His job was just beach. His art, his science, his philosophy, his religion, his ethos, his billion-dollar brand: beach. Just beach. “No man is an island entire of itself,” wrote John Donne; “If we couldn’t laugh / We would all go insane,” sang Jimmy Buffett, who died Friday, of skin cancer, at 76, “surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” per a post on his Twitter account, which added, “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.” That collective grief, that camaraderie, that interconnectedness: Of course that’s what “No man is an island” means, but also, no man was more of an island than Jimmy Buffett, a cheerfully boozy and poignantly serene walking vacation of a man where all were welcome and nobody ever had to leave.
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