#16: "Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?)" - Sufjan Stevens

Another personal choice from an album that serves as a reminder of colder days, lots of snow and alcohol and a sense of things not getting better. But this song & album were of great comfort.

It’s a very cold day here in Chicago on the morning of March 18th. Somehow this song reflected the weather both outside and in. When I first heard it, I was also becoming a huge fan of Okkervil River, The Magnetic Fields, The Shins and Low. Sufjan would be on the bottom ranking of that top five possibly due to a lack of brevity but sometimes that’s not a bad thing. Here is a track that will forever remind me of what it was like moving out of my comfort zone only to become more uncomfortable than ever before.

Before diving into that specifically, let’s look at this songwriter under a microscope. Stevens himself plays almost everything, listing in the credits over 20 "instruments", including oboe, vibraphone, drums, sleigh bells, "dramatic cymbal swells", "rhetoric" and his signature banjo. His sound is of cold comfort that ends up feeling warm and inviting. His voice, distant yet intimate. Of course his signature track ended up on the Illinois album with “Chicago” probably because it was his most upbeat with the infectious “all things go” choral refrain.

There was something about this songwriter that I intially wrote off, possibly due to the overlong song titles and the rather pretentious conceit that he would eventually write albums for every single U.S State (of course that idea was nixed). Perhaps he accomplished what he set out to do with records that revolve around Michigan (where he was from) and Illinois.

As much as I love those two records another song that I will write about comes from the extremely melancholic Carrie & Lowell, which explored the fallout from the 2012 death of his mother Carrie, and the relationship between Stevens and Carrie’s second husband Lowell Brams who helped founded his record label. I can’t help but think of how emotional I get listening to the final track on that one. But there’s no denying the feelings that come up with this spiritual ballad from his Michigan record.

Part of me wants to make this a review of the entire album because this is a concept record about a specific time and place and in a way, that’s how I think of it in context of my own life and experience. I was hoping I could find the photo of me buying this album outside a record store in Grand Rapids, Michigan. If I come across I’ll change it out from this photo, which was taken on a cold winter morning after I had stepped outside the apartment I lived in at the time.

"I'm a very self-conscious person, I think we all are, but I'm especially not very comfortable in my body. I always feel really weird and awkward on the street or on the stage. It has nothing to do with circumstances, it's just an ongoing psychological state, like white noise." - Sufjan Stevens

This was a difficult time and transition - one could argue I experienced some kind of breakdown while living here that was hard for me to communicate. I knew I had lived with depression and anxiety but somehow they became out of my control. It was affecting every aspect of my life including my physical health and my brain. Later, I would acquire the painful diagnosis of shingles after many tests & doctor visits trying to uncover the mystery. An MRI result even found some kind of mass that triggered the terror I had with a near-death experience and rare disease in 1996. While on painkillers and a variety of meds, I told my mom, “I have to move back home to Illinois.” Sufjan’s two albums, Michigan & Illinois are soundtracks for a tumultuous time. I wouldn’t be surprised if my roommate at the time would agree.

I’m not a religious person but I couldn’t help but pray out loud sometimes while I was in severe pain. Stepping out into the cold was impossible, my head was hurting constantly not to mention the sores on my face. Mentally, I was confused, easily withdrawn and not able to function normally at my job(s). The upside: I had music and movies to console me, not to mention a great boss named Conor who even brought me pot brownies once since he knew I was struggling to calm down.

“Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?)” is an epic piece that shakes me to the core. It’s a haunting, spiritual, and heart-rending question of existence all wrapped in memories that make me feel like I’ve lived this story a hundred times before. There’s stillness, that crisp acoustic guitar strumming and a sense of isolation - wondering if there’s any way out to the point of looking to the skies for an answer that will not come.

Sufjan stated that “Michigan is based on memory, so it’s more introverted and melancholy…that’s what a whole lot of [it] is about, this kind of internal and emotional tension between living and being in a place, and then leaving it and looking back, and having a different kind of experience with the memories of that place.” Jason Crock, Pitchfork Magazine

It begins with piano that wouldn’t sound out of place on one of Brian Eno’s Ambient recordings. In comes a clean electric guitar line and a gently-played acoustic, then a heavenly choir are communely questioning faith while looking to God for an embrace. Midway through the song, after repeating the same set of heaven-bound lines, all of the vocalists break into a wordless chorus (“da da da da da”) as they sing along to the melody set by the piano.

Instruments all flicker and shimmer as if being played by falling snow. It’s hard not to think about winter. The piano is patient and carefully tapped (you can even hear the piano bench tremble faintly). The guitar gleams and quivers, calm and serene. You can hear ambient noise trickling in between the quiet pauses as if the entire of the studio was breathing and coming to life at that moment. This song feels alive. The presence of good and evil are consuming the singer. Which will triumph and what kind of damage will occur in its path?

Would the righteous still remain?
Would my body stay the same?
There's no other man who could raise the dead
So do what you can to anoint my head

For about five minutes, this whole track sounds like a comfortably warm and cozy excursion into the existential unknown, a melody that you can slip away into; it soothes like sitting beside a campfire. The words sung are contained and simple. Halfway through, there is a change - it becomes an instrumental to accompany the feelings left behind early on.

It almost becomes a Sigur Rós song, since the horns take over, carried only by the gentle rolling of cymbals as the song draws to a close. It’s as if he has cast himself away into the fog on one of Michigan’s lakes, never to return. Then, after nine minutes and 24 seconds, it’s gone. Silence. The next track commences seamlessly. The torment is over. Or one would hope so. God himself may or may not have helped. I have a feeling that the music did.

There are even stronger, more memorable tracks throughout both this album and Illinois but this is more of a clear epiphany for me when I first realized what it was doing to me. It made me incredibly sad and mournful for what I had in Illinois but also grateful for the connection I was trying to maintain in Michigan with a roommate / friend who was also struggling to find their footing again. I’m so happy to report that we are both in a better place. We experienced three hard years and have managed to remain friends from a distance.

At that time, moving was hard. Losing a pet was even harder. Experiencing that together was challenging but we were able to put on records, impulsively drink in hopes it would help manage stress and a feeling of uncertainty of if things could get better. I had reached a tipping point though - I didn’t realize that my mind was slipping due to grad school, two jobs, a sense of isolation and the feeling that I wasn’t going to love where I lived the way I did in Chicago. Not to mention the complicated emotions I was facing with physical ailments - wondering if my depression and anxiety were causing something like shingles to manifest.

This song, this album, listening to it now - it reminds me of where I was a decade ago and how dark of a time it became. I was unaccepting of change even if the scenary was pleasant. I was even working at a church that I felt comfortable attending and playing bass in the church band for a while. “Oh God Where Are You Now?” is something I was actively asking when I was on painkillers, most definitely high and out of sorts. Sufjan was trying to play the role of a surrogate, or a therapist to help guide me back home to Illinois.

It was this song that awakened me to make an important phone call to my mom. Listening to it now is a reminder of growth and moving forward, but it’s also difficult to put into words. Sometimes you don’t remember the story, you just remember what you felt. I experienced so many different things at once while living in Grand Rapids and this song is one of the better examples of how there can be calm during the snow storm. You just have to be open, willing and accepting that it’s there waiting to be found. My roommate and friend found peace, sobriety and true love with a great person. I found my way back home - all things go, all things go.