2004: Sufjan Stevens, Seven Swans

By Imogen Bergin

It’s 2008. I was about to be 14 years old. I was writing letters to a girl named Audrey who lived in Ohio who I loved thinking about. She was the opposite of uninteresting. She wrote that I made the sun come up in the city in her mind. Wow, I thought, that’s unforgettably beautiful, and quickly wrote something forgettable back to her.

I tried, I always tried to be unforgettable. I wanted to be thought about, considered. If someone else thought about me, that meant I wasn’t no one. Or, that meant I was someone. Both were fine alternatives to the unreliable Who? of my identity. I didn’t realize that you could answer Who? with You, and call it a day. 

When I was young, I was terrifically lonely and didn’t know it, or I knew it but I chose to forget. I was the youngest of five in a house smashing on the shores of divorce. Every day I was bundled in a soaked, scratchy beach towel of being alone. If you call that divinity, it’s a baptism. If you call it sin, it’s a drowning. Simply, I was lonely and imaginative and too old for my age (I grew up too fast… ) but too young to be old ( … not fast enough). I learned to wear loneliness as an achievement medal of individuality, as a marker of some esteemed idiosyncrasy, instead of as a leaden jacket on my shoulders.

What they don’t tell you in Sunday school is how lonely you will be. 

This is between you and me, okay? I do not mean to blame God for my loneliness – though I am not afraid to point a finger in her general direction – but rather want to reflect on Christians, Christian community, and Christian commitments. Nothing about church got me out of my head. Everything about church pushed me further and further inward, to that lonely locus of my heart where I was trying to talk to my god. When he didn’t answer, I poured hot mugs of shame into my ears to drown out the hollow sound of quiet.

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What they don’t tell you in Sunday school is how easy, how immense it can feel to love.

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It’s 2008. I do not know who I am, but I definitely think I know a thing or two about love. For starters, love indulges in secret keeping. I love a lonely god who knows my secrets, like how he knows the J.V. Fletcher library in my hometown has a great selection of CDs in its basement; she knows that there’s no limit on how many CDs you can take out; she knows that I’m tired of using Limewire to download crudely edited radio versions of Fueled By Ramen and Gwen Stefani; they know that I am trying to escape my body, and that music was a backdoor I’d found.

Inside this secret in a secret in a secret in a secret, in the basement of the J.V. Fletcher library, I see a CD with handwritten words on it, surrounding a painting of a swan. The name strikes me as familiar. Months prior, Audrey had told me to listen to Sufjan Stevens, so when I see one of his albums nestled in a row of alphabetized jewel cases I pick it up without hesitation, excited to learn more about her by listening to him. I was learning and loving by way of reflection, with myself always on the edge of the glass. When I uploaded this CD to my library and started listening I felt that mirror turn towards me and show me a person I didn’t know existed. A person I desperately wanted to love.

Seven Swans is a unique, spiritual garden of love. The roots are strong, the soil is rich and complex. Sufjan is a symphonic gardener and a believable lover. He’s an architect of delicate sounds that can swell into roaring tides, of moments that sizzle like Southern summer pavement. A steadfast chef, he joyfully accepts the consequences of waiting for his moments to be completely cooked through. He knows what a secret in a secret in a secret in a secret looks like. It looks like something, or someone, unforgettable. It looks like me and you, filled with secrets gathered precariously like CDs stacked in adolescent hands, hip to heart.

Seven Swans was an album that taught me that I could be God-loving and God-fearing and still be able to croon honeyed affections over minor guitar chords. “To Be Alone With You” lasted for too many years as a clandestine admission of love on my mix CDs before I admitted to myself that the allusion to Jesus Christ was extremely, explicitly obvious and I replaced it with “The Dress Looks Nice on You.” “Abraham” was an impressive song to pull out on church retreats when I learned how to play guitar, and it was soon followed by “Size Too Small,” which was good at open mics where I wanted to sound romantic and aloof and older than 14 and not Christian.

Eventually, I was older than 14 and not Christian. I walked away from my god because of a different love, and then I turned a corner and walked away from that love, and then I turned a corner again and have been trying to face myself for a few years. I’m still hoping to answer Who? with You. Sometimes I trick myself by answering Who? with I Love You. I tell myself it’s close enough and some days I really believe that. Some days I can’t believe how long I lived with telling myself I was just a weird boy who definitely didn’t hate himself. It is important to admit to you and to me that I am a weird person, weird girl, weird notboy who definitely hated themselves. My loneliness converged with my faith to produce this secret in a secret in a secret in a secret of holy self-hatred, but listening to Seven Swans brought me closer to feeling like I could see and love myself when I didn’t think that was possible.

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I was young then, and I am young now. We have vast youths in particular ways. I am trying to figure out how to reconnect myself to my past, which is an extensive task, a process that asks a lot of my capacities for personal patience, compassion, forgiveness, and love. So, I return to an album that has made me feel like myself before. I listen to “Sister.” What Sufjan urges, more than faith, or love, or intervention, or family, or chaos, or holiness, is patience. What could be more powerful, more transformative, than to be unhurried? It’s within “Sister,” after his turbulent, urgent instrumental, that we listen to Sufjan’s patience on display, singing uncomplicated turns of phrase about his personal world. Simply singing to his sister. I have no one to sing “Sister” to, no younger sibling with which to share the few things I know, so I sing it to myself. I sing it to parts of me that are younger than I am right now, to past selves whose ears still steam hot with shame. I tell myself it’s close enough and most days I really believe that.

Imogen Bergin (they/them) is an artist based on Erie land in so-called Cleveland, OH. In addition to writing, they are a self-taught film photographer, a songwriter, a classical violinist, and bassist in the bands Sasha and the Valentines, Spirit Ghost, and Calico Blue. You can find them on Instagram and Twitter @mercibeauyou.