During my summer living off the kindness of others (i.e. conducting ethnographic research while carless in Los Angeles), I found myself standing outside a sushi bar in Pasadena explaining my research to a friend’s parents. I stumbled through the working thesis of my project: the need to reconstruct collective Iranian-American identity to combat the isolation of wartime.
They seemed curious and eager to express their disapproval of the war, as most are wont to do. But the question I can most vividly recall being asked was whether I thought my generation would be able to travel to Iran for something like a honeymoon. I’d landed myself a position as a spokesperson for the tourist value of the mother country I’ve never been to, rather than a student interested in studying the perils of individualism. How flattering!
I wonder now if research on Iranian loneliness isn’t appetizing enough for someone raised on the American media diet of distant geopolitical despair, hopeless about the world beyond their front door. When I get scared thinking about it, I start listening to “Yeh Tanhayi, Yeh Khalvat” by iconic Iranian pop singer Googoosh.
The song’s title translates approximately to “a loneliness, a seclusion.” Its instrumentals are, ironically, overwhelmingly cheerful. Its poppy bassline, flute accents reminiscent of birdsong and shaker-heavy percussion evoke an almost cartoonish image of paradise. With a saccharine voice, Googoosh sings of sitting alone on a bench under a tree canopy, taking in the wonder of nature and catching her breath in the absence of a crowd. I remember playing the track at my 18th birthday party just to chuckle to myself in a room full of close family.
I think back to my conversation with my friend’s mother. Mouth full of salmon, I listened to her express her jadedness, the way she prioritized caring for her immediate family over trying to solve the systemic issues she believed insurmountable. The conversation flitted from prison reform to immigrant labor to taxing the wealthy to childhood trauma and gender politics. She had so much she wanted to say, and so little that she felt like she had the power to accomplish, so she anchored herself in her home and in the American flag hanging just outside.
I resonated with her lack of hope.
Last week, I read a chapter from Joan C. Tronto’s book “Caring Democracy” that attributes contemporary American distrust and individualist tendencies in part to the war on terror. Amid economic precarity and the perceived existential threat of foreign terrorist attacks, engaging in public life becomes a radical act of trust. Trust can feel like a risk that many do not have the energy nor faith to take.
After two decades of our collective unconscious being overwhelmed by this feeling of being under siege, many people just want to hold tight to their private world, aching for an oasis.
It is in this context of a populace petrified by the oncoming apocalypse that I find “Yeh Tanhayi, Yeh Khalvat” particularly compelling. I think of the garish suburban constructions that plow through the swamps and orange groves of my home state of Florida, and the horrifically personal conversations I overhear people having with Grok. Sometimes, I too yearn to lurk in solitude under the shadow of a tree. If Googoosh believed solitude was her solution, maybe becoming a hermit could work out just fine for me.
“I cannot grasp the utter splendor of being alone that the song elicits. Googoosh sings as if solitude is the only condition in which she can breathe, while the brass accompaniment prances along like there’s something to celebrate.”
Yet I cannot grasp the utter splendor of being alone that the song elicits. Googoosh sings as if solitude is the only condition in which she can breathe, while the brass accompaniment prances along like there’s something to celebrate. As reclusive as I can be, my most euphoric moments are in crowds of both my loved ones and eclectic sets of strangers. Without them, I would have no stories to tell.
American individualism insists on self-subsistence, but asserts that the meaning of life is born from community. As a result, being alone loses its appeal of luxury, transforming into the quotidian. What was a hot commodity for Googoosh is now a survival mechanism against the perilous world.
Loneliness is so baked into American life that many of us attend church — or concerts, for the secular sort. We are convinced that we feel a divine presence from sharing an experience with others. The symphony of this existence, avian-like flutes and all, emerges in the presence of community (as music does in rooms with excellent acoustics, I suppose).
I must admit how terrifying it is to demystify loneliness. Throughout the research project that brought me to that dinner in Pasadena, I was overwhelmed by my conversations with Iranians I interviewed in LA. Once they decided that I might be worth trusting, they narrated their paths to isolation and alienation. Some described themselves as introverted, with no need for a community outside Iranian restaurants.
Others spoke to me as if I were the last person on Earth who could bring the community together. I did my fair share of crying over fieldnotes and interview transcripts, speaking incessantly with my family about my findings. I became desperate for conversation, eager to sprint from the solitude that tore my research participants apart.
It may be a while before I can appreciate “Yeh Tanhayi, Yeh Khalvat” for more than the irony of its lyrics juxtaposed against the rich instrumentals. For now, I am consumed by a need to be among Googoosh’s dreaded crowd, that of individuals converging in chaos to bring meaning to the world.
The only thing scarier than leaving the security of homeland is losing sight of the odd little interactions that give our horrifying existence any meaning at all. So give the track a listen, or several, in the company of anyone who’s given you a story to tell.
Chloe Mossey PO ’29 thinks she should be reincarnated as a brown bear so she can catch and eat salmon with her hands. For now, she’s quite content to be a human among humans, as salmon is easy enough to acquire.
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