There are other islands, of course.  One that comes to mind just now sits in the middle of a very wide, very slow, very brown river somewhere in the South of the United States.  Its upriver, northern point is composed of a high bluff of some hard-wearing stone, sloping southwards downriver some half kilometer in a sort of teardrop shape.  It is forested with broad-trunked hardwoods, hardy deciduous trees that do not seem to mind the occasional inundation. I have a small house there, all screen-porches and hammocks, perched high in the trees on the lower slopes of the upriver end of this island.  It is quiet, and no one ever comes there in spite of daily ship traffic. The commercial ships that pass the island always do so at a wide remove, fearing I assume the shifting shoals and captured snags deposited as the currents churn about. And smaller vessels seemingly do not travel so far from the river’s distant shores.  Most days I hear only the hum of insects, the calls of birds, the gurgle of the water quietly stunned by the heat and the humidity, and the occasional hoot of the massive container ships passing each other in the channel. Some days, generally in the winter, heavy fogs lay over the river all day long, and then the only sounds are the soft gurgle of the water and those mournful hoots.  

The heat and the humidity is generally stunning, of a depth and level that almost absolutely denies mental – let alone physical – activity.  I can only lay in a hammock, wishing for a cool breeze, and experience the sounds and the heat. And so the days pass, in this dream.

At night though, in my dreams, a curious thing happens.  The river loses its voice, flows in absolute silence. And then the sounds of distant music drift across the wide black expanse, apparently arising from some town or city whose existence is betrayed only by the darkness as an orange glow on the western horizon.  The city is so distant, the music so soft, that my mind must supply the greater portion of the songs, of the instrumentation, so that I am sometimes treated to what must be a New Orleans street band, holding a drum-fueled revel outside a smoky bar on the river’s shore; or at other times, in the heat of the night, I am certain that I hear a lonely blues guitar crying out for a friend who will never come.  These nights, still hot, still humid, pass less oppressively than the days; and while I do not feel any increased urge to activity, I at least do not feel stunned, do not feel half-drowned by the very air.

This island, these dreams when I awaken from them, leave me feeling heavy – enervated but not fatigued – just as if I were still smothered by a hot Southern day.  It is a surprisingly not-unpleasant sensation. Or would be if I did not have to get out of bed, did not feel forced to shake the dream off in order to function appropriately in the real world.  A dream of seemingly perpetual not-quite-sleep, similar to the first, tropical island, but with a stronger connection to humanity, albeit still comfortably removed. A dream of suppression much like the second, barely-sub-arctic island, but without the privation or total isolation.  As if there was some comfort to be drawn from the acknowledgement of the existence of humanity, without actually being forced or even allowed to interact therewith. It is a curious sensation.

Would music be the only thing I would truly miss if completely removed from the human sphere?  I think not; but it runs a close second.

 

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