Disclaimer: The following is not meant to be taken terribly seriously. It is merely the realisation of a promise made in jest to a close artist friend. However, it is also a love letter to the man and his music, which are both excellent. You should support him by buying the album on Bandcamp. GO THROW MONEY AT MY AMAZING FRIEND RIGHT NOW
Introduction
Josh Island has variously been described as a musician of optimism and a songwriter who infuses his soulful lyrics with a distinct internationalist touch. However, it is this author’s claim that Island’s oeuvre is firmly rooted in psychoanalytic theory in general and, more specifically, in the thought developed by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. This becomes particularly evident when considering his latest album, Imaginary Borders, released on 6 March 2026.
The title of the album provides the first clue. There are two aspects to this interpretation, the first of which shall be revisited in the concluding section. As for the second, it is worth recalling the three orders that constitute Lacanian psychoanalytic thought: the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real. Lacan famously focused his attention on the symbolic and the real while being, at best, dismissive and, at times, critical of those overly invested in the imaginary.
Through the title of his latest album, Island indicates that he is following in Lacan’s footsteps. The album’s 13 songs take listeners through the border regions of the imaginary. Island’s interest lies where the imaginary ends – and thus where the symbolic and the real emerge.
This theme is apparent from the very beginning. The album opens with Artemis, a song about Actaeon’s encounter with the Greek goddess of the hunt. Actaeon sees the goddess bathing naked and is subsequently transformed into a deer and devoured by his own dogs. Actaeon’s sight of the naked goddess can be read as the subject’s encounter with Das Ding, the lost object at the centre of the lack that brings the subject into being (cf. Lacan, Seminar VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis). A direct encounter with Das Ding would be traumatic and ultimately lead to the annihilation of the subject, which is precisely what the myth – and thus the song – depicts.
Some may object that Das Ding was essentially a hapax in Lacan’s thought and should be disregarded as a concept. Even without it, however, Artemis can be read as a song about the subject’s encounter with the real, the point at which the symbolic structure breaks down.
The lyrics of four songs shall now be analysed more closely: Little Boy On The Hill, Blind Driver, Rise Up, and We Can Win. In addition to their textual relevance, these tracks have been chosen as a representative sample of the album, because they appear at its beginning, in its middle, and at its end.
Little Sisyphus On The Hill
The second song on the album, Little Boy On The Hill, begins with the subject expressing a series of desires that appear utterly incompatible with one another.
I wish I was a little bit taller
I wish I was a little bit smaller[…]
I wish i was a little bit faster
I wish I was a little bit slower
In these four lines, Island prompts consideration of two psychoanalytic insights. First, the subject’s desire is erratic and contradictory. In fact, the subject “does not know what they want” because desire is located at the level of the unconscious. Second, Island exposes the inherently unstable nature of symbolic identity. The subject moves from one symbolic identity to another, but always ends up expressing yet another wish for a different one.
The following lines are also worth considering in this context:
I wish I was a little bit naughty
I wish I could throw a big party
Build a sandcastle on the beach
With all the disco lights bouncing right to my beat
Here, the subject longs for plain hedonistic pleasure. However, in the third line, Island inserts a reminder of the impermanence of these desires and pleasures. Even if the subject were to let loose and party on the beach, the resulting brief release of tension would last little longer than a sandcastle caught in the rising tide.
It seems almost superfluous to point to the obvious reference to Sigmund Freud’s seminal 1920 work Beyond the Pleasure Principle and the concept of the death drive first introduced in this book. While the death drive underwent important revisions under Lacan, Island evidently wrote Little Boy On The Hill to recall Freud’s original discovery, namely that seeking to maintain tension takes precedence over seeking its release. Given that Freud partly credited this insight to observing his grandson engage in the now-famous fort-da game, Island’s decision to write this song about a little boy is unsurprising.
