Last week I posted this on FaceBook and wanted to share on the FV site as well.  As a musician, needing time alone is crucial if for no other reason than to have space to take in the world so you can actually say something about it.  Lonliness is something I’ve  grappled with  for a longtime.  I’m pretty comfortable being alone but sometimes feel guilty that I’m not ‘more’ social or more ‘visible’. And one of the things I’ve read along the way was an excerpt of an interview of the great Frank Zappa giving his take on the subject.

I ran across this and it struck a cord.  The answer to the second question is the thing but I’ve added the preceding Q&A as well and that’s not too shabby either. I’m not saying this is what I feel but I see his ‘meanin’ and I definitely think its a valid point of view hopefully open to a jubilant discussion.  Wouldn’t that be cool?  A jubilant discussion about being alone!

Frank Zappa Companion
Interview Revolt against mediocrity

Originally printed in The Progressive, a Wisconsin Monthly magazine (1986)

An excerpt:

Q: What do you see as your greatest accomplishment and your greatest failure.

Zappa: I would say that my entire life is a massive failure. Because I don’t have the tools or wherewithal to accomplish what I want to accomplish. If you have an idea and you want that idea to be done a certain way and you can’t do it, what would you have? You have failure. I live with failure everyday because I can’t do the things I really want to do.  Unfortunately, I have these ideas that are just too fucking expensive.  In realistic terms, you’re looking at a genuine daily failure syndrome. I have no fantasies about what the odds are at being able to do what I want to do. It’s not going to happen. Once you realize what your limitations are and realize that even if you “achieve” something it doesn’t make a fucking bit of difference anyway, then you can be “okay”. I enjoy sitting down here (in the studio) all by myself typing on the Synclavier. I can do 12 hours and I love it. And I know that ultimately it doesn’t mean a fucking thing that I did it.  It’s useless.  That’s oaky; it makes me feel good.

Q: It seems that for most people that kind of isolation would lead to loneliness.

Zappa: Try to imagine what the opposite of loneliness is.  Think of it. Everyone in the world loves you? What is that? Realize that you’re in isolation.  Live it! Enjoy it! Just be glad that there aren’t a bunch of people who want to use up your time. Because along with all the love and admiration that’s going to come from the people that would keep you from being lonely, there is the emotional freight you have to bear from people who are wasting your time, and you can’t get that back. So when you’re lonely and you’re all by yourself, guess what you have? You have all of your own time. That’s a pretty good fucking deal.  Something you couldn’t buy anyplace else.  And every time you’re out being sociable ad having other people be “nice” to you so that you don’t feel “lonely,” they’re wasting your time.  What are you getting for it?  Because after they’ve done being nice to you, then they want something from you. And they’ve already taken your time!

Loneliness, once you come to deal with it so that it is not an uncomfortable sensation, so it doesn’t feel like drowning or something is not a bad deal.  It’s a good deal. It’s the next best thing to solitude. I’m not talking solitary confinement.  Solitude. If you’re sensitive to loneliness, then you’re gonna be in trouble, because then the loneliness turns into something really painful, a horrible depression and then you die.  One way or the other, you just die.  So who needs that shit?