Five Guys I’ve Never Met who Made Me Believe in Life Again, Part 5: Sufjan Stevens

5.
Name: Sufjan Stevens.
Age: 35.
Occupation: Composer, singer-songwriter, and regional biographer.
Alma mater: Hope College.
Influences: Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, and Flannery O’Connor.

Sufjan Stevens never wanted to be a folk singer. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from NYC’S The New School, went broke, and then embarked on his musical career. In 2003, he declared his intention to record albums for all 50 states, but after the release of Illinois andMichigan, declared the thing a joke. A recent project, a multimedia homage to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, featured a 36-piece orchestra and 16-mm film footage of hula-hoopers.

I’ve been trying to write this essay for a year. You would not believe the copious notes I’ve accumulated in that span of time—fifteen or twenty pages, at least. I’ve read four dozen interviews and twenty-five articles on the man. I’ve written eight drafts. I did all my homework, and yet, every word I tried to write about him sounded awkward and hollow.

I was convinced I was never going to finish writing about Sufjan until last weekend, when Significant Other and I journeyed to Chicago to see him in the flesh. As we sat in the ornate auditorium, every inch of it carpeted or gilded, my anticipation soared. It didn't feel like I was about to encounter a celebrity so much as a mythological figure from my childhood, like Santa, or the Easter Bunny, or the imaginary friends I had from Star Trek. (Come, now. You know you had those too.)

I first discovered Sufjan in 2005, just after the release of Come on, Feel the Illinoise!, the album that got him played in Little Miss Sunshine and earned him indie accolades galore. I only started listening to him because I stumbled across his name in a magazine and was puzzled by it. “Sufjan?” I thought. This was a moniker easily mangled, just like mine. I felt a kinship with him from then on.

Over time, I thought of him as my personal minstrel. His was the voice I chose to sing me through my first heartaches, my first true disappointments, my glimmering mornings and shadowy afternoons. Why him, you ask? Why this eclectic stranger? It was simple: he felt familiar. We had a lot in common. Both of us grew up in large families. Both of us grew up inMichigan. Both of us grew up in—and later left—charismatic and boisterous divisions of the Christian church. Both of us attended small, private liberal-arts schools and studied creative writing. Both of us sat in our cinderblock dorm rooms, clutching our guitars, playing songs we wrote for no one. Fortunately for me, I heard his.

Ballads like these and others sustained me through college. I learned dozens of his songs, emblazoned them on my memory: "To Be Alone With You," "Concerning the UFO Sighting..." But there was one song—an intricate and lengthy epic—that stood out above all others. It was called “Seven Swans.”

Fly with me, if you will, to the February of my junior year, an unforgiving year, a gray year brimming with loneliness and existential crises. A drab and fruitless winter encrusted with gray snow. Picture me, if you will: heart hardened, mind burdened, possessing a cynical soul. I am driving a blue Buick Regal Gran Sport, circa 1995. I am listening to “Seven Swans.” And I am running away from God.

Let me provide you with context. I am not one of those people who can do something half-heartedly. I’m not a toe-dipper in the slightest; I either dive into each endeavor or I leave it alone. This particularly applies to religion. Even as a kid, I was religiously ardent, that irritating waif in Sunday School who peppered each morning with questions. Nor was my ardor limited to inquiry; there were actions too. I prayed perpetually. I studied my Bible, highlighting entire pages in fuchsia and electric green and cautionary yellow. I wanted to be a missionary. And an astronaut. A missionary astronaut. I would lead all them aliens to Jesus—because, you know, them aliens had souls too.

Fast-forward, now, to the roadworn Buick. In my old age, belief in God has become too complicated. It’s not working out. It’s too risky. I, the rational and recently-enlightened undergrad, cannot hinge my livelihood on the existence of something I cannot see or feel or touch, and who academia analyzed out of existence anyway. Confused, I turn to the same old answers everyone does: the cold hard facts of the Real World, the wars and sorrow and friends’ deaths from cancer. Compared to these things, my childhood fervor looks trite. I lean toward giving it up.