The chorus provides further support for this reading of the title:
Little boy on the hill
Little boy on the hill
(And I can’t sit still)
I’m a little boy on the hill
Little boy on the hill
(And I can’t sit still)
And I, I carry my dreams everywhere I go
(And I can’t sit still)
I’m a little boy on the hill
Little boy on the hill
(And I can’t sit still)
Having established himself as a close reader of continental philosophy, Island may well have had the mythological figure of Sisyphus in mind while writing these lyrics. In fact, it is this author’s assertion that this song constitutes a rather open-faced attack on French philosopher Albert Camus and his famous proclamation, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy”.
In the second song of the album, Island declares himself a clear disciple of Lacan. If Camus were still alive, it is easy to imagine the two of them face-to-face, with Island pulling the rug from right under the Frenchman’s feet by posing a question along these lines: “Why would happiness play any part in this? The subject’s enjoyment is predicated on the undermining of happiness, not its obtainment!”
Let us review the facts: Island has replaced the image of Sisyphus, a pained adult man condemned to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity, with that of a carefree child running up and down a hill, not because of some mythological or divine imposition but out of his own volition.
This point is underlined in the final lines of the chorus:
And I won’t come down, won’t come down
(And I can’t sit still)
And I won’t come down, won’t come down
(And I can’t sit still)
And I won’t come down, won’t come down
The subject does not want to escape – at least at the unconscious level. They derive enjoyment from constantly sabotaging themselves, thus maintaining tension. The contradictory desires expressed by the subject may appear nonsensical, but only if we ignore that their very unattainability is in fact the entire point. The death drive maintains tension by circling the object-cause of desire, what Lacan refers to as objet a, rather than by obtaining the seeming object of desire, which results in the release of tension.
By the second song of the album, Island has thus already introduced several psychoanalytic concepts and presented a critique of absurdist philosophy. But this is only the beginning, as the next section will show.
Blind (Death) Drive(r)
If psychoanalysis were a country, Blind Driver would be a strong candidate for its national anthem. In fact, this song is so rich in references that its lyrics warrant a close reading in their entirety.
The song opens with the following lines:
Everytime I plan A to B and B to C
Oh life doesn’t always go to plan
All of these twists and turns they come and go
We’re wandering off the beaten path
From the outset, Island rejects the idea that “the ego is the master in its own house”. No matter how carefully one plans, life rarely follows the trajectory one so meticulously constructed in one’s mind. Note how there is a certain externality to these “twists and turns” that is implied in these lines. “Life” seems to act of its own accord, regardless of the subject’s conscious planning. From the subject’s perspective, it feels as if an outside force is interfering with their experience.
Since Island has already established himself as a thinker of the unconscious, this outside force can be understood as the subject’s own unconscious desire acting through the death drive.
These ideas are further developed in the next few lines:
And it feels so hard when you’re lost
And way off course
But if you embrace it
I wish I knew this before
First, Island acknowledges that this situation causes the subject suffering. As long as the subject has not taken responsibility for their own enjoyment, they will believe that they are genuinely following their conscious desire while being constantly undermined by some unknown other. There is also a clear reference here to Little Boy On The Hill and the exhausting pursuit of symbolic identities, discussed in the previous section.
Lines 3 and 4, however, dispel any remaining doubts about Island’s engagement with psychoanalytic theory. Instead of fighting, ignoring, or even merely accepting this seeming interference, Island openly calls on his audience to embrace it. One could imagine him during one of his performances shouting something like: “We are all castrated subjects!”
Line 4, incidentally, in all likelihood expresses Island’s wish that he had read Lacan’s seminars earlier.
The following lines constitute perhaps the heart of the song:
We’ve been driving down the road that
Nobody has walked down before
It is so inspiring to be desiring
The things making you feel so unsure
Island opens by acknowledging the scale of the psychoanalytic project. Freud famously declared that humanity had suffered three historic humiliations: the discovery that the Earth was not at the centre of the universe, the discovery of evolution, which demonstrated that humans were not qualitatively different from animals, and his own discovery of the unconscious, which demonstrated that we are not in control of our own minds.
