Island of Strangers
I wrote a song for you: a stranger. Maybe you'll like it.
“An island of strangers” is an evocative phrase. Whatever the political intentions behind it, it’s got an undeniably poetic quality to it. And, like much poetry, it contains a kernel of truth.
Assuming you’re living the UK, you’re sharing an island with nigh on 70 million other people - of whom you can probably name a few dozen. The man driving the bus, or the car in front of you is likely a stranger. Go to a hospital and a stranger will mostly likely treat you. A stranger delivers groceries to your house. Unless you live in the fabled ‘tight knit community’ the people three doors down the street are strangers.
And you, in turn, are a stranger to them.
The miracle is that this any of this hangs together. We’re constantly in need of and reliant on strangers. And yet somehow, the teeming millions for the most part amble through the days, mostly without incident.
In a quiet way, there’s a beauty to that.
Of course, that’s not what the intent behind the phrase was trying to convey. Here ‘strangers’ is a pointed phrase, directed outwards. The full speech - which I took the trouble to actually read - is nothing like Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ tirade, regardless of what hyperventilating strangers will try to tell you on social media, but it does carry certain… undercurrents.
That the discussion about Powellite kinship exists at all says much about the tenor of the times.
Anyway, having chewed on the phrase for a few days, I found myself sat in a chair with an acoustic guitar and - by the strange alchemy that sometimes happens - a song fell almost effortlessly into my lap. From start to finish? Probably twenty-thirty minutes. It’ll need tarting up, of course, but for half an hour’s work I think it says.. something.
Lyrics
The doctors’ full of strangers
With strangers’ disease
A stranger takes my blood
And tries to puts me at ease
A queue full of strangers
Looking for their change
There’s strangers in the paper
On every single page
It’s an island of strangers
But they’re not any stranger than me
The sky’s full of strangers
Going who knows where
Strangers at the joysticks
Keeping strangers in the air
A rush hour full of strangers
Stuck behind their wheels
I know they might be strangers
But you must know how it feels
It’s an island of strangers
But they’re not any stranger than you
People that you think you know
Cos they’re on a tv show
Are laughing up their sleeves at you and me
In the corridors of power
They rack up billions by the hour
And they know that they have got you by the balls
Cos if you hate a stranger
Then you don’t pose any danger
And they cock a snook at you
And there’s nothing you can do
Cos if you hate a stranger
Then you don’t pose any danger
And they cock a snook at you
And there’s nothing you can do
Cos if you hate a stranger
Then you don’t pose any danger…