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- [00:01]
Sponsor Announcer
Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial. When your celebration of life is prepaid today, your family is protected tomorrow, planning ahead is truly one of the best gifts you can give your family. For additional information, visit dignitymemorial.com all right.
- [00:18]
Robin Hilton
We'Ve got a pretty special episode of All Songs Considered this week. It's a conversation with Sufjan Stevens, all about his album Carrie and Lowell.
- [00:38]
Sufjan Stevens
Spirit of my silence I can hear you But I'm afraid to be near you and I don't know where to begin and I don't know where to begin.
- [00:57]
Robin Hilton
So Carrie and Lowell's a pretty big album for me, and I think for a lot of people, it's my favorite that Sufjan Stevens ever did. I think maybe it's the best thing he's done. Came out 10 years ago. There's a big 10th anniversary version of it now. It's got some unreleased tracks. There's a new essay from Sufjan Stevens in the liner notes. That's a pretty incredible read. Also, a whole bunch of photos. Like, there's this whole photo album's worth of stuff. You know, Sufjan Stevens is a pretty interesting guy. He doesn't really do a lot of interviews. And in fact, when Carrie and Lowell first came out, I really wanted to talk with him about it. But he only did a couple of interviews. And, you know, I read one of them, and honestly, it was all so heartbreaking. I got it. I thought I wouldn't want to talk about this any more than he already had. You know, Carrie and Lowell, the songs have a lot of pain in them, a lot of sadness and grief. It's all about his mom, and he didn't really know her very well. The story that's often told, the one that Sufian himself was told when he was older, is that she abandoned him and his siblings when Sufjan was about a year old and that his mom, Carrie, had schizophrenia and struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. But after reading the essay that Sufjan did for this anniversary edition and then talking with him about it, he isn't really sure how much of that is true. At the very least, he thinks it's a lot more complicated than that. The only thing he knows for sure is that he did reconnect with Kerry briefly just before she died in 2012. And then we got this album, and you listen to it, and it's the sound of him attempting to make sense of his grief and his loss, of his limited memories, of him trying to find clarity and Comfort. And what I was surprised to find out when Sufjan Stevens and I sat down to talk about all of this is he doesn't really like the album very much. At least not like I imagined he would. In fact, at one point in this conversation you're going to hear he even calls the album an embarrassment. But it's not that he thinks the songs are bad, like, this is just a terrible album. It's more that he doesn't think the music did what he wanted it to do. He was looking for something, you know, he was looking for some clarity or maybe just a way to get over his grief. And when he was done, he found that he didn't feel any better, and so the music failed him. Anyway, you can hear Sufjan talk about all of this and a whole lot more in this conversation, including where he is with his recent battle with Guillain Barre syndrome. He came down with it in September 2023, and it's been a really long road to recovery for him. This is a pretty deep conversation. You know, all the themes in the record led us to talk about some pretty big things, some cosmic questions like dark matter and the universe, the nature of truth, and lots of questions about time. You know, when Sufjan Stevens made Carrion Lowell, he was about to turn 40. He turns 50 in the summer. So I wondered how his relationship to time has changed now that he's older.
- [03:58]
Sufjan Stevens
Well, time is undefinable. You know, we haven't really figured out how to explain it or summarize it or make sense of it in terms of science and physics. So I think my relationship to time is now about presence, you know, present tense. Especially in the recovery of the Guillain Barre. Like, I really had to slow down and just focus on small menial tasks, you know, like trying to lift my foot up off the floor, you know, trying to kind of reinvigorate the nerves and muscles, you know, it slowed me down a lot. So now I think of time as being irrelevant in a lot of ways. It's really just about the present tense, the moment we have here and now.
- [04:48]
Robin Hilton
Where are you with your recovery? Have you mostly fully recovered?
- [04:52]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah, I'm doing pretty good. It took me about six months to get back to walking again, and now I'm off all the time. Adaptive equipment. I was in a wheelchair for maybe two months, and then a walker, a Rollator, a cane. But now I can walk and run and jump, and that's great drive. So, yeah, I'm pretty independent now.
- [05:16]
Robin Hilton
When you think about Time. And how much time has passed since you first released Carrie and Lowell? I'm wondering what's changed for you, like, your relationship to these songs and to your mother. I mean, your. You're in a totally different place now.
