Sufjan Stevens reflects on what he’s learned about the holidays after releasing 100 Christmas songs, in conversation with CraigSJ
There is experience there with liturgical Christmas music. I’m just kind of a hymnal collector. I have Presbyterian hymns and Methodist hymns and early music books. I have a little library. I would just dip into that archive whenever I was working on EPs. I like to mix that kind of stuff with more contemporary secular stuff. I think as the box sets evolve, they get more and more indulged in the secular stuff.
I keep coming back to “X-Mas Spirit Catcher.” There’s a couplet that got me thinking about the fatalism in the spirit of the season. A child will come who’s destined to do great things but also to be tortured. As a musician, you get license to cover a lot of ground from that. I’ve thought about this stuff way too much. In fact, I had to stop. I put a moratorium on it. I was like,At some point, I think one has to confront one’s absurd obsessions and sort of OCD behavioral pathologies. Unfortunately, my own pathologies are often an explanation for my work, and the motivation for my work.
I think that’s the writer’s dilemma: “How deep does this trail go? Am I willing to follow?” Are you just a lore master bouncing between bouts of intense tunnel vision? That’s how it plays out for me. You have to pry yourself away after a while.50 States projectYeah. I feel like my whole music career has been an exercise in calling my own bluff. I go on all these excursions and I feel they’re indulgent and slightly megalomaniacal in their approach.
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