Is One the Loneliest Number?

When I read through the entries for the Breakup Nonet challenge, I was again and again stricken with how the form of the nonet is an excellent analogy for those critical moments when relations break down.

With its lines of descending syllables, counting down nine to one—which, as Harry Nilsson so eloquently intoned, is the loneliest number—the nonet gives us a perfect illustration of the way love can starve itself, grasping at a fantasy while pushing away the authentic reality of the other.

At age forty-five, I’ve become set in my ways, and as a three-time loser in the marital arena, I no longer crave the fantasy. However, I do know people who are happily married, and I am very happy for them. For my own part, I’ve spent time playing the role of pater familias, which, for better and worse, is a far cry from that which the Romans meant to indicate when they coined the term, but this is not something I regret, a sentiment which I honor in my song On Your Way.

So… let’s be honest. Not everyone wins at the game of love, but people who are in love, or who do make it to marital bliss, like to believe the whole damn world revolves around it.

Nope.

Let me just name a few great personages who never married: Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ludwig von Beethoven, Jane Austen, Anne and Emily Bronte, Elizabeth I, Edvard Munch, Voltaire…

All of these people, in some way or another, changed the world. Should we deem their lives less valuable on account of their lack of interest or luck in romantic love?

Another analogy for all sorts of interpersonal relations could be drawn from chemistry. Some elements combine to form an enduring mixture or compound… which may or may not be toxic.

Some combine in an explosion of light and heat which repels and propels into new, separate elements.

We shouldn’t be surprised that people sometimes do the same. Best to go our separate ways then, rather than keep struggling to recombine.

I know that the breakup nonet was, for some, merely a thought experiment… but for others it must have been deeply personal.

The main point of my presentation here, dear reader, is to highlight the fact that love is given in countless ways. Many of the above personages claimed to have done their work out of love, for the love of humanity, for life, as have many others.

If you wrote your breakup nonet with someone in mind, don’t think you necessarily need someone else to take their place. There is a process of inner alchemy which also can be accessed, and which, I believe, is most prominently expressed by the artist, but which we might call The Philosopher’s Stone.

It happens of its own accord when we accept ourselves and give freely of that which is the fruit of our highest calling.

Speaking of which, Harry Nilsson’s iconic song was written to a dial tone. He called someone and got the old busy signal.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

And those are the beginning notes of the song. Harry was just making a casual call, though, and was not, at the time, lamenting a breakup. He would go on to be happily married, as his wife attested in the documentary Who is Harry Nilsson (and Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?) which I highly recommend if you’re interested.

Again, here I am, feeling ancient at age forty-five, knowing that some of you out there have no idea what a busy signal sounds like; but I can tell you that the old busy signal did inspire a special kind of latent anxiety that the modern text silence or voice mail message does not.

To wrap it up, I leave you this link to the winners of the breakup nonet challenge.

Read ‘em and weep.