A Lexicon for Life: Episode 1 - Loneliness

Loneliness, Grace, Vitality, Anxiety, Dreaming, Trickster, Spirituality, and Imagination. All these words have a special resonance in the work of the award-winning writer Jay Griffiths (author of Wild: An Elemental Journey, Why Rebel? and How Animals Heal Us).In each of the eight episodes, Jay takes one of these words for a walk – exploring how they connect us to the past, bind us to the other life on the planet and offer us a silver thread to follow into the future.Each episode features readings and discussions in which Jay is joined by the actor and writer Joanna Scanlan (Riot Women, After Love) and the writer and podcaster John Mitchinson (QI, Backlisted).Words are our species’ most brilliant invention. A Lexicon for Life shows us why some words matter more than others.Today’s word is Loneliness. “Lonely hurts. It just does. It hurts in particular places, on the edges of the self. All of them.” In this episode, Jay Griffiths reads from How Animals Heal Us and discusses how pet animals “offer medicine for loneliness in simple touch that salves the loneliness at the body's edge.” She also reads from Why Rebel? and talks to Joanna and John about the loneliness of humans as a species. “We humans in the Dominant Culture cutting ourselves off from all The Others, the teeming worlds of insects birds and animals who are the only other life we know of in the universe: without them, how silent and foreboding is the loneliness of humanity.”You can order any of Jay Griffiths’ books from her online shop on Bookshop.orgThis Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Byline Times at www.bylinesupplement.com/subscribe