the island, part 1: new britain

(Note: this is part 1 on a series about why I chose FULL FORCE GALESBURG as the one disc I would take to a desert island. See this post for an introduction.)

I awake on the beach, the cool waves licking at my feet: the tide is coming in.

Where am I? I have no idea. I must change this. The first thing, as always, is the name. If we can name something, we can delude ourselves into thinking we know what it is. For now, the name is Dougtopia. It may change.

A desert island and a deserted island, but a once-inhabited island, so the comforts are not entirely up to me inventing things from scratch. The cabin will need work, but the stove is good, the mattress is more comfortable than I hoped, and the view is unimpeachable. Also, there are enough D batteries to last a long time, and a CD boombox, and so I throw in the only CD that will keep me company, FULL FORCE GALESBURG by The Mountain Goats. The familiar aggressive acoustic guitar volley hits me, the only opening to a track I hear until I am rescued.

If I am rescued. I should repair the cabin, take advantage of the good weather, find fresh water to supplement the few bottles in the cabin. Instead, I sit on the beach, staring into the sun, like the protagonists of this song.

The name of the first track is "New Britain". As it happens, there are New Britains in Pennsylvania, Papau New Guinea, and Connecticut, none of which, I expect, are meant to be the subject of the song. (Neither the album by Whitehouse nor the far-right British political party, for that matter.)

I assume, rightly or wrongly, that New Britain is an old name for America, before a war was fought, battle lines drawn, a new relationship was borne out of years of blood and hatred, and certainly the Revolutionary War reference is explicit in the lyrics:

All the way across the ocean, they're gathering their strength again
lining up across the country's length again

But in the world of the Mountain Goats, at least in this era, the struggles of the world ultimately boil down to the struggle between man and woman. (The universe of the Goats has always been an incredibly hetero-normative one.) And this struggle, one more basic, one based around the inability to communicate and failures of language -

you've had it up to hear with my west country talk
you can hardly understand a word I say ...

I try to tell you secrets til my face turns blue
I am not getting through to you

- is no less challenging.

A common movie trope - and I assume it comes from life - is for soldiers or others in precarious situations to have a picture that sustains them through the rough times, usually of a loved one. Inevitably, the return home, where they come back to the vision that has sustained them through all of this, is a letdown, a catastrophe, and nothing as they imagined. The woman has found another man, or the dream job has fallen through, or what have you.

I could've taken an album of a dream, one that gave me a fantasy to sustain me. But that would be catastrophic. I didn't want to take a dream of a possible world with me. When the narrator of "New Britain" has had his world collapse -

I hold you in my arms but you're hardly even with me
This morning I know who you are

- it's not something to hope for. But it's something I know, the horrible feeling of holding somebody who is a million miles away, and it's not a pleasant memory but it will keep me human, both now and when I return, for the end of this experience, be it an ordeal or paradise, will not lead to a happily-ever-after but to a sloppy and complicated world interacting with humans, with challenges less visceral but far more difficult than any I will face here.

I hit play again, as the sun sets, and the guitar starts up one more time, and I wonder if it is the narrator who is New Britain, or the woman he fruitlessly holds close to him. The woman, I decide, who has made her declaration of independence. The man will be left behind. Alone. Call him old Britain, unable to adjust to a new changing world, plunging forward in redcoats in straight lines while being fired upon in unexpected ways.

I could listen to this song forever. I may have to.

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VIDEO #1 for people who don't give a shit about The Mountain Goats: recently, the amazing director Michelangelo Antonioni died. I re-watched BLOW-UP (truthfully, not his best film, but I'd still be ecstatic if I made a film this good), and when I heard "Middle of Nowhere" by Hot Hot Heat a few days later, it reminded me of the video, which owes a huge debt to BLOW-UP but still manages to be its own, very cool thing. Even if the singer's hair bugs me.