- [05:30]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah. When I was writing these songs, I was in the thick of it, and I wasn't thinking clearly. So there's a lack of objectivity to the music that now feels very foreign and unfamiliar. You know, time is a salve, but it isn't a. It offers no solution, really, especially in dealing with pain and suffering and death. And I think what I realize is that grieving is eternal, and you never really get over it. It just moves around and within you and transforms you, but it never goes away.
- [06:03]
Robin Hilton
Yeah. I lost my mom in recent years, and I was telling my wife that it's like it creates this little empty space in you that never gets filled again. And you kind of carry around with you, and you just have to learn to be okay with it.
- [06:17]
Sufjan Stevens
Right. I think that our responsibility is to duty and endurance and survival and to also learn how to live with the grief. And I start to really feel like the absence of a loved one is the presence and becomes a ghost that you have to learn to live with. It's haunting, and it's overwhelming at times, and I think it's best to sort of acknowledge it and receive it and welcome it and give it the time and space that it needs. But it's also important to keep living and to keep moving and to learn how to navigate your life in tandem with death.
- [06:59]
Robin Hilton
Yeah. At the time you released the album, I know you said that you were kind of looking for meaning and a better understanding of everything that you'd been through and were going through. Where are you in that journey?
- [07:12]
Sufjan Stevens
You mean, like, generally?
- [07:14]
Robin Hilton
Well, do you. I guess. Have you found any clarity?
- [07:17]
Sufjan Stevens
No, unfortunately, no. You know, so I think that death is unresolvable, really. And I don't feel like I get any smarter or more intelligent as I get older. I find as I get older, experience makes fools of us all. And I feel kind of stupider and less prepared for what life brings me in a lot of ways. So I think what's becoming of me is, like, I'm just becoming more Zen, more present, more accepting of yourself. Yeah. I think of accepting and also welcoming pain and suffering and knowing that it's possible to survive it and that it's okay. And endurance is. Is really my mantra right now.
- [08:10]
Robin Hilton
It sounds like maybe something you've learned about yourself in the last 10 years is that you're stronger than you think.
- [08:17]
Sufjan Stevens
Maybe. You know, strength is funny because it suggests a kind of, like, power and authority and vigor. But I also think there's greater power in survival. And sometimes survival requires sensitivity and openness and even subservience. And I think I've just become a lot more kind of subordinate to the chaos of the world around me and less inclined to fight it because I'm starting to learn that you cannot create change by force. You just have to move through it and welcome it and be open to transformation.
- [08:55]
Robin Hilton
Well, one of the reasons why I ask what kind of transformations you think you've gone through in the last 10 years is because while the songs on this anniversary edition haven't changed, really, your presentation of them has. You know, I think the original release felt very much like an elegy. You know, it was very heartbreaking, if a necessary elegy. And this feels more like a celebration of Carrie's life in a way.
- [09:27]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. Perhaps the anniversary issue is more like a memorial. I don't know if you've seen the packaging, but it has a booklet of photos. And I went back and looked through the archives and put a lot of photos of myself and my siblings and my parents in it. And I think it stands more as a memorial to Carrie and to her life, you know, and what little I knew of it. And I think it's probably a good idea to use the word celebration as well. When I made this record, I was just a hot mess. Yeah, I wasn't really celebrating anything.
- [10:06]
Robin Hilton
I have seen the box set, and I've gone through all the photos. And those photos are one of the reasons why I thought it felt very much like a celebration of her life. Can you take me through what it was like for you going through all these photos, Maybe where you found them and how you arrived at the ones you did?
- [10:23]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah, I just asked my siblings and my stepdad if they had any photos lying around, and they all sent me what they had. And I think my grandpa Maribias Papu was the one who took a lot of the home videos. He was Super 8 back in the day, you know, in the 50s and 60s. And I had had that all digit or someone had had it digitized at some point. So we had a lot of. Of material to look at, and we used some of that on tour 10 years ago. So going back over all of that was. I think it was for the first time I was able to kind of look at it without sobbing and without feeling overwhelmed. And I was able to really see the beauty and elegy in all of it. You know, they're just little snapshots. They're kind of trifles in a lot of ways, but they, you know, they're just. They represent a kind of a larger life that's lived, most of it unseen and unrecorded. And I wanted to kind of fabricate it almost like a scrapbook, put it all together so it feels kind of. There's a wholeness to it that probably doesn't accurately reflect the way that life is lived. You know, it's all disjointed and chaotic. But when you look at the remnants of archival material, you start to perceive the kind of wholeness and beauty and truth in all of it. I think that's really, I think, important to see because otherwise, when you live moment to moment, you just kind of feel lost in space. And, you know, when my mother died, she really didn't have anything. She was like a ward of the state, I think, and she had a backpack with some stuff, but she didn't really own anything or have anything. So I feel like this music and these photos and the memories that we have, they all reflect the sort of the greatness of her life, you know, in spite of what little she had when she died.
