Would you believe me if I told you I had no idea who Sufjan Stevens was before 2015? Honestly I can’t believe it and I lived it. I had heard “Chicago” before on the radio when I was younger but had no idea who it was sung by. It wasn’t until I got to college and everyone started talking about Carrie and Lowell that I went to look him up in secret so I could be in the know.
I really fell in love with Carrie
and Lowell. It’s hard not to. It feels so sweet, almost feathery to me. Like it’s
a fleeting renaissance or a wispy lace. That sentence is so pretentious and
means absolutely nothing, but frankly those are the images and textures I associate with Carrie
and Lowell. With this album being my introduction to Sufjan Stevens, I had absolutely
no idea what I had coming to me when I started listening to his other stuff.
I didn’t even hear his other albums until the summer of 2017 when I returned from my study abroad.
After being in New Zealand and travelling around for nine months, having
completed the experiment of introducing myself as non-binary to every new
person I met, coming home to where everyone knew me as she/her was fucking weird. It
feels harder to correct people you’ve known for years on your pronouns than it
feels to correct strangers. Coming home and returning to my life before going
abroad, I felt like I had erased all the progress and experiences I had made
while I was gone. I settled into a strange, silent depression that summer. I
started my own gardening business where I worked nearly every morning for several
hours, then I would get cleaned up and go wait tables at the restaurant I
worked at since I was 16, serving the same faces the same food. That summer
started a kind of anxiety cycle that I’m still recovering from.
That summer is also the first time
I listened to Illinois. I have such a specific association for these songs. I
was doing a big gardening project while house sitting for family friends for
about two weeks. Every day I would go into their house, empty the dehumidifier,
feed crickets to the frog, work on their garden, and listen to this album. Illinois
feels like the soundtrack to the beginning of this period in my life. Listening
to it makes me feel like I’m stuck in the undertow of my own
life again, that everything was washing over me and I could do nothing but watch my
own life happen while I drowned.
I don’t really feel that way
anymore, though COVID has certainly thrown me for a loop. Mostly when I listen
to Sufjan Stevens, and especially when I listen to this album, I think of that
time in my life as a doorway to where I am now. I feel sad for the lonely person I was
when I was first listening to this, but I’m happy that being that person got me
to listen to these songs at all. I mean how can you not love an album that has
a song titled “A short reprise for Mary Todd, who went insane but for very good
reasons.” An album that has gut-wrenching songs like “Casmir Pulaski Day” and “John
Wayne Gacy, Jr.” Plus, there’s no way to dislike a man who has put out at least
one hundred Christmas songs.
Sufjan Stevens is the patron saint
of Gay Christmas. He is also the patron saint of writing songs where you can’t
tell if the subject is God or a boy he has a crush on (or both). Playing the
game of Gay or God? for his songs is always fun. And his music will always push
at a soft spot in my heart, not just for my associations with it, but because
it’s beautiful. Listen to this national treasure of an album again if you haven’t
lately, and pretend it’s summer and there isn’t a pandemic and you’re sitting
in some warm grass, pulling weeds with your bare hands. It’s a nice reprieve.
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