\n<\/p>\n
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore\u2019s newsletter<\/a>. Subscribe here<\/a>.<\/p>\n O<\/span>ne cannot imagine Jimmy Buffett and J. R. R. Tolkien in a room together, sharing a \u201ccheeseburger in paradise\u201d at The Eagle and Child. Tolkien was drawn to \u201cnorthernness,\u201d to Icelandic myths and elvish languages. Buffett captured the breezy exuberance of Caribbean rum. And yet both merged without rancor into my life from childhood on, somewhere between Middle-earth and Margaritaville.<\/p>\n And then last week, Jimmy Buffett died\u2014on the 50th anniversary of the death of Tolkien. Both of them, I think, have something to remind us about the meaning of mortality.<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve written here before, my wife often tells people that if they really want to know me, they should know that my most listened-to artist is not who they think it is (Johnny Cash); it\u2019s Jimmy Buffett.<\/p>\n That makes sense, of course. Buffett was from Pascagoula, Mississippi, a couple of towns over from my hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi. Buffett and I both went, a generation apart, to the University of Southern Mississippi. Though, his biographer Ryan White notes that he spent more time where the action was: in New Orleans \u201cand its scrappier Gulf Coast neighbor\u2014Biloxi,\u201d a city that White describes as having \u201cscars and a temper and ill-considered tattoos.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t have much of a temper, and have no tattoos, but the description isn\u2019t really wrong. When Buffett sings \u201cBiloxi,\u201d I feel like I\u2019m home.<\/p>\n My wife says what\u2019s really telling is that the songs I listen to over and over again aren\u2019t the \u201cDon\u2019t Chu-Know\u201d type of cruise-ship party songs. What resonates with me is the melancholy, moody Jimmy Buffett. The songs that have made up my life include \u201cHe Went to Paris,\u201d \u201cA Pirate Looks at Forty,\u201d and \u201cDeath of an Unpopular Poet,\u201d all of which deal with the fragility of life and the inevitability of death, along with \u201cOne Particular Harbour,\u201d \u201cWhen the Coast Is Clear,\u201d and \u201cSon of a Son of a Sailor,\u201d all of which capture a kind of longing for a just-out-of-reach home.<\/p>\n On a superficial level, Jimmy Buffett music can seem like the opposite of a counting of one\u2019s days. Instead, it can seem like a perpetual adolescence that uses fun to pretend that death will never come\u2014what Blaise Pascal called the kind of \u201cdiversions\u201d we employ to divert our consciences from judgment.<\/p>\n That might be an accurate reading of many Jimmy Buffett fans, but not an accurate reading of Jimmy Buffett himself. In \u201cA Pirate Looks at Forty,\u201d for example, Buffett showed the dark side of the aftermath of a life of diversion\u2014of feeling \u201cdrowned\u201d and out of place in life. In fact, as White points out, \u201cMargaritaville\u201d only sounds light and fun because Buffett\u2019s the one singing it; the lyrics themselves are less a lifestyle celebration than the kind of cautionary tale one might hear in Kris Kristofferson\u2019s \u201cSunday Mornin\u2019 Comin\u2019 Down\u201d or George Jones\u2019s \u201cStill Doing Time.\u201d<\/p>\n For someone born on Christmas Day, Buffett had complicated feelings about Jesus. Reacting against what he saw as a cold, judgmental, hypocritical Bible Belt religion, Buffett described his beliefs as a California-like Zen Buddhist pluralism. That doesn\u2019t mean, though, that he escaped any sense of sin and judgment. In fact, \u201cHe Went to Paris\u201d is a kind of secularized Judgment Day\u2014the accounting of a human life from youth to death, of someone who was \u201clooking for answers \/ To questions that bothered him so.\u201d<\/p>\n The same is true with a song he wrote about a life lived on the road, \u201cStories We Could Tell\u201d:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n All the stories we could tell
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Stories only last a little longer than the storyteller, though\u2014unless there\u2019s a bigger Story behind it all. Perhaps that\u2019s why we can see shadows of Eden lurking in Buffett\u2019s lyrics, along with a realization that the shadow of death is still there, that there must be, in some way, a Fall (some people claim that there\u2019s a woman to blame, but I know it\u2019s humanity\u2019s own fault).<\/p>\n Buffett sings in \u201cSon of a Son of a Sailor\u201d:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Where it all ends I can\u2019t fathom my friends
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, again, I would hardly expect Tolkien to have been anything but horrified by Jimmy Buffett. He was irritated enough when the Daily Telegraph <\/em>described C. S. Lewis as \u201cascetic.\u201d \u201cHe put away three pints in a very short session we had this morning, and he said he was \u2018going short for Lent,\u2019\u201d Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher.<\/p>\n I think Tolkien would have recognized nonetheless how Buffett\u2019s songs are shot through with a kind of longing for Eden. Again to Christopher, Tolkien wrote that, while he saw Genesis as a different type of history than other accounts, he nonetheless believed that Eden did, in fact, exist. \u201cWe all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of \u2018exile,\u201d Tolkien wrote.<\/p>\n In his \u201chappier\u201d songs, Buffett sang about his own kind of Shire\u2014of islands, not highlands. But even so, his fuller work seems to recognize the truth of what Frodo said, when he headed home after all that had happened: \u201cThere is no real going back. Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same. I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden. Where shall I find rest?\u201d In other words, \u201cA Hobbit Looks at Eleventy.\u201d<\/p>\n Those wounds are, in fact, unhealable, but only within the confines of the story. What Tolkien knew, and what Buffett seemed to want to be true, is that the longings themselves point beyond what we can find\u2014whether sailing under the Southern Cross or dancing under fireworks in Hobbiton. Changes in latitudes can force changes in attitudes, but only when the latitudes give way to something beyond what we can find on a map.<\/p>\n Like Buffett, I\u2019ve read lots of books about heroes and crooks, and learned much from both of their styles. One never knows what happens in the last moments of a man\u2019s life, but I hope that Jimmy Buffett found the answers to the questions that bothered him so. I hope that he could see, even from southeast of disorder, that there\u2019s a Father who welcomes home his children\u2014even a prodigal son of a son of a sailor. That Father is preparing a party beyond the imaginations of this life.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if Jimmy Buffett ever found that, but I know that you can.<\/p>\n Can you hear the call to a wedding feast, an invitation to walk down the road to the party at the Father\u2019s house? Maybe the time to seek out that eternal party is now. Life is fragile and short, but, well, it\u2019s five o\u2019clock Somewhere.<\/p>\n Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today<\/span> and leads its Public Theology Project.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n
\nIf it all blows up and goes to hell
\nI wish that we could sit upon the bed in some motel
\nListen to the stories we could tell<\/p>\n
\nIf I knew I might toss out my anchor
\nSo I cruise along always searchin\u2019 for songs
\nNot a lawyer a thief or a banker
\nBut a son of a son, son of a son,
\nSon of a son of a sailor<\/p>\n