The World's Lonely and Ramshackle Head
On Sufjan Stevens' 'John My Beloved'
for Cap, who was a very good boy
I often tell my students, half-jokingly, that the truest path to posthumous philosophical influence is unclear profundity. The philosophers who last say brilliant things that are hard to pin down. They demand and, most importantly, reward interpretation. This is a beauty of great philosophy.
Sufjan Stevens is definitely aware of this general principle. His music is lush; in fact, its lushness is lush. Different dimensions that have multiple parts lay on top of and next to each other, from the musical arrangements to lyrical delivery to the poetic meaning of the lyrics. Sometimes it’s too much. Experiencing the music makes you feel like Mr. Pitt trying to see Saturn in the 3d art. When it works, though, it gets into your blood. You can’t help but play it over and over to see how (or if) it works. (The catch is that from the inside it’s often hard to tell which condition you’re in.)
In 2012 Stevens’ mother Carrie died of stomach cancer. They were not close. She abandoned him when he was just one. She was a depressive schizophrenic with substance abuse problems; she knew she couldn’t take care of her children so she left them with their father in Michigan and moved to Oregon.
She married a man named Lowell in the 80s. Stevens and his siblings spent three summers in Oregon with Carrie and Lowell during this time. This was the most they spent with her. She was stable and the children loved to be with her—Lowell later reported they would follow her around like puppies. Carrie and Lowell divorced after a few years, but Lowell stayed in touch with Stevens, eventually becoming the manager of his record label.
Carrie’s death hit Stevens hard, despite the fact that he had not kept in close contact with her. He was there when she died. Grief rocked him, though, and he was slow to work. Eventually he put together a record about his relationship with his mother and his grief in response to her death. It is called Carrie & Lowell.
Carrie & Lowell is not musically lush. It is the sparest album Stevens has ever made. Most songs get by with some acoustic guitar and piano. Stevens’ singing is often raw. As always, though, there are moments of joy in his voice. There are also many, many moments of beauty. It is an album about heavy, hard truths that you can enjoy listening to even if you are paying attention to the lyrics. (This contrasts most starkly, for me, with Mount Erie’s crushing A Crow Looked at Me.)
seriously don’t listen unless you want to be real bummed out
The album’s ninth song is called ‘John My Beloved’. It is a song about loneliness of a special kind. This is the type of loneliness that accompanies a deep alienation from the world. It is often part of grief, as the loss of certain goods—people, relationships, values—can rip you from the world. This loneliness is not just sadness at being alone. It is a feeling of being divorced from the world, being homeless.
The music is achingly beautiful in its simplicity. A steady beat on an unknown instrument (perhaps synthesized) is overlaid by piano. There is love in the music; it could have been for a traditional love song. Instead it is the music for an untraditional love song.
This much is undeniable. The rest is far from sparse. There is a reading of the song where it is about the loss of romantic love. This path starts at the very beginning.
Are we to speak, first day of the week Stumbling words at the bar Beauty blue eyes, my order of fries Long Island kindness and wine.
We start in a very specific place. A bar, fries, wine, and someone with beautiful blue eyes.
... So can we pretend, sweetly Before the mystery ends? I am a man with a heart that offends With its lonely and greedy demands There’s only a shadow of me; in a matter of speaking, I'm dead Such a waste, your beautiful face Stumbling carpet arise Go follow your gem, your white feathered friend Icarus, point to the sun If history speaks of two baby teeth I’m painting the hills blue and red They said beware, Lord, hear my prayer I’ve wasted my throes on your head
It takes a turn for the worse. Perhaps we’re still in the bar when the narrator realizes the best they can do is pretend, sweetly.
So can we be friends, sweetly Before the mystery ends? I love you more than the world can contain In its lonely and ramshackle head There’s only a shadow of me; in a matter of speaking, I'm dead
The narrator sees some more hope, asking for friendship? Perhaps because now there is real love. There is also some deep seated pessimism, seeing the world as lonely—not empty or meaningless, but lonely—and disorganized.
I’m holding my breath My tongue on your chest What can be said of my heart? If history speaks, the kiss on my cheek Where there remains but a mark Beloved, my John, so I’ll carry on Counting my cards down to one And when I am dead, come visit my bed My fossil is bright in the sun
The erotic enters explicitly. Union occurs but ambiguously. The narrator is not sure about his heart. He certainly knows that things are coming to an end.
