A Sufjan Came

Once upon a time, there was a player named Monica Seles. This was back before she had been stabbed by an out of work Graf fanatic named Gunter Parcher. One day, her whereabouts were unknown, and this lead to speculation of why Monica was being so evasive. It was rumored that she was pregnant. Instead, she was enjoying her schoolgirl antics, having fun with the media, basking in the attention they were giving her. It was an innocent time.

If celebrities hide behind a shroud of mystery and secrecy, we can try to imprint any image of who they are that we want. Many of these speculations will be flat wrong, and yet, it sates our need to know what celebrities are really like.

Sufjan Stevens, with his release of Come on and Bring The Illinoise, has become the critical darling. Many consider his album, the album of the year, once you get past the kinds of bands and groups that generates millions of sales, and get to those who actually care about the kind of music that's being written. True, much of this crowd tends to be white, college kids, who prefer their under-the-radar music.

Sufjan's music is a kind of alt-folk music that's gaining in popularity. Bands like Iron and Wine have raised awareness of folk music as something hip college students can listen to. Yet, many of Sufjan's songs, especially off the album Seven Swans, but even from his 50-state albums, make references to God and Christ. Normally, such religious allusions would ward off indie listeners like Mapplethorpe wards off conservatives.

When interviewed, Sufjan mostly ducks the issue, and that's where the speculation begins. In a recent article in the Washington Times, there are evangelicals who think that maybe his music may become a crossover with non-evangelicals, and believe, because he grew up in the tradition, that he must be an evangelical, and, yet, almost by the definition of being evangelical, he should try to convince others to see the Christian way.

It's also possible that his views on religion are more complicated. I know Catholics who find the conservative stance by the Catholic church to strict for them, and don't really adhere to Vatican doctrine, even as the church is still influential in their lives. Their leadership is more conservative than they are.

So it may be with Sufjan. He may believe that religion is important to him, but that he might not see eye-to-eye with those who believe that it is the obligation of Christians to spread the good word. Or, he may indeed believe that it's important to spread the word, but that he's not going to do it, because he wants to have a crossover audience, who might otherwise run away. Here's a man who wants to make music (well, he wants to write, but he's doing far better as a musician) and already has a large audience.

Perhaps Sufjan is an egotistical man. After all, he wants to write an album for each state. What crazy person would do such a thing? And, his songs often layer a dozen different instruments, most of which he plays when he records. His songs have elaborate titles that belie a literary sense, and yet he's just as likely to poke fun at the high-browed titles (such as his existential crisis in a maze somewhere in Illinois).

If you listen to him in recorded concerts, he sounds a little out of it. He doesn't talk about religion. He talks about the girlfriend he had when he was 14 years old and she was 18. Was young Sufjan innocent in this relationship, or did he satisfy an early urge towards manhood? These are the kinds of questions that you rarely hear answers to since the question itself is rude. Yo, Sufjan, when'd you first get laid?

He'd probably hem and haw at that one too, perhaps, show a sly smile, and want to talk about Carl Sandberg, or life in New York, or the crazy times he had in Chicago, even as he won't quite elaborate on that. What happened in your early life, Sufjan? What kind of emotional ups and downs were you going through. Are you a budding intellectual trapped in the backwater of northern Michigan? Is that why you fled to New York? How do you come to grips with where you were and where you're going?

Lately, Stevens has performed with a large ensemble, where he dresses up in a male cheerleader outfit. Is it a genuine sense of nostalgia for life in small town Illinois, where parents watch their kids in beat up high school football stands, where the shy kid wants to make out with the cheerleader, where the jocks taunt the freaks and the geeks. Is this the kind of America he relishes, or is his thinking more subversive. Does he wish to poke fun at the mentality of midwest America, where people care too much about sports, and too little about intellectual pursuits. That good honest men and women toil in poverty because they don't give a frick about math, science, English, history---all the stuff you go to school to learn, but don't because dammit, school is hard.

Is it some kind of fantasy to put himself into situations he was never part of, except at a distance, playing his oboe, mastering awful tunes of the 80s, hanging out with horny band types who got to spend many hours with the opposite sex? What is it about music and blowing and fingering that makes young teens and preteens so horny (pun almost intended)?

This is the vast realm of imagination, my Mirrormask, if you will, where I imprint all sorts of motivations and history on a man I barely even know, except through his songs, and even then, what do I know? I hardly pay attention to the lyrics that he slaved over, or maybe it was something simple--just because he liked the repetition of the words "Palisades, Palisades". I am the inquitistive press, and Sufjan my elusive Monica, and I wonder if he's pregnant and where he's hiding.

And Sufjan is laughing at the attention, on the one hand relishing his fade from obscurity, and on the other, amused at those who would seek to understand his soul. "I feed you crumbs, and from it, you make a cake? This is not me! This is not me!"
A man more clever and more simple than one would expect. Vanity and humility. Purity and sin.

Who is Sufjan Stevens? Why is he so vexing?