Feeling alienated from the world is not a new phenomenon.
We believe we don’t belong, and our lack of confidence underscores our strangeness. Authenticity becomes dangerous for fear of exposing our dislocation, as if there were a flaw in our manufacture, putting us in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Two examples, many years apart.
The first is 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen, portrayed in the 1999 movie Girl, Interrupted. The story begins with an overdose, leading to psychiatric hospitalization.
A friend of hers on the same ward, Daisy, kills herself late in the film.
A nurse, Valerie, attempts to console Susanna:
- Valerie: “What would you have said to her?”
- Susanna: “I don’t know. That I was sorry. That I will never know what it was like to be her. But I know what it’s like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in, but you can’t. You hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.”
In the course of her treatment, her psychiatrist Dr. Wick captures Susanna’s estrangement with a quotation in Latin from Seneca’s Hercules Furens:
“What place is this, what region, what shores of the world? “
Seneca (4 BC — 65 AD) understood Susanna’s sense of not belonging 2,000 years ahead of her birth.
Something of a different vintage touches us. It is the 1902 song by Gustav Mahler – “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen“ (Rückert): “I have become lost to the world.”
Once again, we sense ostracism and exclusion from the smiling faces around us. There is an ache in the singer’s voice — a quiet resignation, revealing his self-exile from the possibility of a shared life.
Mahler identifies with the poetry he set to music. As the composer wrote, “It is my very self” expressed in this work.
Modernity has been blamed for such feelings since the Industrial Revolution. Yet, if we listen to songs that move us to tears, we are not so alone as we think.
Mahler is someone else who shares a recognition of our emotional life without knowing us.
A connection to others often comes in the music matched to words, reminding us that some strangers feel as we do, and we are not so odd and dislocated after all.
Defying the singer’s message, we realize we must search for individuals who identify with the music, and thereby with us.
Not only the vocal art of Mahler, but any composition — any song or symphony in which we find the recognition of our vulnerability — enlarges our awareness and demonstrates the possibility of human connectedness.
Soul mates are out there.
No wonder that one of the first questions we ask of a new acquaintance is, “What music do you like?”
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The top image is Lotus and Herons by Huang Yongyu, 1984. It is followed by Vasile Kazar’s untitled painting. Both are sourced from Wikart.org/
I do love your sentiment. As a classical pianist, I have a passion for the kinds of emotions expressed by composers that let me speak without words. I am blessed to have a few friends and a husband who share my passion. Thanks for reminding the joy of listening and sharing.
PS: Once again, I adore your art.
So very kind of you. Your validation is most welcome. Those who hear your playing must be very lucky.
Thank you so much for this post, dear Dr. Stein. There’s a profound sense of peace, solemnity that comes from Mahler and this piece. I listened/watched last night and again this morning. It serves as a meditation…a reminder that the ethereal – stepping away – is soul-satisfying and necessary.
Many thanks. 💕
I am very happy that Mahler won you over, Vicki. If I could only take one of his compositions to a desert island, it would be this song. His symphonies have big emotions, too, and are worth hearing. His life is also quite a story I can tell you about sometimes.
Many thanks, Dr. Stein, for your thoughts! Maybe I do not feel connectedness with music, but vey much when I read books with my friends.
I imagine there are many ways to connect, Martina. Thank you for adding one I hadn’t thought of. All the best!
:):)
Interesting, Dr. Stein. Music is indeed food for the soul. I’ve never used music as a way of connecting with others or a potential soulmate. On the other hand, I cannot imagine spending a lifetime with a person who loved music that rattled my sensibility.
Thank you, Rosaliene. I don’t think most people use conversation about musical likes in an inappropriate way, but rather as something they enjoy and hope others do in the same way. The question of what people like is one of many ways we find our about others.
It could be movies, food, TV, art, gardening, travel, etc. but at its best, music seems to carry emotion and understanding,.
We hope others can relate to us and vice versa. Sometimes we hit it off in multiple areas and hope to see the other again.
I agree that it would be hard to live with someone whose music is distasteful! Thanks again for your thoughtful take on the subject!
I had to chew on this one for a little bit, probably because I spent many years feeling othered. I not only felt different, but I had many people telling me to drop my art making, that was the cause of me being different, they told me. I did try to comply. I did try to stop creating in order to be accepted as being acceptable to them and it nearly broke me. I felt more than bereft. I felt like I was dropping the very voice and language I used to process life and to communicate. It felt like carving a piece of me out.
That’s when I realized that I needed to just accept that I wasn’t like a lot of people, that I was indeed different, and that it wasn’t a bad thing. Once I reached a point of fully accepting myself and even liking and loving myself for the mixed bag I was, that the naysayers dropped away.
Being different isn’t the problem, I discovered. It was the lack of self-acceptance and lack of liking myself that telegraphed itself to others, and in their efforts to “fix” or “mend” me, I had interpreted it as them rejecting the very things that sustained me.
They were in their way, trying to help me. They weren’t creative themselves, nor were they driven by any passions, so they attributed my own brokenness as being the fault of what made me different from them.
(By the way, this has spring-boarded into a new post!)
I appreciate your openness, as well as your thoughtful comment, Tamara. I think those who are exceptional in the best sense (artistic, creative, intelligent, etc.) often find themselves set apart by the fact of being different. It can be a lonely place. I am glad you found a way out and, I hope, found a community of others who are like-minded and understanding.
This is such a wonderful approach to finding others who are similar. How interesting to think about the music we identify with as a way to express our depths. Thank you, Dr. Stein!
You are welcome, Wynne. Some people ask this question in a casual way, without a pass/fail intention. Still, it can be informative and, in the best cases, find a shared quality that opens the door to a relationship.