Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
Asthmatic Kitty, 2006
You’re a painter. You paint landscapes, mainly. The paintings are beautiful and extremely detail: you use the thinnest brush you have to individually paint in each blade of grass. Your paintings are full of life: there’s often a herd of deer dancing in the background, the trees are filled with birds, mice hide in between the bushes. Your paintings are vibrant, painted with the brightest of colours so that, when you cover your studio with them, it feels like you’re in the middle of summer, even at night. What amazes people the most is that you don’t even live in the countryside—you live in inner-city Chicago. Your days are filled with the choking fumes of mid-day traffic. People ask how you manage to draw such detailed pictures without a reference, but you don’t understand—all you have to do is close your eyes, and the pictures are right there, even more beautiful than you can ever realise. You slowly build up a small following, getting places in some major galleries, but you don’t really like the attention.
Your brother died a year or two ago. The police said it was an accidental death—but you’re not so sure. He was always such a good boatsmans, and he always wore his life jacket. It just doesn’t seem possible. Somehow, he keeps appearing in your pictures. Your brother is there, drowning in the lake, his body soaking in the harsh blue water. You don’t know how, you swear you don’t draw him. Sometimes you swear you didn’t even mean to draw water, but his body is still there, floating in the river, wearing his blood-red Arcade Fire tee shirt. In your heart, although you try not to think about it, you know it was probably suicide.
You draw another parade of rabbits, hopping across the front of the forest.
5/5
Reviewed by David.
Tracklist:
- The Avalanche
- Dear Mr. Supercomputer
- Adlai Stevenson
- The Vivian Girls Are Visited in the Night by Saint Dargarius and His Squadron of Benevolent Butterflies
- Chicago (Acoustic Version)
- The Henney Buggy Band
- Saul Bellow
- Carlyle Lake
- Springfield, or Bobby Got a Shadfly Caught in His Hair
- The Mistress Witch from McClure (Or, the Mind that Knows Itself)
- Kaskaskia River
- Chicago (Adult Contemporary Easy Listening Version)
- Inaugural Pop Music for Jane Margaret Byrne
- No Man’s Land
- The Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake
- The Pick-Up
- The Perpetual Self, or What Would Saul Alinsky Do?
- For Clyde Tombaugh
- Chicago (Multiple Personality Disorder Version)
- Pittsfield
- The Undivided Self (For Eppie and Popo)
