No man is a… (no no, don’t say it)
On an island our world is smaller and we feel bigger. I think that’s the basis of it. It is all over art, literature, film, and is supremely romantic. There is a short story by DH Lawrence The Man who Loved Islands that spoofs a chapter in his friend Compton Mackenzie’s life. Compton fell out with him over it. A sad tale of a failed utopia.
I have been on some islands https://youtu.be/dVccOqWjJto
and https://porty.net/st-kilda
… and discovered that this music was thought to have been composed by Marion Morrison a few years after the Napoleonic wars in the 1820s. She met a young man - a ‘laird of Islay’ - who visited St Kilda and promised to return the following summer to marry her. Sadly, when he eventually appeared on his fancy yacht in Village Bay, impressively decked out with fake armour, she and the villagers ran away thinking it was a press gang. He sailed home a bachelor.
Fun fact Marion Morrison was John Wayne’s real name. And that suggests a whole ‘nother island story. I made a short film in 2017 inspired by John Ford film The Quiet Man with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. Sort of.
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
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