What exactly is the result of “embracing” our symbolic castration? Here, Island uses a highly interesting word: inspiring. Any somewhat serious reader must see in this a clear reference to remarks on the outcome of psychoanalysis made by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek: “The real goal of psychoanalysis is paradoxical; it’s precisely to liberate you from yourself – to bring you to the point where you can finally forget about yourself and work for a greater cause.”
According to Island, it is so inspiring to be desiring // the things making you feel so unsure. In other words, it is inspiring to embrace the fact that one’s desires are unconscious and thus fundamentally alien to oneself. It is inspiring because this insight finally allows the subject to see through the ego’s illusions, recognising them as nothing but smoke and mirrors.
The chorus goes on to celebrate the lacking subject:
I’m a blind driver, blind driver
Blind driver, crazy
I’m a blind driver, blind driver
Blind driver, crazy
Come on
Instead of remaining within their own particularist sphere, the subject who fully embraces their own lack – the Blind Driver – is finally free to dedicate themselves to more universalist concerns. The use of the word crazy is also noteworthy. What is a crazy person if not someone who is not in control of their own mind? By that definition, we are all crazy, according to psychoanalysis – and Josh Island.
In the next verse, a note of caution appears:
So many times I’ve been wanting to turn around
Our eyes can’t even look past the hill
Over there light is shining, we need reminding
To ride and see what’s in store
Island emphasises an important point here: there is comfort in neuroticism. Recognising our symbolic castration means taking responsibility for our enjoyment. Many are not ready to take on that responsibility and prefer instead to remain invested in the illusion that their lack can be overcome.
When faced with the “craziness” of the death drive and unconscious desire, which suggest that we do not know where we are going (Our eyes can’t even look past the hill), it might seem appealing to return to the comforting (but false) belief that we really are mapping out the route of our journey. Light is a common metaphor for knowledge or wisdom, and Island clearly locates it over there, inviting us to “traverse the fantasy”.
The song concludes with what can be read as the subject’s experience at the end of analysis:
Now I’m speeding down the other way
All my troubles fade away
Now it’s really falling into place
I’ll be staying in my lane
One further detail merits comment before the final section. Blind Driver is the sixth of the 13 featured songs on Imaginary Borders and is thus located near the middle of the album. This is necessarily speculative, but given Island’s extensive references to psychoanalysis, the placement of the album’s most conceptually dense song may suggest that he considers what is often referred to as Lacan’s “middle period” to be the most important in intellecutal terms.
Island’s most devoted listeners may wish to raise the issue during the next Meet&Greet and perhaps enquire whether he considers Lacan’s later Kantian turn an unfortunate regression from the more radical Hegelian positions he developed in the middle seminars.
We Can Rise Up
While Lacan never developed a political project for psychoanalysis, many subsequent thinkers have used his ideas to push the field in this direction. An analysis of the final two songs of the album, Rise Up and We Can Win, suggests that Island follows them down that path.
Both songs are addressed to a collective. As previous songs have shown, Island emphasises the limitations of particularism and does not appear to endorse individual liberation. This is most evident in the opening lines of We Can Win:
There’s many things I don’t understand
I can’t wrap my head around
Why we only think about ourselves
Island goes further by highlighting the devastating outcome of blindly pursuing individual liberation:
So easy to turn a blind eye
And leave our world behind
That’s why the rich all go to Mars
As contemporary theorists, including Todd McGowan, have noted, capitalism is the first economic system to be built on excess. However, this excess is not actually achievable. Even those seemingly living the most excessive lives, the ultra-rich, always feel the need to accumulate more. Capitalism promises to overcome lack through the sublime object of the commodity but never actually delivers on that promise because, once an object is obtained, it merely reflects our own lack back at us. Having depleted the world’s resources in their pursuit of endless accumulation, the rich board their suspiciously phallic-shaped rockets bound for another world in the hopes of achieving the promised excess there.
