Why I'm Lonely

I really like this song because I think it's a broader commentary on how modernity makes it difficult to love and achieve intimacy. As Tadhq pointed out, "not much nourished by modern love" is from a Leonard Cohen song. In that song, Queen Victoria is an obvious symbol of the Victorian age, an era known for its emotional and sexual restraint. The Victorian era is also when the Industrial Revolution occurred, which marks the beginning of modernity and helped to create the consumer culture we have in the western world.

Today, the new modernity in the western world tends to focus on upward mobility, independence, and freedom. Having such a focus on those values has had a huge impact on how we express and react to true intimacy. HD captures that perfectly with the lyrics:

"So i told her that everything she does is divine and she replied with a blank expression (an object lesson in making me feel benign) Then whispered, 'independence and indifference are the wings which allow the heart to fly.'"

Here, the speaker offers an honest expression of admiration and love, and is met with the independence and indifference that an unrelenting focus on upward mobility at all costs has taught us.

In the next stanza, we see a kind of existential terror set in when the narrator is struck with the realization of what the costs of our "freedom" really is:

"And with the right revolting piety of tone, the word 'freedom' can make you want to lock yourself in a deep dark dungeon. "

This feeling of rejection causes the narrator to feel even more alienated, as we see in the next stanza:

"But I know everybody follows pleasure, everybody gets somewhere. I swear, I wish I could be less aware."

To me, that really speaks to our consumer culture... everybody else is just able to stop thinking, buy things, engage is purely physical relationships, follow pleasure, and it seems to work for them. However, the narrator isn't able to ignore his own feelings.

The next line, I think, speaks again to how our consumer culture expresses their ideas of freedom & independence.

"now it’s absolutely clear to me that solitude is not the same as singularity, but that’s not why i’m lonely."

We think our freedom makes us "singular," unique individuals who are self-sufficient & free-thinkers. But really, we just end up "solitary," physically alone in the world and emotionally alienated & detached from others. We just end up pushing others away in order to reinforce our false ideas of independence that modernity has taught us.

The very last line ("but that's not why I'm lonely...") I think is meant to be sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek. To the narrator, it's very obvious that the cause of his loneliness is not his own doing, but representative of larger social problems. However, because people love to cling to their consumerism and modernity, if you speak out against this, people will do everything they can to make you feel like it's your problem to discount your feelings. So the narrator is effectively laying this all out there, and then bitingly saying "but that's got nothing to do with it..."