Apeman

The Kinks' 'Apeman':

And with the over population
And inflation and starvation crazy politicans.
I don't feel safe in this world
No more don't want to die in a nuclear war.
I want to sail away to a distant shore
And make like an apeman.

It's not just that this is a pastoral text (of course it is); it is that it is symptomatic of an important shift in the logic of pastoral. It is no longer enough simply to leave the city and go to the countryside; we must leave civilisation altogether -- urban or rural -- and find a completely new, primitivist environment. Is this postDarwinian pastoral? There's lots of it in SF.

In man's evolution he has created
The cities and the motor traffic rumble
But give me half a chance and I'd be taking
Clothes and living in the jungle.
But the only time that I feel at ease
Swinging up and down in a coconut tree.
Oh what a life of luxury to be like an apeman