Further into the song, some of the most compelling lines appear:
I’m so sick of the greed of this world
Desire for power
When all men end up dying naked here
While the possibility of Island’s preference for the “middle” Lacan was considered earlier, this verse seems to suggest that he also found value in the later seminars, notably the formulas of sexuation introduced in Seminar XX: Encore. The formulas of sexuation concern the structural position a subject takes relative to symbolic castration. While these positions are denoted as “male” and “female”, respectively, they are strictly structural and have nothing to do with anatomy, sex, or gender.
Another important point to clarify is that the phallus, for both Freud and Lacan, is a fraud. No one actually has the phallus, as all subjects are lacking. What Island criticises here is the male position, which consists of pretending not to lack. Driven by desire and greed, subjects pursue all kinds of objects and pretend that, beneath this accumulation, they possess the phallus. Ultimately, however, their lack is always revealed when they die, unable to take any of these objects with them.
The return of nakedness as a metaphor for lack, previously encountered in Artemis, is also worth highlighting. Island thus opens and closes the album with a clear reference to the lack through which the subject comes into being.
As mentioned at the beginning of this section, Island advocates collective action to bring about emancipation from the current political situation. Throughout Rise Up, the backing vocals repeatedly call the collective to action:
(Why don’t you rise, why don’t you rise, why don’t you rise)
[…]
(You’ve got to rise, you’ve got to rise, you’ve got to rise)
[…]
(You’ve got to rise up)
The same song also contains another reference to objet a:
You got the power, it’s the look in your eyes
[…]
You got the power, in your voice
In Seminar XI, Lacan introduced the gaze and the voice as visual and aural forms of objet a, respectively. The gaze, in particular, has since taken on somewhat of a life of its own, sadly at the expense of the radicality which Lacan originally gave it. Given Island’s familiarity with Lacan’s seminars, these lines may be intended to recall this original meaning.
The crucial point often overlooked is that the gaze and the voice, as forms of objet a, undermine mastery rather than uphold it. Encountering either is traumatic because it confronts the subject with the realisation that it is always other to itself.
The inclusion of this reference at this point is significant. Having called for the formation of a collective, Island provides a key to its emancipatory struggle: the emperor is naked! The phallus is a fraud and there is nothing beneath its display of mastery. This is precisely why revolutionary change is possible and it is an important point for anyone engaged in this kind of political action to keep in mind.
Conclusion
The introduction alluded to a second aspect of the interpretation of the album’s title, Imaginary Borders. The preceding analysis now provides a basis for considering it.
Borders, Island suggests, are imaginary. They are abstract concepts that exist only for as long as we agree that they do. Do birds feel the need to apply for visas before their annual migration? Do rivers care to show their passports as they move from one “country” into another?
But the implications extend further. If borders are imaginary, what does that mean for belonging? Some believe that people belong only where they were born. Yet some feel profoundly out of place in their supposed “home”, while others find a sense of comfort halfway around the world.
The truth that must be faced is that none of us belong. There is no “home” to find or return to. We are all just passing through. It is precisely our lack, the fact that we always “stick out” no matter where we are, that allows us to move just like the Earth’s birds and rivers.
Imaginary Borders is an album about non-belonging. Through his signature musical style, characterised by warmth and confidence, Island suggests that our lack is not something to fear but something to embrace. On an individual level, this involves taking responsibility for our own enjoyment and freeing ourselves from the endless stories in which the ego traps us. Once we are able to forget about ourselves, we are then able to join in collective action for a truly universalist cause.
Island’s latest album thus reveals itself as a delight to listen to, appealing both to those simply looking for laid-back tunes to dream their afternoons away and those fringe lunatics who take a frankly perverse pleasure in writing thousands of words in a desperate effort to tie their friend’s lyrics to one of their favourite philosophers.
