Jimmy Buffett makes no secret of his Catholic background. ” Might this contain a faint echo, perhaps just a whisper, of Augustine’s famous insight, “our hearts find no peace until they rest in you”? Īfter spending fourteen years in Catholic confinement, I was ready to make up for lost time. I don’t want to live on that kind of island. And yet, Buffett himself is critical of this attitude, writing in “Cowboy in the Jungle” (1978), “They’re tryin’ to drink all the punches / They all may lose their lunches / Tryin’ to cram lost years into five or six days / Seems that blind ambition erased their intuition / Plowin’ straight ahead come what may.

For many Parrotheads, this longing is translated into enjoyment of cold beverages (often to excess) while relaxing on a sandy beach. There is more to life than work and financial gain. At one level the view of his army of loyal adherents is correct. Jimmy Buffett has been able to tap into the ennui of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century society, in large part because of his upbringing in the distinctive Catholic culture native to the former French territories of the American Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Mobile (his hometown). Buffett’s incredible success, however, bespeaks in his fans an instinctual dissatisfaction with the demands of modern work and a desire to get away, to escape and have a good time, to have fun. Augustine too in his City of God as delight in “lazy inactivity” ( iners vacatio). Indeed, he would seem to be the Evangelist for just the kind of leisure recently criticized by Paul Griffiths.īuffett peddles the side of leisure ( otium) decried by St.

He has accrued a tremendous amount of wealth through these endeavors and cultivated a devoted following, known as Parrotheads. In his music, merchandise, restaurants, and resorts, Buffett revels in escapism and pleasure, giving license to hedonsim and letting it run amok.

Jimmy Buffett, the king of “drunk Caribbean rock and roll music,” may seem like an unlikely person to be an example of the Catholic imagination. This little song sort of combines a hangover cure and fourteen years of Catholic education into a song it’s a little bit weird, but it sort of works out.

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