Sufjan Stevens

Illinois
Asthamtic Kitty / Spunk, 2005

Perhaps it was being raised by strict atheists that led to my intense fascination with pop songs about faith, both the finding and losing of it – as if religious belief was some great and turbulent love affair that I was missing out on (which would be a terrible pity, as all writers thrive on having their hearts broken). The most interesting are those songs set in the middle ground, in which someone's faith is tested or ugly questions are raised. It is for this reason that I love the albums of Pedro The Lion, which among other things follow the journey of singer David Bazan's troubled relationship with morality and religion.

Another prominent indie musician who touches on such issues is Sufjan Stevens. The title of 'Casimir Pulaski Day', from his album about the state of Illinois, is taken from the state's public holiday to remember an officer who fought in the American Revolution. It is a love song, but a very sad and complex one filled with the smallest of details, like shirts being untucked and light coming through the window, that make it feel all the more tangible. In it, the singer watches a friend die of cancer and feels powerless to stop the illness. "Tuesday night at the bible study/ We lift our hands and pray over your body/ But nothing ever happens," Stevens sings.

When the character finally dies ("on the first of March, on the holiday"), there is a moment in which the singer seems to question his faith. It's nothing definitive – the whole song thrives on understatement – but is portrayed as simply an intensely vulnerable moment. "Oh the glory that the Lord has made/ And the complications when I see his face/ In the morning in the window," are the lines. Some writers have argued the song is about theodicy, the debate that God is good despite the existence of evil in the world, but I hear something different in it. I think of 'Casimir Pulaski Day' as a love song with more than one subject – the dying girl and also a divine figure – and the tension between the two. In the end, I think, it thanks the Lord for the creation of the characters in the first place, but also describes the anger and doubt felt when one of them is taken away.