Dear Sufjan,
Thank you.
I first encountered you in a small record shop in Ohio. I had read a blurb describing Seven Swans as if Dylan had attended Sunday School. That was enough for me. I picked up the album and changed my life.
The quiet magnificence of the record seeped into all of my private moments. The trees of the field clapped their hands, yes, speaking to me in ways they never had before. I understood the church yards, the sisters, and the Abrahamic sacrifices. I woke up to hallelujahs. I knew what it felt like to want to make that swim across Lake Michigan. I kept the Devil at bay as your banjo steeped itself in life’s rich mysteries.
For the first time, a writer was not merely writing to me, he was writing for me. On my behalf. You depicted faith and hope in the Lord alongside life’s soul-wrenching but necessary struggles. Your deft artistry was inclusive but personal, universal but hermetic. You also sang about family: brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers all grappling with love in the past and present.
I picked up Illinois while working as a summer legal associate in Phoenix. I spent my first few weeks alone before my wife Shelley and our first-born son Dylan would join me. I could not sleep after listening to the record all day: the cascading piano lines of “Concerning the UFO“ repeated in my ears, haunting and beautiful. I rolled around in reverie too excited to drift away. Your collection of songs were the most magical, fantastical, and wonderful things I had ever heard. More than twenty listens in, “The Predatory Wasp” was still giving me chills. Significantly, the religious and mundane were not inapposite in your world. They were part of the same narrative fabric, the stuff of life. (The avalanche that followed was no different).
Later in the summer, we left our baby with my Aunt Ila—Dylan’s first time away from his mother—so that we could see your show in Mesa. The set was thrilling and the horns rang for days. When you played your solo acoustic version of "Romulus” during the encore, I could see the faces of Annie Clark and other Illinoisemakers as they watched you from backstage. They were standing on the edge of their toes, their eyes fixated in anticipation. Their faces said, we are watching something special.
I embraced the left turn that is Age of Adz. The kaleidoscope of sound and performance art collided during your appearance in Salt Lake City. By the end of the show, I felt as if I had wrestled with demons and emerged victorious. “Impossible Soul” left me spent. As the closing guitar passage played, your voice left alone, I finally understood what you meant, although I could never put it into meaningful words.
Last spring, Shelley’s mother passed away from cancer. She was only 56. She was beautiful. When I brought home Carrie & Lowell, I knew that Shelley needed to hear the record, but I could have never realized just how much she needed to hear it. After we put our four children to sleep, we laid on our bed together and listened to the album from front to back. In the dark we held hands as your gorgeous and devastating words pierced through the room, pierced through our grief, pierced through our hearts. Shelley gently sobbed next to me. I squeezed her hand. You were describing all of the things she had experienced and felt. You were saying things that even our own family members ignored or were too afraid to discuss with her. It would not be the last time that your own journey through grief moved us to tears. But it was a spiritual catharsis that we could have never found elsewhere.
So we flew to Portland to watch your performance on my 36th birthday. It seemed like it was the only thing we could do. To meet you at the crossroads of your own memories of your mother. And to pay tribute to our own mothers, both living and dead.
As a devout Mormon, I believe that Christ rose from the grave and that we will see our loved ones again. The prophet Joseph Smith declared in scripture that the same sociality that exists among us here will exist among us there. Your music somehow captures this message. It attempts to leap the universal gulf—in feeling, in hope, in quiet desperation—and in so doing, I hear from your words that I am not alone, and that we are not cast off forever.
So thank you again.
- Redford (for Yia-Yia & Pappou). A swelling, instrumental beginning.
- Death with Dignity. Arguably my favorite song on the record, the opening track stunned to silence. Images from family home movies played on the columnar screens behind the five-piece band. Children running in the surf. Parties bustling in living rooms. Tube socks and tank tops. Mothers and fathers. Brothers and sisters. How do you move forward amid such loss? Knowing that the past is now forever behind you? Spirit of my silence / I can hear you / And I long to be near you / But I don’t know where to begin / I don’t know where to begin.
- Should Have Known Better. During the second movement of the song, when Sufjan sings encouragement to himself, the synth profile bubbled and then crested like a wave. My brother had a daughter / The beauty that she brings / Illumination. Illumination. He pointed to the sky as he repeated those words. We understood.
- Drawn to the Blood.
- All of Me Wants All of You. This song, surprisingly, sounded absolutely huge. He infused it with cosmic pathos inspired by the Age of Adz. The lighting was impeccable throughout the night, and it almost served as another character on the stage. Kudos to the tech team for such a splendid and well-constructed production.
- Eugene. Sufjan’s throat caught during one of this lovely song’s passages. He had to wipe tears from his face. Even this deep into his 2015 tour, there was a sudden surge of emotion that he could not anticipate. It was clear that this music was not the sort of material that you could ever play without feeling, without passing through some of its profound depths and emotional turns. It was touching in every sense.
- John My Beloved.
- The Only Thing. The stage turned dark and the spotlight singled out Sufjan alone with his guitar. The rendition was jaw-droppingly gorgeous.
- Fourth of July. The album’s emotional centerpiece delivered what only a handful of songs have ever attempted to do. By the end of the song, we’re all going to die crescendoed into something simultaneously frightening and hopeful. Sufjan extended the final coda for an arresting emphasis that was not lost on anyone.
- No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross. Devastating.
- Carrie & Lowell. Though the song started out as an intricate folk-picking affair, with four band members holding a guitar or banjo, it finished in a flourish of electronica.
- The Owl and the Tanager. Sufjan never said a word until he finished his Carrie & Lowell set. "We can all breathe in and breathe out," he said to laughter. "There is a lot of life and light in this room." He shared some funny stories about his memories of Oregon and his recent stay in the city. And then he threw on his hat to emphasize the change in direction. Although the remaining songs dovetailed thematically with Carrie & Lowell, the room seemed lighter. We had been through something together, and Sufjan reminded us that "despair is self-perpetuating" and that we need to seek and embrace the light that is all around us.
- In the Devil’s Territory. This song thrilled me like no other. He emphasized the choral harmonies of the chorus, the song sounding twenty times bigger when played live, and his lead banjo carried me back a dozen years to my own private reckoning with the Devil and his territory. The best surprise of the night, my throat lumped as I longed for the Divine. But I'm not afraid to die / To see you / To meet you.
- Casmir Pulaski Day. As heart-breaking as you ever remembered it.
- The Dress Looks Nice on You. The spiraling electric guitar parts paired with Sufjan’s lead banjo were brilliant.
- Futile Devices. Age of Adz, yo!
- Sister.
- Blue Bucket of Gold. He filled the universe with light. The closing moments were a furious and stellar sendoff, an instrumental jam from an impeccably talented group of musicians. Somewhere to the stars and beyond.
Encore
- Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois. Alone, at the piano, haunting me with those piano lines yet again. Sleep was no longer an option after the show.
- Chicago. You came to take us / All things go, all things go / To recreate us / All things grow, all things grow.
