{"id":32324,"date":"2020-08-01T17:48:07","date_gmt":"2020-08-01T22:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=32324"},"modified":"2020-08-01T17:48:07","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T22:48:07","slug":"briefly-sufjan-stevens-album-always-evokes-old-feelings-about-my-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=32324","title":{"rendered":"Briefly: Sufjan Stevens album always evokes old feelings about my mother"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Carrie-Lowell.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32325\" src=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Carrie-Lowell.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"259\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Carrie-Lowell.jpg 460w, https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Carrie-Lowell-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Five years after it came out, the Sufjan Stevens album, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wX8vpzU_i_c\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Carrie &amp; Lowell<\/a>,\u201d is still the most beautifully melancholy album I\u2019ve ever heard. I\u2019m biased since it deals with Stevens coming to terms with his feelings about his mother after her death. I don\u2019t know the full story, but she had some sort of mental issues and she left him at some point in childhood. His story isn\u2019t just like mine by any means, but there are strong echoes of similar feelings in his experience, so I can really identify with it. I hadn\u2019t listened to the album lately, but I just played it all the way through and it had the same effect on me that it always does. It\u2019s beautiful and it\u2019s sweet, but it\u2019s also heartbreaking \u2014 and it leaves me with images and powerful feelings about <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=23734\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">my own late mother<\/a>. If you have bittersweet feelings about a dysfunctional parent you\u2019ve lost, you might identify with it, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Five years after it came out, the Sufjan Stevens album, \u201cCarrie &amp; Lowell,\u201d is still the most beautifully melancholy album I\u2019ve ever heard. I\u2019m biased since it deals with Stevens coming to terms with his feelings about his mother after her death. I don\u2019t know the full story, but she had some sort of mental <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=32324\" class=\"more-link\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-8pm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32324"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32328,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32324\/revisions\/32328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}