Blog Post
This is an excerpt from a blog post I wrote during a year-long self-imposed assignment. My father and I listened to one Sufjan Stevens album each month in 2021, then compared notes on the music and all subsequent feelings. This particular post was about the song “Chicago.”
I wrote this entire post, got up to eat dinner, and my draft was erased. All things go, all things go.
I started my original draft by saying, “How ya bean!” Ha, Chicago puns. Sry.
The song that took Sufjan’s music everywhere. This is probably the first Sufjan song, or the only Sufjan song, that most people have heard of. That’s alright. It’s got so many incredible qualities, I get it.
This song, for me, emulates the sentiment of I wish you were here. This phrase carries so many meanings in my heart; the Pink Floyd song performed at my uncle’s funeral, a phrase I’ve repeated to friends and family members for decades when I’m experiencing something that oddly feels like it was meant for them, not for me. “Chicago” is the tune of wanting someone desperately by my side, to adventure with, to feel new emotions with, to Live with. I think expressing to someone that you wish they were Here is one of the purest forms of adulation you can gift someone. I’ve never felt more special, more understood than when a friend sees something and thinks to stop and tell me, “Dude, I wish you were here! A deer actually approached me and took a bite of my hotdog! Don’t they only eat plants?! Omg, I cried, I felt like Snow freaking White!” (This actually happened, my lifelong friend is on vacation with her family and the instant she found Wi-Fi, that’s the message I received.)
[Before I jump into some of the lyrics that I love, can we just acknowledge that Suf is the King of the Jingle Bells™? I admire that he takes such a nostalgic sound, charged with holiday echoes, and uses it for music about everyday life.]
This is the song that takes me back to the exhilaration of discovering an unhindered side of my adventurous spirit. If I was crying, it was for freedom from myself and from the land. I didn’t drive northeast across the country, or sleep in a van or in parking lots, or sell my clothes to the state. However, there was significant growth in my heart and in my character.
In the summer of 2012, I became ~instant~ best friends with a woman named Michelle Walker. She was the first human, other than the human that introduced me to Sufjan Stevens in 2009 (tysm Carly <3), that knew and loved Suf like I did. I fell in love again. Late summer 2012, Michelle and I wanted one last summer adventure. We drove north through Utah until we hit Wyoming, then circled back through Idaho and landed at Bear Lake. We found this Stonehenge formation of haystacks in a field near the lake, and since the sun was setting we decided we needed to climb on the haystacks and sleep on top of them. Excuse me, hi, what were we thinking? Luckily that didn’t work out, so we quickly drove around to the shoreline, laid out our sleeping bags, and Michelle sang a song. Tiny waves crashed throughout the night as the wind picked up, they would wake me up long enough for me to look up/behind me to see the moon shining through the crack in my sleeping bag. I would look over to make sure Michelle was still there. This song was playing in my head when we woke up to the sunrise over the lake. I made a lot of mistakes.
And there are so many moments when I wake up or open my eyes to things/people/places/experiences, and think to myself, “I wish you were here.” I think it’s a beautiful emotion that we as humans are able to feel. I don’t believe the English language does an ounce of justice in explaining this emotion. I rely on Brazilian Portuguese here, leaning into the culture built around a single word: Saudade. This word is meant to describe the feeling of missing someone; the feeling that is that person’s shape stamped through your heart, knowing that the lack of their presence is a void that cannot and will not be filled by any other human. “Chicago” is the music playing in my mind when I scroll through pictures of adventures past. “Chicago” allows me to accept the Saudade I feel, and reminds me that all things grow to recreate us.