These feelings are not pleasant. When your livelihood depends on the truth of one being’s existence, and that being disappears, reality itself seems to crumble.

With positively stunning self-confidence (read: arrogance), I decide that God’s existing depends on my believing in him. Kind of like Tinkerbell. Belief that had gotten me into this mess, this agony of soul, so ceasing that belief will get me out. I decide to walk away from my faith. I make this decision while driving my Buick, imagining fuzzily that God was located behind me, living somewhere on the east side of the city. If drive away from him, God will leave me alone.

On my car stereo, Sufjan mumbles blithely and strums along on his banjo. Then he sings the following:

He will take you.
If you run, he will chase you,
‘cause he is the Lord.

And, just in case I had missed it the first time, he sings it again:

He will take you.
If you run, he will chase you,
‘cause he is the Lord.

And then, simply,

He is the Lord.

Sufjan sang, and suddenly I believed him.

I’m not going to pretend that this one song changed everything. I didn’t instantly revert back to heartfelt monotheism; it took another concert to pull that one off. But it did make me realize that, even if I turned my back on God, even if I rejected him flat, he would still find me someday. Maybe in a couple months. Maybe in fifty-four years, on my deathbed. No matter how long it took God, he would always keep trying to find me, whether I liked it or not. In those days, those heartsore transitional days, nothing in my life was certain, and so I found these thoughts comforting. I still wasn't sure what I believed or why, but I kept at it. In the meantime, Sufjan embodied a faith I found both stimulating and beautiful.

These days, I feel far more ideologically settled. It could be that college is done and behind me. It could be the new apartment, the steady job. It could be the ever-constant presence of Significant Other. It could be that I've found a church that makes me feel at home. But panic can accompany this stasis; without the perpetual struggle of my faith being endangered, I now fear becoming complacent. Maybe I 'll forget about God. Or maybe he’ll forget about me. These were the thoughts floating through my head as we sat in the Chicago Theater, waiting for Sufjan to appear.

We almost hadn’t come that day, Significant Other and I. Sufjan had released a new album that week, The Age of Adz, and it was freaking weird. Gone was the comforting banjo I’d known, lush folk now replaced with thundering electronica. Sufjan didn't sing of widows or faith; instead, the new record was a concept album inspired by an artist-schizophrenic. Who was this new Sufjan? We recognized him, but only a little bit. It was like seeing Santa flying a spaceship.

The night before the show, we listened to the new album and sat there bewildered. Significant Other wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know if I actually like this, or just feel like I’m supposed to,” he said. Concert reviews informed us he wouldn’t be singing the old songs, anyway. So much for my “Seven Swans.” So much for the comfort I'd known.

In the end, we decided to go to the show anyway. We had third-row seats, after all. This would be miserable if the show was an art-rock disaster. Tour reviews warned us that Sufjan's setlist was comprised of wholly new material; we likely wouldn't recognize a song. But we went anyway.

Sufjan and his twelve-person band sauntered onto the stage. He wore a Korean Frosted Flakes T-shirt. He didn’t say anything. He picked up his banjo, and then he sang,

He will take you.
If you run, he will chase you.
‘cause he is the Lord.

He is the Lord.
He is the Lord.
He is the Lord.

photo credit: www.flickr.com/iamcreativ

The Nine Books that Live on my Nightstand

My title is too kind. Really, this post should be called "The Nine Books that Occupy my Floor, my Desk, and Anyplace Else I Happened to Leave Them." A recent move seemed to demote my level of personal neatness from a seven to about a three. This is bad.

The good news is that I've started reading again. Finally, after four long months of recovery from school, giving my beleaguered brain a chance to rekindle itself, I am returning to my books. (And to writing. Obviously.)

1. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers.
This book is the reason I'm writing again. It's probably also the reason that everything I've written thus far is sprinkled generously with dependent clauses and appositives (that right there is fancy grammar speak for "being long-winded"). I first encountered Dave around the tender age of twenty. At this point, I'd begun to have sneaking suspicions that the world wasn't as spotless as I'd hoped—though I was far too terrified to admit it. Dave gave voice to my anxieties, and I felt emboldened by his brutal honesty.

2. Anne of the Island, L.M. Montgomery.
Most days, I turn up my nose at Anne of Green Gables; it's a schmaltzy and occasionally embarrassing relic from my homeschoolery past. But on some days, days when I'm overwhelmed with Life and the Dizzyingly Rapid Passage of Time and Good Lord We're All Growing Up and Getting Older, Aren't We?, Anne hits the spot. This one's my favorite because it's the one where she moves off to college and—spoileralertspoileralert—finally gets together with Gilbert. Because we all knew THAT was coming. Durr.

3. Somewhere More Holy, Tony Woodlief.

I came across Tony Woodlief by happenstance. A couple years ago, this Wall Street Journal article lay open upon my parents' coffee table, and I ate it up. Tony writes about about the same things that fill my own head: doubt, education, and the trouble with being an evangelical.

4. American Salvage, Bonnie Jo Campbell.
Bonnie Jo was my professor once. (Would it be tacky to admit she's the only one who ever gave me an A+?) We got to see snippets of this short story collection in our Intro to Creative Writing class long before it was published, long before it almost won the National Book Award, long before she got all famous and was on NPR and stuff. The funny thing was that she didn't expect it to sell.

5. "The Events of October," Gail Griffin.

This one was also written by a professor of mine. I can't tell you how awe-inspiring it is to come across a book in Barnes and Noble, feel its weight in your hands, and realize that you know personally the woman responsible for every freaking word between the two covers. In it, Gail examines the story of a murder-suicide that happened at our school in 1999—in the same dorm that I lived in, actually. There was some speculation that "the event" had occurred in my room. I have recently been informed that it didn't.

6. Je-Parlez Francais?, Berlitz Publishing.

My mother studied French in college. Consequently, my middle name is French. Also consequently, I learned the French word for “brother” (“frère”) right about the same time I learned what a brother was. This book introduced this and other such concepts to me, all via a small brown bear named Teddy. On the page when Teddy visits the playground, I scrawled my name in vibrant pink pen.

7. The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware.

Orthodoxy is a very old and widespread branch of Christianity that's surprisingly little-known in evangelical circles. Don't be embarrassed that you've never heard of it. I hadn't either, until about a year ago. I think that, sometimes, we'd like to think our religion was invented in 1950. In the Midwest. By Americans. But the truth of the matter is that Christianity is an ancient faith, and it didn't begin on this continent. Timothy Ware explains the origins of Orthodoxy and how it still survives to this day.

8. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, Clay Shirky.

I first heard about this one in the New Yorker. (Just for the record: I don't usually read New Yorker. I browse it occasionally so I can begin sentences with "I was reading the New Yorker the other day..." It impresses people.) Clay Shirky's arguing that, post-WWII, Americans found themselves with more free time than ever, thanks to sparkly new inventions like dishwashers and ironing boards. Back then, we filled our free time with television. Now, we fill it with the internet. The real question is whether we're using this tool for good or for ill.

9. Sam and the Firefly, Dr. Seuss.
(See, the only reason I can get away with admitting I read New Yorker to impress people is that I confess to reading Dr. Seuss immediately after. It's called being brutally honest. Thank you, Dave Eggers.) This was my favorite book when I was very, very small...small enough that, when I discovered it again, I didn't remember any of the words—just the pictures. And the pictures are beautiful. The setting—a dark and endless night—bears more than a little resemblance to that of Howard and the Purple Crayon, which has also haunted me for years. I think we kids want to know that if we ever choose to go wandering about in the night, we can always come home safely.