You think I’m a thug.

(I hear you thinking I’m a thug.

Sentimental like a thug,

well I like the physique. But, yes sir,

it’s a brutal tribe.)

The title of Robyn Hitchcock’s new song frames the anthem of the kind of well meaning self-centered thought in 2017. It prevails in our politics and swells on social media.

I’ll be short and sweet because everyone (ahem) has got something important to say. You have your own blog entry to write and your own political agenda to powerfully assert.

It’s one of the best Robyn Hitchcock singles I have ever heard. Well, since college anyway. And except for the one from the last album and the one before that.

At roughly age 64, Hitchcock stays relevant and rooted to what compels us about him. His rule breaking, his sci- fi worldview, the bizarre mirror he points at us all.

The original title of the song was “My Vision of World Empathy” Hitchcock said in an emailed statement he released with the song that discusses our destiny, replacing ourselves with infallible artificial thought.

In the song he makes absurd demands: “I want world peace.” Assertions like this seem reckless in this political environment.

Then he says things that would blow a fascist's mind. that there are two Frosty paths that diverge in a yellow wood:

“Either [scenario 1] we will eventually become extinct and be replaced by cats with articulated thumbs who have evolved the way apes slowly evolved into us, or [scenario 2] we will become empathetic and mildly telepathic.” [Emphasis, mine.]

He says people like Trump will not be a problem in the future. We presume this will only be in scenario 2 [and not the scenario involving an evolved breed of cats with thumbs inheriting the earth].

“We will become a species that isn’t capable of bullying because we can feel what we are doing to other people.”

By deduction, it appears number 1 will win but clearly some kind of right of free thought will suffer. He dangles a little hope. He has assigned nomenclature to the surviving species.

He calls this species “Homo angelicus.” – our survivors, if any, will be compassionate mind-readers. Evidently their culinary tastes will revert to 1978 in the heyday of breaded fish:

“It can read your mind, it’s compassionate, it can levitate and it’s a great lover! It shares its fish sticks with you and flies you back in time to see The Velvet Underground! That is what we need to become.”

I don't look forward to a future with fishsticks. Maybe we can fly back in time to get a steak and some red wine. But I love everything about this enigma of a song and what it reminds me about Robyn Hitchcock.

Here is a link to purchase this song.

Check out Robyn's site with tour dates: http://www.robynhitchcock.com/

The forthcoming self-titled Album drops in April, 2017. A Robyn Hitchcock Track Listing follows:

1. I Want To Tell You About What I Want, 2. Virginia Woolf, 3. I Pray When I'm Drunk, 4. Mad Shelley's Letterbox, 5. Sayonara Judge, 6. Detective Mindhorn, 7. 1970 In Aspic, 8. Raymond And The Wires, 9. Autumn Sunglasses, 10. Time Coast.