In the UK, the government is addressing the scourge of loneliness head-on with several initiatives. Loneliness shortens lives by making them less fun, so it makes sense that the government might step in. It’s odd that we might experience a loneliness epidemic given that there are more people on the planet than ever before, and we are all hyper-connected to one another. You’d think we’d have the opposite problem: a lack of privacy epidemic. But of course, our screens don’t bring us closer together.
But even when we have friends, partners, children, and coworkers in our lives, we can still feel alone. At least, I have. I’ve often had this feeling of being separate from the world in which I live. Not in a “I’m a unique individual” kind of way, but in a perpetually isolated kind of way. I have always found it a bit painful to realize that, as close as you can be to another person, there’s a part of us that is still alone- always. That’s the nature of consciousness, I suppose. Many songs have been written that touch upon this loneliness, but this isn’t one of them. This song is more political.
I have this sneaky suspicion that we are isolated from each other by design. In a democracy, there is one minority that is particularly vulnerable: the rich. Except, somehow, legislators keep passing laws that make the rich richer. How? Division. What many liberals and conservatives don’t seem to appreciate is how both groups base their politics on human values that are then exploited by the wealthy for their own ends. Trump won an election promising to lower prices, and prices go up. It’s not a fluke. It’s how the system is designed.
As a society, we have been trained to value wealth and to view any lack of it as a sign of personal failure. But our access to wealth is typically controlled by those who already have it. Nobody gets rich by sharing. Nobody gets rich by empowering others to succeed. Maybe one or two have. I’ll have to look into it. It seems unlikely. At any rate, we are trained to want/need money. There are many things that I have that I can share with others and not be any worse off for it. Sure, loaning you my circular saw will, in theory, add some wear and tear, but it’s hardly noticeable. Instead, we are expected to be productive to boost GDP. Sharing doesn’t do that- neither does bartering.
I couldn’t tell you much about how/when I wrote this song. It was early on in this batch, I can tell that based on where it falls in the Word document, and I remember that it all started with the chorus. Sometimes you start singing something over and over, and then you have to sit down and write verses to get yourself to that chorus that is already in your head. This is one of those songs.
While I didn’t write the song about the pandemic, I did a lot of recording of this song during that time. The chorus certainly resonated with that time- what with social distancing and all. I began recording folks like Myron Koch, Arabo Bey and Leigh Ann Yost remotely. I just asked if they could record themselves and send me the file, and they did. It gave us all something to do. It was quite a pleasant surprise to listen to the recordings the artists made. No feedback was necessary, since everybody hit the nail on the head. Made me question myself as a producer, but I suppose part of producing is finding the right people to do the job- not just telling them what to do.
Well, time flew by and I had a pretty good version of the song, but last fall I began replacing stuff that I did with my new version of the Navigators. Tonya came in and added more backing vocals, Woody added keys, Glen added drums and Tim played bass. Voila! The song sounded a bit too classic-rock, so Andrew McKenna Lee added some more modern-sounding guitar, and there you have it.