Lonely Woman

Beast Body Epic Soundtrack

Lonely Woman

Beast Body Epic Soundtrack

I chose Lonely Woman, a jazz composition by Ornette Coleman to epitomize the tone of Section II of Beast Body Epic.

In an interview with Jacques Derrida, Coleman spoke of the origin of the composition:

Before becoming known as a musician, when I worked in a big department store, one day, during my lunch break, I came across a gallery where someone had painted a very rich white woman who had absolutely everything that you could desire in life, and she had the most solitary expression in the world. I had never been confronted with such solitude, and when I got back home, I wrote a piece that I called "Lonely Woman."

THE OTHER'S LANGUAGE: JACQUES DERRIDA INTERVIEWS ORNETTE COLEMAN, 23 JUNE 1997

I’m not rich, but I definitely am a privileged white woman. I have a good life. A great life. I was treated well in hospital, taken care of. I am grateful for the health care I received. What this song makes me think of is the loneliness I felt while in hospital. Loneliness and disorientation.

At first on the ward, after ICU and surgery, I didn’t really know what was going on. In ICU I was having scary delusions where everyone was out to get me, including the hospital staff. We are told that it’s important to talk to patients when they are in ICU or in a coma. I wasn’t in a coma at all, but I was on drugs to prevent me from breathing over my ventilator and these drugs affected my short term memory, so that apparently I didn’t know what was going on every time I woke from one of these delusions.

No one knew I was having the delusions while in ICU. I was alone. I felt abandoned. In one delusion Charles told me he would explain everything to me and he knew it didn’t make sense.  And apparently, he did say that to me, but what it meant to me was that he was on the bad peoples’ side. I believed the staff was out to get me. In one delusion I was tied to a desk with fishnet and left by the reception area, only to be laughed at by everyone who walked by. A lot of my delusions involved people mocking me for not being able to move or get out of bed. It was upsetting and not the way my life is. I was very confused.

When I was moved to the ward, after surviving the surgery where I was expected to die, I continued to have delusions, involving my roommate, an elderly Francophone woman and the staff. I had alienated her and she wouldn’t talk to me. In reality, she was quite ill and couldn’t say much.

I spent a lot of time by myself, lying in bed in pain and even not being able to move, so that I had to ring the call button to get orderlies to come in and boost me back up to the top of the bed.

The brass in Lonely Woman is the echo of that loneliness with a clatter, clamourous sound of unpredictability, not knowing what’s going on.

Sickness can be a lonely-making experience. I was fortunate to have Charles, and dear friends who visited, but there were long moments where I was by myself, lying in bed, sweating and in pain. I had to come up with ways to cope during that time. I did things like take inventory of all the places on my body that weren’t in pain. It helped. I had to comfort myself. And of course, I talked the nurses’ ears off.

I spent a lot of time sleeping when I could, but I couldn’t always sleep, and I didn’t even have the strength to hold up a book to read. I was still too weak for much company but I really appreciated it when someone came.

This was early in my recovery. Eventually I got strong enough to move on my own and to go to the kitchen, make myself tea and walk around the ward. If you are sick, what are some ways in which you deal with your loneliness? Pain can make outsiders of us all. We are not part of everyday activities.

In one delusion, I was still alive, but it was as though I was dead. People were in my hospital room, but they were talking about me as if I wasn’t there. I tried to tell them that I was alive, but they didn’t hear me. This was oblivion and it scared me.

What are some ways to help those who are socially isolated due to sickness? If you are feeling lonely, what do you need? What would make you feel less alone?

You can listen to Lonely Woman by Ornette Coleman here.

You can listen to the Spotify Playlist or the Youtube Playlist for more music that I chose for Beast Body Epic.

You can purchase Beast Body Epic here.

Thanks to those who are reading these posts. It helps me to write them. There’s a lot I’m still dealing with in terms of processing the health crisis I had in 2009.