Tragic Elizabeth and The Language of Aloneness

Last week, when in La Latina, one of the hipster areas of Madrid, I inspired such intense pity in the waiting staff of a café that they offered me a job. My Spanish is terrible. I recently, accidentally but with forceful enthusiasm, informed a taxi driver that I’m a fascist , and the majority of my attempts at speech still involve optimistically adding ‘ivo’ onto the end of English words.  Note: fascista and faschionista not to be confused.

So what was it that I was doing? This thing so heart-wrenching and pitiful that these waiters were willing to overlook my bumbling, fascist, Spanish-illiterate ways, and offer me a livelihood? I was eating lunch by myself. I was eating lunch by myself, out in the open, like the crazy bitch that I am. Well OK, I was also wistfully gazing at small children playing in the square, whilst drinking a glass of wine. There’s a strong possibility that you could see my ovaries twinkling in my eyeballs, BUT STILL.

The concerned individuals even used the word ‘shocked’ and asked me, with brow furrowed, ‘but for why?!’ This was difficult for me to answer, because I wanted to ask them the same thing. I was also shocked and wondering why.

Gin and tonic for one please?
Have recently learnt that drinking
alone in Madrid suggests alcoholism.
Ooops...

I looked around me and realised that there was not a single person in the entire square who was, well, single. In fact, I had never seen anyone eating by themselves in the weeks I'd spent in Madrid. But why? In London nobody would bat an eyelid to see someone enjoying a leisurely lunch by themselves, more than that it would be considered an admirable quality to have the self-assurance and independence to do so. Does being independent also make you tragic here?

Once I began to ponder this, one surprising but glaring detail of my Madrid experience struck me: I never feel lonely here. I often do in London. Nothing heartbreaking or debilitating, just that self-indulgent kind of loneliness. Like dipping the tip of your tongue in cinnamon to make it tingle; slightly bitter, slightly sweet, a little addictive. Of course this isn't clinical loneliness, it’s my fetishised, glamorous version. But in consideration of real loneliness, what is the connection between independent people, or individualistic cultures, and loneliness? Is there a connection? 

According to Eric Klinenberg in his 2012 book, ‘Going Solo’, what counts in combatting loneliness is not the quantity of friends we have or socialising we do, but the quality. I read this and thought I'd caught the Madridian’s out. They have mostly superficial friendships! I thought to myself,  fickle friends happy to up and tapas somewhere else at the drop of a tapa! This fitted in neatly with my smug assumption that independence beats sociability, the loner is happier than the cheerleader. Strongly encouraged independence from the moment of umbilical detachment is clearly the only way.

Just after I decided this to be true, I read up on some studies and statistics. Always a bad idea for personal theories that, reading the facts. 

Turns out that the Spanish score the fifth highest in the EU for feeling close to those around them and the third highest on having someone to turn to in a crisis.* It seems that the Spanish do not, in fact, live with fickle friends who are willing to up and tapas somewhere else at the drop of a tapa. They are actually just doing a shit ton of brilliant quality socialising, with huge quantities of people, all the bloody time. Umm… how?!

I had a little chat with my Spanish teacher, Diego, on this matter of aloneness.

My aim was simple: ask him specifically about Spanish language surrounding ideas of alone-time/independence, and conclude some kind of very clever thesis on the way specific language influences thoughts and expression and therefore behaviour and loneliness etc… but every which way I asked him about this, I got the same answer: what is the context? Diego could not confirm whether the equivalent to words like ‘loner’ or ‘individual’ have a positive or negative connotation, unless I gave him context.

It was during this line of questioning that I realised I had misunderstood something vital about the incident in the café. It was not that I was by myself that was so shocking, but more that I was eating by myself. Had I been going for a walk or going to an exhibition that would have been fine, but it was the context of my aloneness that they pitied. 

I am beginning to think that this element of context is an influential factor in feelings of togetherness. Spanish is certainly a more contextual language than English, I have found that even in beginner’s lessons. Does this make it a more dynamic mode of expression and therefore the Spanish people more expressive, more socially dynamic? Samuel Beckett famously switched over from writing in his native English, to French, because he found English words so detached from their actual meaning, so inexpressive in and of themselves. Perhaps the fluidity of the Spanish language leads to people who can better express themselves, that are less trapped by rigidity of definition, and therefore more connected to those around them. Less lonely. 

Having said all that, I would still quite like to be able to lunch by myself without accidentally inspiring a Help Tragic Elizabeth charity campaign. Is that too much to ask?

*The UK traipses in at the second lowest in closeness to those around them, which is not sup rising considering our innate fear of getting stuck chatting to the neighbours. We are the third lowest for having someone to turn to in a crisis, but who needs that anyway when you can handle it yourself?