What the hell is this?
An introduction to the Lonesome Valley
Welcome to Reflections on the Lonesome Valley, a newsletter about exploring the fundamental truths of our universe through music, philosophy, research, and navel-gazing to better understand our own humanity, our place in space and time, and our pathway to living (and dying) with happiness and dignity in a world gone slightly mad.
You likely have (at least) two questions regarding that cryptic run-on sentence.
First: What is "Lonesome Valley? Lonesome Valley is a folk/americana music project led by Robert Roche (c'est moi). After years of making strange and diverse music, I had a series of incredible personal experiences during the global COVID-19 event (including my discovery of philosophy, psychedelics, and having a child named Hugo with my life-partner) that greatly changed my perspective on life, death, and the nature of the universe. Because of my new baby, I could no longer make music sitting in front of my computer like a cave troll, as every spare moment was spent taking care of little Hugo. In the face of certain musical death, I had to pivot, and pivot hard. I dug my acoustic guitar out of the basement, sat down in front of a displeased infant in his foot rocker, and started to play. The songs flowed out of me, songs about existence and reality, about miracles of life and death, about consciousness and space and time. 6 months later, I have just released my second single and played my first show as Lonesome Valley.
Second: What is “the lonesome valley?” The phrase itself comes from a lineage of folk songs dating back to the 1920s, referring to the land of death that a soul enters in the afterlife. The actual concept that I refer to is slightly different, and it formed in my mind after listening to a series of lectures by Alan Watts, and from my own ruminations on the nature of death and consciousness (Psychedelics helped with this one, and I will write about it in the future). The concept is this - the lonesome valley is the realm of non-existence from which our consciousness, a singularity born of (likely) unconscious matter, was born. When we die, we do not enter a new, unknown realm of existence - we simply return to the realm from which we came, where our atoms existed for almost 14 Billion years after the bing bang. Hence, when we die, we return to the lonesome valley.
I wrote a song about this, obviously titled “Return To the Lonesome Valley.” Another post will be dedicated to outlining the philosophical concepts in this song that have changed the trajectory of my life.
I hope to use this platform to store and share my philosophy, my music, my passion, and my progression through this strange world. I have no designs for it other than my own personal development, but if it can help another person in the slightest way, I would be overjoyed to learn it.
Cheers - R <3
