Music Thoughts: The Only Thing by Sufjan Stevens

The Only Thing is undoubtedly the most important song in my life. It’s not the most listened to but its meaning surpasses any other method of quantifying music. All throughout secondary school I had bouts of deep, deep depression. Skipping the details, simply put I couldn’t imagine a better future.

Nothing else really gave me hope except for the smaller things. Maybe cliché, but sunsets, a beautiful painting, a mom laughing with her toddler on the bus, an adorable dog by the grocery store, reading in a bookstore, a kind smile exchanged with a stranger — small things would move me to tears but kindle that impossible to describe bittersweet hope and longing somewhere deep inside me.

By God the world is beautiful, I would think. We are all so small but so significant to each other. It’s all so temporary and sorrowful, but full of wonder.

I still don’t know how to quite describe that feeling. It was bittersweet; wonder, sadness, joy, hope, nostalgia, grief — and I never felt like anything could really capture it until I stumbled upon this song.

I won’t describe it, the song can be listened to, but some of the lyrics go:

The only thing that keeps me from driving this car
Half-light, jack knife into the canyon at night
Signs and wonders, Perseus aligned with the skull
Slain Medusa, Pegasus alight from us all

Do I care if I survive this, bury the dead where they’re found
In a veil of great surprises I wonder did you love me at all?

The only thing that keeps me from cutting my arm
Cross hatch, warm bath, Holiday Inn after dark
Signs and wonders, water stain writing the wall
Daniel’s message, blood of the moon on us all

Do I care if I despise this, nothing else matters, I know
In a veil of great disguises, how do I live with your ghost?

…

The only reason why I continue at all
Faith in reason, I wasted my life playing dumb
Signs and wonders, sea lion caves in the dark
Blind faith, God’s grace, nothing else left to impart

The album Carrie & Lowell is an album full of grief and despair, surrounding his mother’s passing. The Only Thing has been lauded as one of the most depressing songs on an already heartbreaking album.

But to me, The Only Thing, just like how I perceived my life at the time — felt like indescribable sorrow inexplicably intermingled with hope.

For the first time in my life I felt like somebody understood this feeling I had that I could never put into words. You’re in the darkest place you can be as a human being, but the wonder of the smallest things — signs and wonders, water stains, sea lion caves in the dark, blind faith — instills the strongest most profound strength in you.

Faith is a big part of Sufjan’s songs. Although I don’t consider myself religious like he does, faith is something that is unique to everyone. You can have faith in God, faith in yourself, faith in the future, faith in love. It’s a steadfast belief and blind faith is how it feels like when you feel like there’s no way out, but you hold on still anyways.

When I first listened to The Only Thing and got to the line sea lion caves in the dark, I had this vague image of a blurry man standing before a sea lion exhibition in a dark aquarium, looking at it with a wonder that only the hopeless can find a unique form of hope and beauty in. For a moment the weight, the grief, can be put aside.

The Only Thing is a song about how I stayed alive. It has been the only song I have ever listened to that has come even close to describing that feeling deep inside of me, the only song that captures both my depression at the time and the hope that remained.

The old adage “this song saved my life” doesn’t quite apply here. But this song is more important, it captures how I did that for myself.

I am doing better now, but the song is still the most powerful and important song in my life.

Thanks, Sufjan.