Sufjan Stevens: Seeking Dignity in Death, Grief, and Loss

The last few weeks have put me through the wringer.

I can scarcely remember the last time so many converging factors amounted to a barrage of crises to manage. External circumstances and the changing landscapes of work launched me into a realm of terrifying speculation about whether or not I would have a job at this time next year. If things stayed the same, or continued to develop at their current rate, I would be forced to leave my ministry assignment at the end of the academic year, earlier than I would have planned. My mind grappled with a catastrophic sense of having to make a decision without the freedom to do so unencumbered by the failures of others. I have been reeling to recover a sense of rhythm, clarity, and peace in the midst of a difficult and ongoing process to move forward.

Luckily, I had the chance to have a literal escape by visiting some close friends for the weekend. Although Santa Barbara is in the midst of its warmest months of "summer" (a phenomena common to coastal environments), I could hardly complain even if Fresno was actually a few degrees cooler. Along with spending time with great company, enjoying good food, and beer, I was able to see one of my favorite artists play at the Historic Arlington Theater in downtown, quite the contrast to the cramped nightclubs or open-air splendor of the Bowl that I visited a few weeks back.

I have to admit, the show was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had interacting with art. It was more than a concert. It was a light show, it was a quasi-religious revival meeting with a charismatic leader. It was a man pouring out his soul in a two-plus hour meditation on death.

First, I must provide a few disclaimers. The venue certainly left much to be desired. As far as the quality of sound and the richness of the music itself, I greatly prefer my experiences at the Santa Barbara Bowl, a larger but still well-designed outdoor amphitheater nestled in the hills. I've seen Sigur Ros and My Morning Jacket there, and they rocked. The Arlington, although beautiful inside and out, was stuffy, with cramped seating and not enough speakers to take advantage of the whole space. There were only a few moments when the music was too loud to hear myself speak or sing over. I was sweating the whole time, and my shirt was sticking to my back when I arose to applaud the encore.

The thing is, Sufjan was so good that none of that even mattered.

He kicked off the second leg of his tour with us in Santa Barbara, supporting the release of his latest album Carrie & Lowell, released earlier this year. Although the reviews all point towards the spectacular results of his latest spell of songwriting, praising this work as both his best lyrical introspection ever, and the maturity of his meandering through genres as distinct as lo-fi, folk, baroque pop, electronica, and trip-hop. This album is special for the reason that it is his most personal yet. It was written as the result of Sufjan processing the death of his mother (Carrie) in 2012. She had left the family when he was still a young child, and suffered the rest of her life from varying degrees of mental illness and drug addiction. This complex backstory was well known to me by the time I sat in the theater, and I was prepped by this excellent interview that details this context as well as his ability to maintain Christian faith in the midst of it all.

Still, that didn't quite prepare me for how he shared this art with us as a performance. The atmosphere was utterly different from concert footage of Sufjan in past iterations, from the whimsical expansiveness of the Illinois era to the more recent costumes and dance-choreography of the Age of Adz. This time, there were no costumes, and the stage was undecorated. The instrumentation was straightforward for Sufjan and four other supporting musicians. The electric guitar was plugged into a tiny amp whose wattage is comparable to the one I played in high school. And, as the lights fell and the applause subsided, we were captivated from the beginning.

A lone piano droned out the mournful chords of "Redford (For Yia Yia and Pappou)," an exceptionally deep track from his 2003 Michigan album. Even without words, we are invited into a vulnerable space, something the artist has worked throughout his oeuvre consistently. Immediately as the reverb hummed out from the soft ending, he launched quietly into the first track from Carrie & Lowell, called appropriately "Death With Dignity." We saw illuminated images projected from large panels hanging behind the stage, showing clips from home videos when Sufjan and his brother Marzuki were tiny. It is a simple acoustic track, yet closed with an eerie, powerful chorus of syllables, elegiac and stripped of the confines of words or images. The panels went black; the stage was dark, wisps of fog drifting out on the stage. As the chords of the third song, "Should Have Known Better," started, I sensed that this concert would be more than a collection of songs. We were getting a glimpse into the painful search for meaning that someone undergoes as they grieve. He would not pepper his set with the charming anecdotes and homespun atmosphere of years past. In fact, he would not even speak to the audience until the house lights came up after the last song.