- [12:20]
Robin Hilton
You talked about being a mess at the time you were writing these songs and recording them. You also include this really, I think, deeply moving essay in this deluxe edition. And the essay, I think it reveals a lot of things that I don't think anyone. Well, or at least not many people actually knew about you and what you were going through when you first released the album. For starters, you share what I think is I took as a pretty harsh assessment of these songs and the whole process of working through them.
- [12:53]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah, yeah. I think this album is evidence of creative and artistic failure from my vantage point. You know, I was trying to make sense of something that is senseless. And I felt that I was being manipulative and self centered and solipsistic and self loathing, you know, and that my work and the approach that I had taken to my work, which is to kind of like create beauty from chaos, was failing me. It was very frustrating. And I think for the first time I realized that, like, not everything can be sublimated into, you know, into art. That some things just remain unsolvable or insoluble or whatever. I think I was really just frustrated by even trying to make sense of the experience of grief through the songs.
- [13:54]
Robin Hilton
Can I read you a little excerpt from the essay?
- [13:56]
Sufjan Stevens
Okay.
- [13:56]
Robin Hilton
You say the process was painful, humiliating, and an utter miscarriage of bad intentions. My grief manifested as self loathing and misery. Every song I tried to write became a weapon aimed against me, an indictment of ignorance, blame, resentment, and misappropriation. And then a little later, you say the songs I sang were of ineptitude and disrepair. I could never make sense of the nothingness that consumed me. And it was foolhardy to believe anything good could come of superimposing my mother's memory onto my music in the first place. But I did it just the same. I kept waiting for you to say at some point in the essay how you just don't feel this way anymore, that you now realize you actually did make a great and meaningful work of art that means a lot to a lot of people. But you never say that.
- [14:47]
Sufjan Stevens
No, I'm kind of embarrassed by this album, to be honest with you.
- [14:51]
Robin Hilton
Really?
- [14:52]
Sufjan Stevens
Because I started to feel like I don't have any authority over my mother, her life, her experience, or her death. You know, all I have is speculation and my imagination and my own misery, you know, And I feel like that, you know, in trying to make sense of it all, is that I kind of felt like it didn't really resolve anything.
- [15:17]
Robin Hilton
But what is art and making music for you then? I mean, is it a failure just because it didn't get at what you sort of set out to do? Or is it still a success, for lack of a better word, because you created great songs and meaningful songs that reached people?
- [15:37]
Sufjan Stevens
Well, yeah, that's the effect of the music, not of myself or my intentions. You know, I believe the music has the consciousness beyond me. And so I'm grateful that the songs can. Can exist regardless of my own intentions, my failed intentions, or my bad intentions. But I still don't feel good about myself for making these songs.
- [16:00]
Robin Hilton
Do you regret making the album? Because you certainly sound like you feel bad.
- [16:05]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah, I do. I feel bad. Well, really, it's just a bummer that my mother's not alive and can't speak for herself. What would she say about all this? Maybe she would be proud. I'll never know.
- [16:19]
Robin Hilton
Well, let me ask you this, and maybe this is impossible to really do, but if you divorce yourself from the context of the album and just as standalone songs, do you not hear accomplished music?
- [16:32]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah. There's this logic to it, A musical logic. You know, it all makes sense. It sounds pretty.
- [16:42]
Robin Hilton
There are notes. They follow patterns.
- [16:44]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah. Subject, verb, predicate. Yeah. But it's still following rules and routines and there's clearly tradition there. You know, you can feel it in all the songs. A lot of these songs are very orthodox in their shape and all that stuff.
- [17:03]
Robin Hilton
It's a powerful gift though, I think, to her memory and knowing that her story and now all the photos in this edition are reaching so many people. It's hard for me to see that as anything other than a profound act of love.
- [17:20]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah, she was a very beautiful, loving, caring person. She was really funny. She was really curious. She was a poet and an artist. She was a musician too. She played the piano. There's a, you know, little bits and pieces that I remember about her were all pretty amazing. You know, it's a shame that most of it goes into this music that is kind of a fabrication. But what I do remember about her is it's all pretty great.
