On the Subreddit r\/Sufjan, there\u2019s a discussion called \u201cGay-ish references in Sufjan\u2019s music.\u201d In the first post, a fan writes, \u201cAlright, I know it’s probably just my wishful thinking and hoping that someday I can marry Sufjan, but every once in a while, I come across some of Sufjan’s lyrics that are somewhat, well…gay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another admits, \u201cSufjan is often portrayed as shrouded in mystery. Although he seems to pour out some of the most intimate and personal of his feelings and memories to his listeners, people seem to think of [him] still as some kind of mythical man, a poet-prophet-whatever-you-call-it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s discord in the community. Another says, \u201cI’m divided on discussing Sufjan’s sexuality. On the one hand, it doesn’t matter. He is clearly not hiding his sexuality but neither does he feel the need to be ‘out’. But on the other hand, maybe it is relevant in understanding some of the conflicts in his work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an offshoot of the Facebook group \u201cIs this Sufjan Stevens song gay or just about God?\u201d, member Darcy Mitchell gets to the root of it: “I don’t really think it’s about what sexual identity [Stevens] has,” writes Mitchell. “That’s not the important part of it. It’s that a lot of the things he sings about are really identifiable to LGBTI people, and particularly LGBTI people that have grown up religious and [dealing with] that resulting guilt.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For them, <\/em>Michael Cuby discusses Stevens\u2019 involvement in Luca Guadagnino\u2019s 2018 film Call Me by Your Name<\/em>: \u201cThe artist has expressed his admiration for [Andr\u00e9] Aciman\u2019s original book, James Ivory\u2019s adapted screenplay, and Guadagnino\u2019s skill as a director, but his willingness to immerse himself in this story, in particular, speaks volumes.\u201d Originally asked to create one song for the soundtrack, Stevens shared three. \u201cWhen asked about his decision by Vulture<\/em>,\u201d Cuby writes, \u201cSufjan pointed to the profound physicality of Guadagnino\u2019s work, as well the emotional experience detailed in this narrative. \u2018That\u2019s really what I was working on, this idea of first love being really irrational and sensational,\u2019 Sufjan said, \u2018and feeling boundless in its experience.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I came to Sufjan late, in 2018, in an embarrassingly obvious way: through Call Me by Your Name. <\/em>The book was what I needed to begin understanding my sexuality\u2013\u2013Aciman\u2019s novel, like much of his writing, is more vividly bisexual than the film implies. Aciman tracks Elio\u2019s sexual becoming with a man, a woman, and, of course, a peach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I first listened to the audiobook when I was in my early twenties, living in Maine and working in college admissions. In January, we worked from home, reading over a hundred applications for admission each week. Beaten down by my workload and the Maine winter, I wanted to dissolve into the text\u2013\u2013sun-soaked Italy, intellectual sparring and mirroring, which amplified and refracted attraction in a way that seemed to unveil previously unseen parts of my mind. In the weeks after listening to Aciman\u2019s book, I bought the film\u2019s soundtrack. The Psychedelic Furs, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Sufjan Stevens scored my days reading college essays. The album\u2013\u2013from poppy Bandolero to a brooding Moroder\u2013\u2013became the soundtrack for my new imagined life. The cadences, the peaks and valleys charted my queer becoming. A coworker and I bonded over Sufjan\u2019s lyrics and would sing along in carpool or flail to \u201cLove My Way\u201d at parties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two years later, I was dating my first boyfriend. There were so many things I needed to learn\u2013\u2013queer history, gay bars, top and bottom stereotypes. Being with a man, I could participate. On Valentine\u2019s Day, at a pizzeria in North Carolina, we were seated next to a lesbian couple, and I trilled my delight to my boyfriend. We weren\u2019t the only gay people here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the books, movies, and music of my gay education\u2013\u2013Giovanni\u2019s Room, <\/em>But I\u2019m a Cheerleader, <\/em>Lana Del Rey\u2013\u2013Sufjan Stevens resurfaced. Throughout the pandemic, Carrie and Lowell <\/em>animated my solitude. The Age of Adz <\/em>retroactively soundtracked my high school and college years lusting for \u201cfriendship\u201d with men. I\u2019d known Sufjan from the outskirts, coming into an understanding of bisexuality and the queer community from mostly straight spaces (it seems fitting that Call Me by Your Name<\/em>, criticized by some for packaging queerness for a straight audience,was the invitation). Many queer men found comfort and visibility in Stevens\u2019 lyrics when they were coming to understand their sexuality. Sufjan captures the longing for connection in same-sex attraction, in the coded ways we so often operate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His music was unknown to me in high school when the lyrics might have meant something significant. But back then, I leaned hard into the mainstream, readily supplying Coldplay as my favorite band whenever anyone asked. Taste in music was a way to fit in, or else something to hide (nobody could know I had Howie Day\u2019s CD, though I only ever listened to \u201cCollide\u201d). In college, we sang one of Sufjan\u2019s songs in my a cappella group, but instead of paying attention to the lyrics I was more annoyed at the arrangement and how it never quite cohered, the dins and jens of \u201cChicago\u201d reverberating diaphanously in the campus chapel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the summer of 2020, I read a news report that revealed a handful of universities had funded studies to discover whether bisexual men \u201cexist.