I was struck by the care taken to preserve the intimacy of the album's aesthetic, a turn that hearkened back to days before his more popular releases, where the eclectic adornment of all manner of instruments carved the sounds we heard on Michigan and Illinois. As Sufjan picked his guitar through "SHKB," the panels above the stage showed a beautiful sunset on the Oregon coast, with fog banks rolling onto the forested cliffs and hills. A single shaft of light bent down on the singer, and he considers his numbness in reaction to his mother's death, that feeling that so many of us experience in the aftermath of trauma. "The past is still the past/The bridge to nowhere/I should have wrote a letter/Explaining what I feel, that empty feeling." Regret clouds our actions, and we find ourselves frozen, afraid of our very emotions. Later in the show, on one of my favorite songs, "John My Beloved," we find another startling image of vulnerability. He lets us into the effects of this loss in his life, where sex and drugs try to distract him from his pain. "I am a man with a heart that offends with its lonely and greedy demands," he sings, before admitting, "There's only a shadow of me/In a manner of speaking, I'm dead." The key for me, in this song, is his cry at the end: "Jesus I need you, be near me/Come shield me from fossils that fall on my head." According to his intimations, these fossils represent the haunting remnants of death, still present and hard, filling the cavities which the bones leave behind. Although he has used biblical imagery before, and even addressed God directly, nowhere have his cries become this explicit, raw, and desperate. The point was underscored in even more dramatic terms when he sings the sparse "Fourth of July." The song ends with the quiet refrain "We're all gonna die." This was repeated and amplified to a cacophonous thunder in concert.

The first single he released ahead of the full album came next, as another beautiful landscape was projected across the hanging panels, bathing the stage in a serene, still light. On "No Shade In The Shadow of The Cross," he admits with explicit immediacy, "Fuck me, I'm falling apart." As my mom noted upon hearing the song, they sure won't play that on K-Love. Still, I find myself thinking that this paints a more poignant and penetrating picture of faith than any of the mindless drivel on that station.

But the show ended in a thunderous climax, with several tracks unknown to me (apparently from an EP and the controversial Age of Adz, released five years ago) leading up to the greatly expanded live version of "Blue Bucket of Gold." It was fifteen minutes of terrifying and beautiful catharsis, with the lights on stage and panels transforming into surreal, ethereal beacons. After the sound faded, Sufjan and his band got up, gave a quick bow, and shot off the stage as we erupted into a standing ovation. He played every song from his latest album, plus a few more, in this expanding performance. Finally he approached from the shadows and we settled in for the encore, where he hammered out the thoughtful piano chords of "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois." Then the lights came up, and he began to speak before playing a few familiar and celebrated songs for us to enjoy.

He gave us his thanks for sharing in this "meditation on death," noting that he sees hundreds and thousands of faces illuminated from the stage, even when he is shrouded and silhouetted by such backlighting. In his gratitude he almost choked up, hinting at the authenticity of this music, something that its form can only express what has been roiling within. This is the power of music, or any art, to transcend what words can only hint at. Although I dispute the philosophical concept of language's diminishing utility, it does constrain our experience by obliterating any context and abstracting us from the principle communicated. Art seeks to show, to be, to invite us into what words themselves cannot do. Even poetry, in its usage of words, cannot be fully explained even at its most rigid and formulaic. This art that Sufjan shared with us, however, had a particularly powerful meaning in its attempt to express one man dealing with that ultimate unknowing: coming to grips with mortality. This is surely an ongoing journey, as anyone, including I, can attest. "I've made a lot of mistakes," he sings in his most famous song, right before reminding us that "You came to take us...to recreate us."

To this most legitimate form of prayer, all I can say is, Amen.