- [17:49]
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- [18:54]
Robin Hilton
We haven't talked much about the actual music and we obviously don't need to revisit every song, but there are a few cuts that I wanted to talk about and a little bit about how the album came together for you. I'm wondering, you know, Carrie passed away in 2012. Do you remember when you decided to start writing about it and kind of what you were thinking and feeling at the time?
- [19:14]
Sufjan Stevens
I don't remember why I made these songs in the first place. I write every day. I'm always in the practice of writing songwriting and I was taught to write what you know and you know. At the time I was also writing fiction and fiction was informing my songwriting so it wasn't as if I sat down to, like, write an album about my mother. It just sort of happened. I mean, at the time, I was writing, like, dozens of songs, and a lot of them, of course, were preoccupied with her because she had just died. But I don't really remember because maybe I was in a fugue state. I don't remember what it was like.
- [19:54]
Robin Hilton
Do you remember the first song you wrote?
- [19:58]
Sufjan Stevens
God, I don't remember. It's all a blur. I don't remember writing these songs. I really don't. And some of them I recorded, like, multiple times.
- [20:10]
Robin Hilton
Do you think that's.
- [20:11]
Sufjan Stevens
I repressed it all? I must have repressed it all.
- [20:15]
Robin Hilton
Well, I was going to ask you if you think that's some sort of defense mechanism. You know, there are difficult things I've gone through, and then people will ask me about something very specific that they remember from it, and it's just completely gone for me.
- [20:30]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah, yeah. That might be a result of trauma and ptsd. I do remember the moment that I was told that she had passed away. I was on tour. I wasn't doing the Christmas tour at the time. And her sister, my aunt, had called and said, she's not well. She's in the hospital. They just operated on her. It's not looking good. You should come visit. So in between shows, I would fly to Houston, where she was, and visit her in the hospital, and then fly back to the next city and set up the Wheel of Christmas and do Christmas shows, and then I would fly back. You know, I was doing that a little bit, and we had just woken up. We were in San Francisco, and we were getting ready to set up the Wheel of Christmas. I think my aunt called me and said she had passed away. So I was, like, working. I was on tour. You know, I was in the back of a club getting ready to set up a show, and my aunt had said, there's nothing you can do now. You should probably just finish the tour. She's gonna be cremated. Then we can talk about a memorial service later. And so I had to, like, do the show that day. It was, you know, the show. It was kind of like, the show must go on. And I just set up that stupid Wheel of. Did you ever see that tour?
- [21:55]
Robin Hilton
I didn't, no. I never saw the holiday show.
- [21:58]
Sufjan Stevens
It was horrible.
- [22:00]
Robin Hilton
You're being very hard on yourself.
- [22:05]
Sufjan Stevens
Well, I think there's just, like, this disconnect, you know, between the work that I'm doing and my interior life, you know?
- [22:12]
Robin Hilton
Yeah.
- [22:13]
Sufjan Stevens
And at that time, it was. The contradiction was so profound. You know, it's.
- [22:18]
Robin Hilton
I get that.
- [22:19]
Sufjan Stevens
Incredible that I survived it at all.
- [22:21]
Robin Hilton
I thought I had read at the time that you were with your mom when she passed away, but no.
- [22:27]
Sufjan Stevens
I was grateful that I was able to fly down and see her multiple times in the hospital and spend time with her, with my siblings. So we were there in the hospital. We sat by her bed and talked to her and made our peace.
- [22:47]
Robin Hilton
The song, I think, on the album that is my favorite and certainly wrecks me the most is Fourth of July.
- [23:03]
Sufjan Stevens
The evil had spread like a fever ahead it was night when you died, my firefly what could I have said to raise you from the dead? Or could I be the sky on the 4th of July? Will you do enough talk? My little hug why do you cry? Tell me, tell me what did you learn from the Tillamook burn or the Fourth of July? We're all gonna die.
- [23:51]
Robin Hilton
And it's not the line, we're all gonna die, which is just sort of. I mean, that's just a universal truth that we all have to accept. It's all the little nicknames that you share. My little Hawk, my little Versailles, my Dragonfly. And this what I took as a conversation between you and Carrie where she seems to be wishing you nothing but the best. Was this an entirely imagined conversation for you?
