What We Were Waiting For

Strangely, that does make me feel a bit better.

You’re forgiven, almost-half-of-America. We know you did your damndest. We’ll even keep fantasizing that your outnumbering was very slyly voter-frauded into existence (note: perhaps in 25 years some Republican insider will have a deathbed guilt fit and fess up what happened, but we suspect that fact is, thanks to a flying wedge of pulpit-prodded homophobes, we did lose, sorta-fair and very goddamn square).

And since so many of you have been asking, we’d be delighted to have you come join us in Canada. You’ll have to sustain a little flak from our more anti-American countryfolk, but some of us really crush on you almost-half-of-Americans. (However, that doesn’t mean you can automatically immigrate. You think we can automatically immigrate to your country? Hah.)

Anyway, after a few days’ sulking, I am prepared to get on with it. In fact I’ve already been getting on with it back in the real world before now, writing this week’s column. It is loosely about the rising Psych-Folk Nation, what Wire called “the New Weird America,” the bluest and most stateless of blue states, Americans of the wildest, Walt Whitmaniest, Emma Goldmanickest, Harry-and-Jack-Smithiest lineage, dissenters down to their dirty fingernails and fuzzy toes, and in the latest generation they are imaginatively dropping not just out of U.S. society-if-you-can-call-it-that, but out of the whole stinkin’ human race.

I’m talking Animal Collective, Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Wolf Eyes, Espers, CocoRosie, Animentals and so forth, in a tone that may in some respects be still kinda desperate and unhinged: It was written yesterday, with a full 24 hours’ less recuperation than this message. So check it out in tomorrow’s (Saturday) Globe & Mail (or check here for further instructions) - and then, if you are a qualified mental-health professional, drop me a line to tell me precisely what kind of medication I need.

Meanwhile I’m going to see Ray, to remind me why we’ve loved (and lost) America before and no doubt will again, someday.