Unspooling

No one can bear it alone

Sometimes an image sticks so well that I forget where or when I encountered it. The only thing I remember about May, from The Secret Life of Bees, is that she’s too porous. Her sensitivity overwhelms her. So her family devises a system, not unlike the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, whereby each time May is overcome with sadness, she writes what troubles her on a piece of paper and tucks it between the stones of a wall near her house.

The Paris Review recently published an essay by Richard Deming about the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. Deming, a recovering alcoholic, weaves his experiences with what he knows of Hoffman—an actor, famous for his haunting portrayals of loneliness, who died by overdose after decades of sobriety. The essay is a remarkable commentary on the intersection of loneliness and addiction. It’s also a reminder that loneliness comes for even the most talented and successful among us.

Deming wonders if perhaps Hoffman descended too far into loneliness “in order to know it and to be able to express on the cinema screen its warp and woof.” In his descent, he “lost the thread that could have led him back out, and that hunger, that need for connection, devoured him wholly.”

A wall in Jerusalem. Disposable camera from March 2016.

I keep returning to Deming’s image of the thread. For all of philosophy’s talk of the lone figure on the mountain, the lone writer at a desk, there must also be a way back.

Last month I wrote about becoming soft. There is joy here, and also grief. When some of us allow ourselves to be soft, it’s impossible to not also feel the pain written on paper and tucked between stones.

Hoffman lost his thread that, like May’s wall, could have provided life-saving relief. Deming cites social psychologists Daniel Perlman and Letitia Anne Peplau, who define loneliness as “the unpleasant experience that occurs when a person’s network of social relations is deficient in some important way, either quantitatively or qualitatively.”

Loneliness is never more profound than when we are surrounded by people, or in close relationship with someone, who can’t see us.

I’m reminded that a thread needn’t always be human. From the scholar

Kim TallBear

: “I do not privilege humans in my accounting of relations or relatives. I lodge without other humans most of the time. But my treasured companion most days is the North Saskatchewan River that flows just outside my south-facing windows, large as life.”

Loneliness is fickle. It’s easier to try to go it alone. And not all outlets lead to safety—something an addict likely knows well.

As a teenager I frequently dreamt I was walking a tightrope high above ground. And I was. I knew that I couldn’t fall—that I wouldn’t let myself—because at the time there was no way back up.

It takes courage to descend fully into softness and stay there long enough to look around. I am hesitant to fall entirely. I’m still not sure how it’s done.

I like that Deming doesn’t blame Hoffman for descending fully into the abyss. Instead, he recognizes that Hoffman’s talent, his art, was the result of such courageous searching.

What’s missing was the thread—his link back to the surface. The relief for what’s too heavy to bear on our own. A web knit by paper tucked between stones.

Blurry documentation of a spell. April 2023.

There must always be a way back. Maybe it’s time to trade these shields for something more pliant. Soft and strong, like thread.

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I’ll leave you with these songs by Quinn Christopherson and Medium Build, two divers who plumb the depths and emerge with handfuls of gold. I hope you find some too.

Cheers, Julia