- [24:18]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah, of course. Yeah. That whole song and the interactions and the affections are all made up because I didn't have that kind of relationship with my mother. She was very loving and caring and affectionate, but we didn't have pet names, and we weren't intimate, you know, it was. Our relationship was distant, you know, because she mostly wasn't there. She wasn't available, and I wasn't raised by her. I was raised by my dad and my stepmom. And we called our parents by their first names. Yeah, we didn't even call them mother and father. So there was a kind of stayed at arm's length, impersonal dynamic to our relationship. And I think that song is kind of an imagined parallel, you know, reality parallel universe in which we were more intimate and had pet names and could share things intimately with each other, but that wasn't possible.
- [25:22]
Robin Hilton
You included a handful of demos in this new release, including one on the Fourth of July that's nearly 14 minutes long, and it's pretty different. Do you remember how you got from. From this to the final version, which is, you know, less epic, more stripped down?
- [26:13]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah, well, you know, I recorded a lot of these songs multiple times. I do remember doing that. And in different scenarios, in different studios. I remember really, really trying to figure it out. And that song I probably recorded four or five times. And it's interesting because the ending is just sort of. Is unresolved, but just sort of transcends lyrical content and just becomes a kind of a New Age journey. And it becomes a mantra. And I think that's probably ultimately, like, what I felt like where I really wanted to reside in was just the sonic landscape that didn't have words and didn't have narrative and didn't have any meaning. I just wanted to be in this intimate sonic space. Since I recorded Carrying Love, I've been doing a lot more kind of New age ambient music. I think I'm starting to realize that, like, that's my happy place. That's really where I want to reside. It's like in a world in which there is no content, there's no language, there's nothing being really explicitly said. There's just sound.
- [27:37]
Robin Hilton
I have to ask then just. And we'll get back. So do you not see yourself doing another vocal album in a while?
- [27:43]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah, I haven't really been writing songs. I've been just making music. Been doing a lot more instrumental stuff and producing other people's work. But for the time, I feel somewhat similar, censored, you know, And I. I'm kind of allowing myself to live in that world where I don't have to say anything.
- [28:08]
Robin Hilton
Well, the album is. Is, of course, it's very spare. You talk about wanting to keep it intimate, but I think you do so much with very little on it. And there are some devices and motifs that you kind of deploy in, I think, really effective ways. And one in particular that I love is on the song John My Beloved. And it's that pivot note that never stops, goes through the whole song.
- [28:48]
Sufjan Stevens
Oh, yeah.
- [28:50]
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 beloved of drown. I get it all wrong. I read you for some kind of.
- [29:23]
Robin Hilton
Poem.
- [29:26]
Sufjan Stevens
Covered in lines. The fossils I find have they no life of their own? 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.
- [30:13]
It's a meditation.
- [30:16]
Robin Hilton
Meditation is a good word. I was also actually thinking that it's like an alarm, a very gentle alarm, but an alarm. It kind of implies that nothing is changing here, right?
- [30:28]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah, maybe it's that single repeated note is a beacon that gives us a center of gravity. And while we move about the chaos of the world, I think it's something that I do sometimes is as I'm writing or recording or composing and I find myself venturing onward and upward through all the chords and notes and melodies and trying to, you know, create new relation, new sonic relationships, new harmonic relationships. But I always have to have this one note that kind of holds me down. That's a lot of times how I compose too is I find one note and then I find all the various chords that share that one note. And even though you're kind of meandering and you're reharmonizing and changing keys, you still share that one common link, which is one note gives you a center of gravity.
- [31:26]
Robin Hilton
Yeah. I've often wondered what your creative process is like, you know, how you start and move through a song. Is, you know, how intentional is it? Or are you just sort of kind of letting it take you somewhere?
- [31:40]
Sufjan Stevens
I think a lot of it is impulse, you know, an instinct. I don't really arrive with an idea. I just try to physically be present and allow my body to kind of enter into a musical space. You know, sometimes on the piano it's just shapes and, you know, physically engaging with an instrument I think is really important.
- [32:04]
Counting my chords down to one.
- [32:10]
Robin Hilton
And.
- [32:10]
Sufjan Stevens
When I am dead come visit my bed My fossil is bright in the sun so how 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 no matter of speaking I'm dead.
- [32:59]
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- [33:44]
Robin Hilton
You close with Blue bucket of gold.
- [34:00]
Sufjan Stevens
My blue bucket of gold frowned why don't you love me? Once the myth has been told, the Lance deforms it as lightning.
