I like the idea of being alone. I like the idea of often being

Host: The night had fallen over the coastal town like a dark blanket, soft but suffocating. The sea breathed heavy below the cliffside café, where the windows fogged with salt and the low hum of an old jukebox whispered the echo of a forgotten Led Zeppelin song. The air smelled of rain, wood smoke, and melancholy.

Inside, the lights were dim — amber, almost candlelike, cutting slivers of gold across the table where Jack and Jeeny sat opposite each other. Jack’s coat dripped faintly from the walk along the shore; Jeeny’s hands were clasped around a mug, her fingers trembling slightly from the cold.

Host: Outside, the waves crashed like distant applause — an ancient rhythm to their quiet conversation.

Jeeny: (softly, almost a whisper) “Robert Plant once said, ‘I like the idea of being alone. I like the idea of often being alone in all aspects of my life. I like to feel lonely. I like to need things.’ It’s strange, isn’t it? To like loneliness.”

Jack: (exhales smoke, watching it coil in the light) “Not strange. Honest. Most people just don’t have the guts to admit it.”

Jeeny: “You mean to admit they want to be alone?”

Jack: “To admit they need it. Everyone runs from loneliness like it’s a disease. But it’s the only time you really meet yourself. Plant got that. The man lived in noise — crowds, fame, fire — and still found silence more real than applause.”

Host: A wave hit the rocks below, hard enough to make the window tremble. The sound rolled through the room, deep and slow, like a heartbeat that belonged to the earth itself.

Jeeny: “But there’s a difference between solitude and loneliness. Solitude is chosen. Loneliness is… absence. It’s when you reach for something — someone — and there’s nothing there.”

Jack: (half-smiling) “Maybe he liked that nothing. Maybe it reminded him he was alive.”

Jeeny: “You can’t like needing things, Jack. That’s just pain disguised as philosophy.”

Jack: “No. It’s recognition. When you admit you need — food, touch, music, love — you remember you’re not a god. You’re human. Most people drown in wanting to feel complete; Plant preferred to feel the gap.”

Host: The jukebox clicked softly as the song changed, shifting from rock to something bluesy, full of ache. The bartender wiped glasses without looking up, lost in his own quiet orbit.

Jeeny: “You think loneliness is a virtue, then?”

Jack: “No. But it’s the only honest emotion left. Every relationship, every job, every city — it’s built to distract us from being alone. We fill the space with noise. Loneliness strips that away. It’s the last pure thing.”

Jeeny: (eyes narrowing) “Pure? It’s devastating. You ever lie awake and feel your chest hollow out because there’s no one on the other end of your thoughts? That’s not purity, Jack. That’s grief.”

Jack: “Maybe grief and truth are the same thing.”

Host: Jeeny’s eyes darkened, a flicker of pain cutting through her calm. She turned her face toward the window, the reflection of the sea trembling in her pupils.

Jeeny: “No, Jack. Truth can build. Loneliness destroys. Robert Plant could afford to romanticize it — he had the world listening. But real loneliness… the kind where no one calls, no one cares — that doesn’t inspire. It erases.”

Jack: “Maybe that’s why he liked it. Because erasure is freedom.”

Jeeny: (turning to him, voice firm) “Freedom from what?”

Jack: “From pretending. From belonging. From the endless performance of being someone for someone else. Alone, there’s no audience. You stop acting.”

Host: The rain began, soft at first — tiny drops tapping the glass like cautious fingers. The room dimmed further, the streetlights outside blurring into gold rivers against the wet pavement.

Jeeny: “You make loneliness sound noble. But you’re talking about control, not peace. You like solitude because it keeps you safe from disappointment.”

Jack: (shrugs) “And you fear it because it keeps you from illusion.”

Jeeny: “That’s not fair.”

Jack: “It’s true. You want meaning in connection. I want honesty in isolation. Same hunger, different diet.”

Host: The rain quickened, matching the pace of their words. The wind whistled through a small crack in the window frame, the sound like a whispered secret between strangers.

Jeeny: “You sound like Nietzsche. Or some tortured poet trying to make emptiness sound poetic.”

Jack: “Maybe emptiness is poetic — if you listen hard enough. Think of monks in silence. Think of artists who vanished to create. Virginia Woolf. Thoreau. Even Plant — he didn’t fear the quiet. He fed on it.”

Jeeny: “And how many of them drowned in it, Jack? Silence can inspire, but it can also consume. You stare too long into the void, it stares back. Woolf didn’t survive her silence.”

Jack: (leans forward, voice low) “And yet her words still do. Maybe she understood — loneliness doesn’t kill you. It reveals the truth about whether you’re alive or just existing.”

Host: The clock above the bar ticked softly, slow and steady, like the passing of time itself was weary. Jeeny’s reflection in the window shimmered beside Jack’s, their images overlapping like two halves of a question that never meets its answer.

Jeeny: (quietly) “So you think we need loneliness to live?”

Jack: “No. I think we need to stop running from it. To feel it. To need things. To remember that longing itself is proof of the pulse. That’s what Plant meant. To need is to be human.”

Jeeny: (a long pause) “I used to think needing was weakness.”

Jack: “It is — but it’s the kind of weakness that builds you. Every time you admit you need, you carve out space for something real to enter.”

Jeeny: “And what if nothing comes?”

Jack: “Then at least you’ve stayed honest.”

Host: The rain turned heavier, the sound deep, rhythmic — almost like applause from the world itself. Jeeny’s eyes softened; she looked at Jack not as an adversary, but as someone who carried the same hunger, only named it differently.

Jeeny: “So that’s why he liked loneliness. It wasn’t sadness. It was self-awareness.”

Jack: “Exactly. To sit with your hunger without filling it — that’s strength. Most people can’t bear the sound of their own heartbeat when the world goes quiet.”

Jeeny: (whispers) “But don’t you ever want someone to sit in the quiet with you?”

Jack: (smiles faintly) “That’s the paradox, isn’t it? You crave solitude — until someone understands it.”

Host: A faint flash of lightning flickered across the ocean, illuminating the waves like veins of silver fire. The thunder that followed was distant, rolling, patient.

Jeeny: “You know, when I was younger, I used to fear being alone. I filled every silence — calls, friends, background noise, anything. But lately… I think I understand what he meant. Loneliness forces you to meet the parts of yourself you keep avoiding.”

Jack: (nods slowly) “And if you stay long enough, you might even start to like their company.”

Host: For a moment, neither spoke. Only the rain, the waves, and the faint crackle of the jukebox filled the space. Jack looked out the window, and his reflection merged with the dark ocean beyond — man and sea, solitude and infinity, blending into one.

Jeeny: (after a long silence) “Maybe what Plant was really saying is that loneliness isn’t emptiness. It’s a kind of need that never ends — and that’s what keeps us alive.”

Jack: “Maybe. The need itself is the heartbeat.”

Host: The storm eased, and the rain turned into mist, rising gently off the street like ghosts of what had been. Jack stubbed out his cigarette, the ash curling upward like smoke from a tired altar.

Jack: “I think he liked being alone because it kept him honest. Fame, love, success — all illusions. But when you’re alone, there’s no one left to perform for. Just you and your truth.”

Jeeny: (soft smile) “And maybe, if you learn to love that truth, you stop being lonely.”

Host: The camera would pull back then — out through the fogged window, over the sea, where the waves moved endlessly beneath the bruised sky. Two figures inside a tiny café, small against the vastness — and yet, somehow, not lost.

Because maybe loneliness isn’t a void to escape — but a mirror to face.
And in that reflection, trembling and unfinished, there’s the quiet miracle of still being here — still needing, still alive, still human.