\u201d I sometimes feel as if I straddle groups and it\u2019s easier, less confusing to say I\u2019m gay. I watch bisexual characters on screen, and so often they are only used to create mystery or deceit. From Jennifer\u2019s Body <\/em>to the men of Bret Easton Ellis\u2019s novels, the \u201cDepraved Bisexual\u201d listing on TVTropes <\/em>constellates a universe of bisexuals using sex to manipulate people for their own ends. <\/em>I even think of Summer Finn, the subject of Tom Hansen\u2019s manic pixie-ification in (500) Days of Summer, <\/em>whobecomes ever more illegible to him when he learns of a girl from her romantic past. These characters are nearly always women and sexualized. I missed out on some of the unifying experiences, the coming-of-age narratives common to gay men peers because I didn\u2019t know what I was looking for. But now I listen to Sufjan\u2019s lyrics and feel everything too. Play a song of his and you\u2019ve got a soundtrack for an angsty gay memory, for the nights you felt dejected when you were ignored by your high school role model or that \u201cfriend\u201d who drove you crazy with longing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Representation often asks about the person behind the work. There\u2019s an abundance of essays about whether Stevens might be gay; some people on the Sufjan subreddit speculate he might be bisexual. We seem to prefer stories and lyrics that embody and are borne of, instead of only speaking to, experiences like ours. We want to know he\u2019s one of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I understand this desire to know, to be recognized. Think of the rare bisexual male character in a romcom. Think of bi men who come out and are told they\u2019re in denial. Perhaps we feel something more when we know an artist creates from a space we occupy, too. That they have been through something like we have and ended up creating something beautiful out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though his love life remains enigmatic, Sufjan is quite candid about his faith. He said of the first song, \u201cMake Me An Offer I Cannot Refuse,\u201d from his 2020 album The Ascension<\/em>, “I think in some ways that song’s about giving God an ultimatum.\u201d In 2020, this song was an expression of frustration with his \u201cdivine creator.\u201d Sufjan is Christian Orthodox and enjoys going to church and singing, still. While he\u2019s had to interrogate his beliefs and admits to their changing contour, he says, “I feel more confident in my faith than ever. That has enabled me to then make these remarks and think about these things, and have the bandwidth and the wherewithal to really question them. I think that’s just part of the nature of belief.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps there\u2019s something prickly to our questions. The presumption can create pressure, a prescription for someone whose understanding of identity might look different from what we assume. Just last week, fully out and with nothing to hide, I talked with a partner about how work re-closets you\u2013 buttoned up, better to blend in. In the right (wrong) setting, I\u2019ve flattened men I\u2019ve been with to \u201cfriends.\u201d One could argue that there\u2019s privilege to this\u2013\u2013straight-passing\u2013\u2013yet I know it\u2019s also emblematic of the larger system that we\u2019re always navigating and negotiating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll lock the doors for Sufjan if he never comes out, or never gives us more to go on. I love how we\u2019re all hanging onto every word of his. The thing is, people are asking for genuine stories. People are asking to be seen, to be validated. We don\u2019t want to be reduced. We can sniff out bullshit because of the bullshit we\u2019ve lived through. But Sufjan knows us. It\u2019s telling that fans call him by his first name. His music is held\u2013\u2013wielded\u2013\u2013intimately. His lyrics are real, dug in, embodied so we can feel the pain, the longing, the love, and lust behind each word. We feel seen when he sings. We want him to know we see him too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sources<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dan Condon and Zan Rowe, \u201cIn some ways, Sufjan Stevens has started caring less as he grows older,\u201d for ABC.Net Double J, September 29, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGay-ish references in Sufjan\u2019s music\u201d on Reddit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jared Richards, \u201cWe Can’t Stop Wondering if Sufjan Stevens Sings About God or Being Gay\u201d for Vice, August 29, 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Matthew Schnipper, \u201cLuca Guadagnino on the Music of His Movies, and Why He Had to Have Sufjan Stevens for Call Me by Your Name<\/em>\u201d for Pitchfork<\/em>, January 23, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael Cuby, \u201cSufjan Stevens’ Music Is Queer \u2014 And He Deserves an Oscar Tonight\u201d for Them<\/em>, March 4, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael Colbert is a queer writer based in Maine, where he\u2019s at work on a novel. He holds an MFA from UNC Wilmington, and his writing appears in Esquire, The New York Times, NYLON, <\/em>and The Florida Review<\/em>, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n @mjcolbert16 on Instagram and Twitter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I came to Sufjan late, in 2018, in an embarrassingly obvious way: through\u00a0Call Me by Your Name. The book was what I needed to begin understanding my sexuality\u2013Aciman\u2019s novel, like much of his writing, is more vividly bisexual than the film implies. 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