- [34:22]
Robin Hilton
And there are a couple of moments on this track where you reference the myths and fables that we tell ourselves. And, you know, you also say in your essay again how most of what you remember about Carrie's mostly fabricated. And I'm wondering if you're any closer to something that you can hold on to as truth in all of this. Or maybe what truth even looks like for you.
- [34:48]
Sufjan Stevens
Maybe truth is endurance, the substance of things that are eternal. And what is that? I don't know what that is.
- [34:57]
Robin Hilton
Maybe different for everyone, but there are some things that are universal.
- [35:01]
Sufjan Stevens
Hmm. There's truth in beauty. There's truth in justice. There's truth in grace. There's truth in love.
- [35:09]
Robin Hilton
You know, it's a big, difficult question, I know. And I guess I ask only because truth is something that it seems like you've been reaching for or at least trying to understand what it even is.
- [35:22]
Sufjan Stevens
Yeah. Maybe truth is emptiness, is vacancy.
- [35:26]
Robin Hilton
How so?
- [35:27]
Sufjan Stevens
I was thinking about this this morning. About black energy or whatever they call that dark matter.
- [35:33]
Robin Hilton
Dark matter in the universe, dark energy.
- [35:37]
Sufjan Stevens
You know, this majority of the universe is this substance that we can't quite figure out or measure or understand. And then maybe that's kind of a reflection of, like what we are mostly non existent or immeasurable. That there's a kind of vacuum to existence. The things that we don't see, that we can't feel, that we can't measure, that those things are what are most important. And that the physical world is just a distraction. For me, having lived in the Catskills now for about six years, where I'm really, you know, entrenched in the natural cycle, you know, of the world around me, of the natural world, is that there's a kind of. I feel very irrelevant to it. You know, it doesn't seem concerned about me at all. And I think in some ways there's like a greater truth to that that I in the world, but not of the world, you know, and that otherness that not belonging to me feels really comforting. It gives me kind of a sense of, like, presence of mind. So I think that the moment that we have here and now, the present tense, I think is the most valuable thing. And it isn't about the stuff that we have or what's around us. It's just about having that presence of mind. And I do think that death is a kind of reminder of that, because death doesn't exist, really. It's a. Death is a manifestation of. Of non existence. Right. So we're all moving towards non existence. And I think the sooner that we can resolve ourselves to that non existence, then we can live in presence physically and spiritually, I think, with more fullness.
- [37:28]
Robin Hilton
Well, we're getting really heavy here, but I think about all this stuff all the time. And I also find great comfort in everything that you just described. Some people don't. That terrifies some people, but I'm the exact opposite. It does. It comforts me and it grounds me in a way, and it makes me appreciate, I don't know, being here at all.
- [37:52]
Sufjan Stevens
Right. I mean, we do. We live in a beautiful, bountiful, boundless world that is offering so much to us. You know, maybe that's what's so frustrating about this record for me is that I could see and feel and hear the evidence of my effort in trying to make sense of it and musically and structurally and narratively. But I knew deep down inside that I was dealing with something that was unresolvable, you know, and that the final tapestry of the album was never really going to be a stand in, you know, for my relationship with my mom. And that's okay. You kind of have to just live with the chaos of it.
- [38:34]
Robin Hilton
Yeah.
- [38:35]
Sufjan Stevens
I don't want to disparage. I don't want to sound like I don't like this album or that I'm. I don't want to talk shit about it. You know, I think. I think I want to disassociate from it. You know, I want to acknowledge that ultimately it has nothing to do with me anymore. Its music is yours.
- [39:15]
Robin Hilton
Sufjan Stevens talking about his album Carrion. Lawrence really love where he lands there at the end of the conversation when he says that the music is for everyone else. Now, I only had about an hour or so with Sufjan Stephens really felt like we could have just talked all day about life and why we're here and all those kinds of big questions. But it was so great to finally connect with him about this album all these years later and to revisit the music of Carrie and Lowell, because it really is incredible. I think you can read a transcript of this conversation on our website. That's@NPR.org if you want to spend more time reading through it and sit with it more, you'll find it there. We've been ending every episode of the show this spring by looking back at the past 25 years of all Songs Considered, you know, talking about our number one songs from each year. We're going to take a break from that, but we'll be back next week with a look at the year 2014. Until then, for NPR Music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's All Songs Considered.
- [40:12]
Sufjan Stevens
I Will Bow down of Lord of the Ancient Waters from the backyard.
- [40:36]
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