a Desert Island, by Laurea, in 12 seconds.
Assuming all (or most) of us think of this island as the archetypal Desert Island, how many of us have seen such an island? How many little sandy islands with exactly one palm tree are actually out there? The New Yorker cartoon archive alone holds over three hundred and seventy desert islands, but Wikipedia makes no estimation of the actual number. We can only imagine that there are many hundreds of thousands, each of which is populated by a poor bedraggled fellow who is either putting a message in a bottle or who is waiting for a reply to the bottle he has already thrown.
Laurea’s Fastest Possible Desert Island corresponds nicely to the standard: little bedraggled fellow, round island not exceeding twenty feet in diameter, palm tree (with optional coconut). We’re of two minds about whether the seas around the Fastest Possible Desert Island should be “forbiddingly choppy” or “maddeningly calm”, but the waves on Fastest Possible Oceans are typically sort of rough, so we’ve got a rogue wave coming in from the right here—with a less aggressive turn of the pen, it might have been a shark fin, which would also have been perfect. As usual, the weather on the Fastest Possible Desert Island is clear and sunny; conveniently (or unfortunately, maybe), it never rains.
Is our stranded sailor sprawled out desperately or reclining patiently? What is the deal with these castaways anyhow—can they reasonably subsist entirely on coconuts and lazy fish? We like to imagine this fraternity of lonely hermits, none of whom will ever meet, separated by leagues of ocean (maddeningly calm, forbiddingly choppy) and communicating with bottles. It’s sort of like the Internet, but with coconuts.
Our message in a bottle to you: The fantasy of solitude that is the Fastest Possible Desert Island, which we’re sure you recognize. Bottle one back to us with a tweet to @fastestdrawings.
