Though the Northern Hemisphere is currently awash in the warm and soothing winds of summer, and things mostly feel good right now, there is still some room for a little darkness, a few blue moods. One particularly strong summer ache is a feeling of loneliness, as we watch Instagram Story after Instagram Story of people we know out and having fun while we are just, well, alone on our couch. It’s a common feeling, I’m afraid, lovely weather or not.
The planet can be a lonely place! Life can be a lonely adventure. Falling stars streak across the sky, hurtling directionless through the void. Maybe everything is random chance, there is no force guiding us toward one another. It’s just indiscriminate luck, which doesn’t always come our way. But! Sometimes it does. Take heart, dear reader, because sometimes it does. Just look at what happened this miraculous weekend in Indiana.
Yes, that flat thumb of a state, that apostrophe stitched with farmland. It seems like a fairly ordinary place, where very little magic dwells. And yet this weekend, a grand confluence happened. You see, there is a radio station in Indianapolis called WZPL, “The Zipple.” (They do not call it the Zipple, I’m pretty sure, that is just something I made up.) Like many big pop stations, ZPL holds a summer concert, this one called the ZPL Birthday Bash. It managed to get some top-tier acts in, including, get this . . . Niall Horan and . . . Liam Payne!
Yes! There was a partial One Direction reunion this weekend, in Indiana of all places, and it was caught on video by both boys, who are both pursuing solo careers with actually pretty decent results. Saints may preserve us, but One Direction fans, saints in their own right, preserve Instagram Stories, so we have the videos available even though they were only supposed to last for a day.
That all seems cheery and amiable, doesn’t it? Two old friends yukking it up backstage, amazed to have crossed paths there in the middle of a country that is not theirs. Doesn’t that make you feel a little less scared? If these two people can find each other by happy accident in the wide and storm-streaked yawn of the American Middle-West, maybe we’ll have our own chance encounters too. Maybe the lonely chaos of the world will eventually swirl us toward one another and we’ll have a little moment together before we barrel away on separate journeys. We can maybe find some comfort in that. Niall Horan and Liam Payne are adrift on the same currents as us, after all.
While they were together, I wonder if they spoke of their former bandmate Louis Tomlinson, who has just given a very revealing, well-spoken interview to The Guardian. In it, a chain-smoking Tomlinson talks candidly about how he was sort of the odd man out in One Direction. He had this to say about his bandmates:
Aw, Louis! Don’t be so down on yourself. Of course, Tomlinson knows he has a legion of fans, some of whom are pretty intense, a fact he acknowledges in the interview. Still, he’s felt a hunger for a stronger sense of self since he started in One Direction, so now he’s putting some solo music together and trying his hand at the game just like the other lads. We wish him luck. Just as we wish ourselves luck, hoping that we’ll find our own place in the world, and someone to share it with. Just like Louis has with . . . well, you know.
