Sufjan & The Kelpies

Duke and Barron - The Kelpies of Falkirk, Scotland

In a country whose national animal is a Unicorn, it seems fitting to have two mythological creatures sculpted in steel to welcome river travelers.  Duke holds his head down as if drinking water while Barron stretches his neck to the sky to bask in the sunlight.  According to mythology, a water spirit would shape-shift into a Kelpie (water horse) who would lure weary travelers walking along a river or loch.  Delighted to take a ride, humans would leap onto the sticky back of the Kelpie, who would whisk them down into the depths of the water with a crack of thunder.

CRACK BOOM.

Sufjan Stevens played I am the Christmas Unicorn with enough confetti and smoke to set off the fire alarms.  We all had to file out without an encore.  In an interview with him, he mentions this fire-alarm-provoking imagination,

"My imagination can be a problem," he says. "I'm prone to making my life, my family, and the world around me complicit in my cosmic fable, and often it's not hard to manipulate the hard facts into a vision quest  But it's all an attempt to extract meaning, and ultimately that's what I'm in pursuit of, like: What's the significance of these experiences?"

His most recent album, Carrie and Lowell, was created underneath the backdrop of the death of his mother in 2012.  I recently was able to visit the grave of my grandmother who passed away in November.  If I were a musician, I would love to title my own album after my grandparents, Alec and Sarah, and create songs reflective of their lives and my own stories of them.  This time I left, I stood in the road waving from the car through the night, watching with blurry eyes the venetian blinds in the front window.  Thicker stripes of yellow light streamed through where my grandfather's fingers were pulling them apart to peek through.

I hope that our own spirits shift into different shapes when we die as resemblances in our families; our children; ourselves.  When we are most weary, may we find them to refresh us in the water of this cosmic fable.  That's what I like to imagine, which fortifies my heart and soul.

Oh be near me, tired old mare
With the wind in your hair
Amethyst and flowers on the table
Is it real or a fable
Well I suppose
A friend is a friend
And we all know
How this will end

- Death with Dignity Sufjan Stevens