http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCb9jxqQYME
This was the song that convinced me I could live in Illinois; that, even though it was far away from home, it would be okay. Even though it was rural and cold and windy and two hours from a city and I knew like three people in a 100 mile radius and I didn't know how to use the buses and the classes were all different and I was in college! And this song, with its first line casually mentioning Illinois, made it okay.
That's really scary. It was - is - an entirely irrational argument. I was convinced by the banjo and the happy horns and the harmonies that someone had recorded seven years prior that something about my life would work itself out.
The lyrics aren't even anthemic. He isn't speaking to the listener, saying 'everything will be alright', the way some songs do. He's speaking about his childhood, transplanted onto a miserable little town in Illinois, and I got comfort from that.
Thank god for Sufjan Stevens, but, still. If that's all it takes to soothe my fears — horns and strings and bells — that's really good. Or is it really bad?
A note — on the cover of The Avalanche, Sufjan Stevens (the cartoon) is wearing a University of Illinois t-shirt. So that's something.
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