So can we contend, peacefully Before my history ends? Jesus, I need you, be near me, come shield me From fossils that fall on my head There’s only a shadow of me; in a matter of speaking, I'm dead
In the end there is a plea for peaceful contending. Struggling, not before the mystery ends, but before his history ends. The antepenultimate line begins with an enticingly ambiguous exaltation. ‘Jesus’ said as a swear, signaling a plea to his lover to shield him from the fossils that fall on his head. After all, he wants to contend, peacefully.
This interpretative arc meshes well with many themes from Stevens’ work. Indeed, it foresees perhaps Stevens’ most famous work, done for the 2018 film Call Me By Your Name. In its bittersweet last scene, Stevens’ ‘Visions of Gideon’ plays. ‘John My Beloved’ would have also worked.
The song could be understood in just this way, except for a stanza that I left out above. This comes right after the Long Island kindness and wine.
Beloved of John, I get it all wrong I read you for some kind of poem Covered in lines, the fossils I find Have they no life of their own?
The subject, here, is not the narrator’s lover. Rather, it is the beloved of John. Since Stevens regularly makes biblical references, it is natural to interpret this as referring to Jesus. Once this lock is turned, large parts of the song twist in meaning.
There are at least three explicit Christian references to come. First, we have the reference to ‘your white feathered friend’—that is, the traditional iconographical representation of the holy spirit with a dove.
Such a waste, your beautiful face Stumbling carpet arise Go follow your gem, your white feathered friend Icarus, point to the sun
Together, this now reads about Jesus. The stumbling carpet being Old Jerusalem’s narrow, cobbled hills, with Icarus (not sure exactly why he’s shown up) ordered to point to the sun, where Jesus is headed.
The second and third references come together.
I’m holding my breath My tongue on your chest What can be said of my heart? If history speaks, the kiss on my cheek Where there remains but a mark. Beloved, my John, so I’ll carry on Counting my cards down to one And when I am dead, come visit my bed My fossil is bright in the sun
John the Apostle is said to have been seated next to Jesus at the Last Supper. He was very near to him. The Kings James translation of the book of John says that ‘there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.’ Now it sounds as if the narrator has switched to John the Apostle (and eroticized).
Primed with this, it’s impossible to miss the kiss on the cheek. Judas kisses Jesus on the cheek immediately before being arrested. This informs our Long Island narrative. Sex is in some way an act of betrayal narrator by the narrator's beloved.
Two key parts speak to Stevens’ (or the original narrator’s?) relationship to Jesus. They come at the beginning and at the end.
Beloved of John, I get it all wrong I read you for some kind of poem Covered in lines, the fossils I find Have they no life of their own?
He gets Jesus wrong. He takes him for some kind of poem—a text to be gleaned. There he finds the song’s first fossils, only to ask if they have any life.
Jesus I need you, be near me, come shield me From fossils that fall on my head
The power of a comma. Now he’s not using the lord’s name in vain. He is calling to him, asking for his shelter.
All of that and no mention of the the most prominent images. The first is the chorus: ‘There’s only a shadow of me; in a matter of speaking, I'm dead.’ The biblical arc should take first chair here. At the end, on the cross, there was only a shadow left. This makes sense of an otherwise inexplicable lyrical mistake—‘in a matter of speaking…’ Hear it as ‘speaking of matter, I’m dead’.
Our Long Island narrator is like this, but metaphorically. Hung on his own cross, he’s but a shadow. He is in a manner of speaking dead. He’s cut off from the pulse of the world. A stranger in a strange land.
In 1812, Stendhal published On Love. Its most famous idea is that at the beginnings of love, the lovers are apt to project a idealistic fantasy on their beloveds. He compares this to the process of crystallization he witnessed at the Salzburg mines. If you throw a stick into the Salzburg salt mines and wait a few months, you will find something that does not resemble an ordinary stick. It is transformed into a glittering object of beauty. He dubbed the process of projection crystallization.
A similar process can occur at the end of love. You can take the beloved and your memories of them and molecule by molecule replace them, sometimes with something good and sometimes not. This is fossilization, chemically a very similar process to crystallization.
But then: You notice the whole thing begins with a question. ‘Are we to speak?’ Perhaps not. Perhaps this is just something to think about when you get drunk on a Sunday afternoon.