healing the world with confusing music: why I love Sufjan Stevens best

excessiveness
A normal person would have ten ideas and choose one or two of them.  A Sufjan Stevens person has ten ideas and chooses 12 of them.  I like the songs that have four endings.  Way to pick d, all of the above!  I think there's something tantric going on, like we push ourselves over the edge of one thing into something else entirely, with the excess.



tender poignancy
Yeah, we put it through the poignancy filter--twice!  "You touched me inside of my cage."



judicious use of noise
I like listening to the noise until it makes sense.  After the thirtieth or so listening, I can see how it's going, and I love it.  Sometime I feel like he's trying to punish us, with the noise, like we contributed to his pain, creating a wrong world, so the noise will teach us to be better people?  But it's all a joke.   The noisy ending of "Pittsfield" seems angry, for sure, but the noisy ending of "The Child with the Star on His Head" just goes into outer space.



healing use of Christianity
I feel grateful Sufjan apparently was abused in the same ways I was?



weirdest most hilariously disturbing music video I ever saw
He disturbs me in the ways I need, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comforter.



flirting with minimalism
I was married to someone who liked minimalists, and when he tried to listen to that music, like Glass maybe, I asked, "Is this music supposed to be torture?" and made him turn it off.  So it makes sense I love Sufjan with his semi-minimalism, like it's the perfect mild dose of minimalism to make me slightly uncomfortable, in a good alert way.



nuance
When I was in the hospital and could only eat broth and juice for four days, I got deliriously obsessed with veggie broth fantasies.  I fantasized about making broth from all the different veggies, individual broths. 

I wanted spinach broth really bad, and carrot broth, which I actually do make, now.  Hahahaha!  I decided cauliflower broth is the most subtle of broths.

Sufjan Stevens could knit a song out of cauliflower broth, moonlight, and the first thin web a baby spider spun out of its baby spider butt.  So gossamer, weightless, and luminous.  What's sound?  It really is vibrations.



humor
I used to think laughs were cheap.  Then I grew up and realized being funny is just the best way to be serious.

most world class use of sleigh bells ever


beautiful poetic images
"You checked your txts while I masturbated," is my favorite sentence in a song in the English language.  I also really like "Why crawl around in the snow when you know I am right here, waiting for you to expect something more?"  (My favorite sentence in the English language, Ming uttered to me a few months ago at an Indian food restaurant, and I knew why I love him.  It was, "You can have all the cheese.")

concentrated queer power
He has the gay really good.



cute cute baseball caps wearing
See "gay."

crazy
He's crazy like me.  How did a celebrity that crazy get to be a celebrity?  His goodness is so good, people got overwhelmed by desire to be near his genius. 

"Tho I play all night with my magical kite, people say I don't exist."  Performance art plus mania plus best possible homemade costuming involving tinsel, neon duct tape, long balloon animal balloons, and unicorn horns for all. 

Overstimulation seems to be the goal.  The yelling lady to simulate the drunk yelling lady you never know will really show up is a really off-putting touch, and I get worried when he jumps off stuff. 

But I like how it falls apart into blissful sublimity.  He's definitely the Jesus of crazy-sin, like I can rest and let him be crazy for me, since he does such a good job.  He has craziness covered!



nostalgic relationship summarizing
The love song of me and Ming is "Too Much."



Go, Sufie, go.  Please continue healing the world with your confusing music.