanor Rigby.
He once spoke of his lonely experiences in the Melbourne broadsheet The Age:
If they told us in school that there was this weird thing you were going to experience the moment you turn 20, that would have been a great service. It might be just a North American thing but you always have to smile for the camera and give it your best. Negative emotions, or inevitable emotions, never get discussed.
His book, as those of sound musical mind will know, is named after a song by The Beatles about an old woman who dies lonely, and whose funeral is only attended by a priest called Father Mackenzie, who may or may not be based on a real ‘Father’ Tommy Mackenzie.
Oddly enough, Rigby herself existed, and is buried in a graveyard in Liverpool where Lennon and McCartney used to spend their bored days.
The Beatles anthology, the name of a documentary series of three albums and a book about the band, mentions that McCartney ended up not thinking that it was all a coincidence, but rather that Rigby was hanging around in his unconscious.
If the story is to be believed, one day, on his own, at a piano, the first line of the song just came to McCartney:
The first few bars just came to me, and I got this name in my head… ‘Daisy Hawkins picks up the rice in the church’. I don’t know why. I couldn’t think of much more so I put it away for a day.
On Tuesday, the Daily Mail published an article about how children in the age of web 2.0 – the social networking class – “are twice as likely to feel lonely as those over 55.” The article cites the Mental Health Foundation as saying that the modern world is making the young more vulnerable. This quote is not in quotation marks, but a quote by Dr Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the foundation, is in quotes. He says: ‘The internet is not a root cause of loneliness but it can exacerbate the problem.’
Typical Mail. They provide an analysis of what the foundation have said first which ends up contradicting the quote they use by the chief executive of the foundation.
Dr McCulloch’s point is of course the one to listen to, at least half of his point is; that the internet is not the cause of loneliness, but it might make the problem worse. But then, if you’re lonely, what will help? How can we really tell if the internet is not helping the loneliness of a lonely person? Sounds like guesswork to me.
The internet might not help (Help! I need somebody Help! Not just anybody Help! I need someone Helllllllp! – as John Lennon once said) but what exactly do we have to prove that it might exacerbate the problem? Nothing.
But even so, doesn’t the song Eleanor Rigby teach us something about modern kids and loneliness; namely that when Lennon and McCartney were kids they would hang around graveyards, and become consumed by names on graves who forever more linger in their unconsciousnesses. Lonely or not, kids today ought to count themselves lucky they have internet porn and pac-man to play with rather than creepy, haunted carcass parks.
But also, most importantly, the song Eleanor Rigby was written when McCartney was alone on a piano. To be alone is one of the few pleasures left in the modern world, where hell is other people more than it has ever been.
by Carl Packman
You can read more of Carl’s thoughts and articles on his blog Raincoat Optimism.
