new sufjan & my old hometown

Yesterday Sufjan released his newest album, and I listened to it in pieces throughout the afternoon, in my childhood bedroom, where I'm staying for the next few days.

This is my first time back home since moving to Mexico. The sounds of birds and crickets and distant trains outside my bedroom window are a balm for my senses. And so is this new Sufjan album. 

I teared up listening to the second to last track -- not because of its lyrics, but because it reminded me of Carrie and Lowell, and of who and where I was when that album came out.

I first heard Sufjan on the soundtrack for a movie trailer titled FOUR FIVE THREE SIX FIVE, a little slice of life documentary about a small town in Ohio. The trailer featured the closing track of Illinoise, "Out of Egypt..."

I was fifteen, and I hadn't seen much of the country, but I knew that I needed to get out of my hometown. At the time I thought my town was boring and ugly. But that Sufjan track, and the visuals from that trailer, shifted something -- they showed me a way to frame my humdrum suburban life in a way that might be artistic, interesting, beautiful. 

It was the summer before my junior year of high school. I rode my bike around town listening constantly to Sufjan and taking pictures. I used this brand new, somewhat unknown app called Instagram to add vintage filters. The phony patina made the plastic and pavement glow a little brighter.

Now I'm in my hometown again, in my old bedroom again, listening to Sufjan again. A gentle autumn breeze sweeps in when I should be asleep. I'm glad I have these memories and this place and this life and all my friends in it.