The United States Has Ceased to Exist

Bon Iver, “Calgary” from Bon Iver (2011)

As a small pendant to the larger discussion of American hipsters’ obsession with Canada (begun in our Patricia Lockwood post), I thought it would be worthwhile to glance at this song. I’m not going to quote all the lyrics – they’re easy enough to find online – but only the part that seems like it could be relevant to Canada:

So it’s storming on the lake
Little waves our bodies break

There’s a fire going out
But there’s really nothing to the south

It’s not immediately clear why the song is called “Calgary.” Most of the songs on the album have place names as their titles, and it seems fair to assume that each song is in some way associated with the place it is named for. And while I think we are free to interpret works of art in our own way, and aren’t necessarily obligated to be guided by the creator’s “intentions,” it might still be worth pointing out that Vernon himself has confirmed that the song is about Calgary, Alberta.

So if we imagine that the singer is in some sense speaking from Calgary – or his idea of Calgary – how remarkable does the final line quoted above become? There’s not very much of Canada south of Calgary, which is in the southern part of Alberta, but there is quite a lot south of Calgary: most obviously, the United States, which is here referred to as “really nothing.”

Could there be a clearer example of an American hipster trying to escape his Americanness and proclaim himself a Canadian? Is there any more obvious way that he could try to tie himself to the effortless cool he associates with Canada? The singer essentially denies the existence of his entire country – a country of hundreds of millions of people – in an attempt to establish his hipster bona fides.

And that isn’t the only clue to his desire to be Canadian. His “band” – which seems to have a more notional than actual existence – is named after a corruption of the French phrase “bon hiver” (“good winter”) – and French, I believe, is one of the official languages of Canada, not the U.S. And then his record label, jagjaguwar, recently merged with – can you guess? – that’s right, Secretly Canadian.

American hipsters wish they were Canadian. What more proof do we need?

Single Post Navigation

← Older Entry

Newer Entry →