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On Go West… life is peaceful there

 

(Go west) in the open air
(Go west) where the skies are blue
(Go west) this is what we're gonna do

Go west, this is what we're gonna do
Go west

 

I was listening to Spotify this morning with my almost 2-year-old grandson. Since it was raining, we could only play around under covered driveway. I was putting on some 80s and 90s dancing disco beat songs. My grandson was prancing around listening to the songs. Yes, grandad is brainwashing grandson for some oldies songs.

 

Then this song came on. Go West by Pet Shop Boys. It is a remake of the 1979 version by Village People, with a slight twist to the lyrics.

 

When I heard the song, either by Village People or Pet Shop Boys, back then, it reminded me of my lessons in American Literature back in US. Go west is a retelling of the glorified American history and folklore called Manifest Destiny. The term was coined in 1845 by a journalist named John O'Sullivan. It described the widely held belief that white American settlers were destined by God to expand across North America. The idea was that the United States had a mission to spread its institutions—like democracy and Protestantism—from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Pacific Ocean, due West of the East coast colonies. 

 

Not actually something to be glorified, if you are the one being displaced and your land forcefully taken over.

 

I also learned, the call to go west in the Village People 1979 version is alluded to about a young gay man heading west to San Francisco. The Pet Shop Boys 1993 version, came a few years after the fall and breakup of the Soviet Union.

 

I like the idea of going where there are open fresh clean air and the skies are blue. Where the landscape is green as far as your eyes can see. Not the feeling of living in a dome of concrete jungle that surrounds us city dwellers.

 

Regardless of the innuendoes, I still love the song. At least in my mind, while listening to the song by Pet Shop Boys or Village People, I am riding my imaginary motorcycle, riding through the backroads between hills of greens, breathing the fresh air and taking in the breathtaking view.


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