Sufjan and the Minivan

I yelled at several drivers today while I was driving around Glen Ellen. I didn't have anywhere to go and was driving around more to get away from where I'd been than to go anywhere in particular. The car in front of me (I believe it was a green dodge minivan. If that's the case, then this story is much less weird, because it is obviously easier to get ticked off at minivans than a car like, say, a red and white mini cooper) stopped at the stop sign. Not stopped for too long, didn't let everyone else go when it was their turn. Just stopped like they were supposed to and got in my way. This set me off. I screamed loud words that weren't very nice. A little later I was on a run and stopped in the middle of the prairie path to sob, and I couldn't explain any of it

Sometimes I balk against listening to the music that Dan does, even though I think he has really good, unique taste. Mostly it's because I don't want to listen to music just because my boyfriend does mixed in with a desire to have a totally unique, though peculiarly refined, taste of my own. That never really lasts very long once I remember that he, and most other people, know way more about music and what's coming out than I do. Plus I've also decided that letting random principles dictate my life only ends in me missing out on a lot of life anyway.

Anyway, that was kinda the case with Sufjan Stevens, until I actually listened to him and I found myself in limbo between attraction and repulsion. I might have felt differently towards him as an artist if the first song I'd heard hadn't been "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." whose lyrics, for anyone who hasn't heard the song, trace the events that formed the life of John Wayne Gacy Jr., a serial killer from Chicago who raped and murdered over 30 people, all of them males, in the 1970's. The subject material is shivering enough, but if it weren't for the last line, you could probably dismiss the song as the product of some weird though talented artist who has a sick fascination with the dark side of humanity. However, the last line says "And on my best behavior I am really just like him. Look under the floor boards for the secrets I have hid." It wasn't what Sufjan was saying that struck me most profoundly. I mean, it doesn't take being super insightful to know that he's saying we're all just as bad as Gacy, and I've known about evil inherent in all of us since the first time Romans was pounded into my brain. It was my reaction to it. It made me angry, I felt dirty and repulsed both by Gacy and by myself.

I wanted to ignore the song and let it pass me by. I wanted to observe and appreciate its artistry. I wanted to listen to it the same way I look at impressionistic paintings in the Art Institute that are inventive and beautiful, I suppose, but merely express someone's opinion on reality. I don't, after all, know whether the lilly pads Monet painted still exist. And if they do, I'm sure my impression of them won't be the same as his. So I can enjoy the painting without it affecting me in any way. I want John Wayne Gacy Jr. to be a name that I can google for facts about his life and for him to stay in 1978 as an anomaly worth my curiosity. I want everything about him to have vanished when he was executed so that he and his victims and all the twisted pain about him is framed and hung on a wall for me to look at.

In the same way, I want total depravity to be a concept that makes sense in the context of a generally Calvinist theology. Held up for me to admire as a way to make the Bible and grace and Jesus and all the problems with the world fit together and, ultimately make me feel good about myself.

But art and truth demand engagement, and music more than any other genre forces that engagement and doesn't let you just enjoy it passively. What Sufjan said touched me because these days I can't deny brokenness. The evil that existed in him exists in me as undeniably as the rage I felt towards cars getting and the tears hitting the pebbles of the prairie path.

I never realized how much I didn't get it about sin. Sin and sin. The difference between doing bad things and being inately messed up in a way that I can never fix. I guess that's why I feel like grace makes a whole lot more sense now.