Ascension stevens point chal8/30/2023 The phrase ‘don’t do to me what you did to America’ was just coming out because it sounded cool, but I thought it was mean-spirited. It was in fact more prophetic than timely he wrote it in 2014, “and then shelved it because I didn’t really understand what it was. “Don’t do to me what you did to America,” he sings over and over like a mantra, his voice distorted with terrific and unearthly power, carried on an overwhelming wave of instrumentation that’s elegiac, psychedelic, beautiful and apocalyptic. Stevens announced his new record in July with the single ‘America’, a song that embodies the sound of that collapse. Isolation and fear, it’s become so crippling here.” “But anything is better than where we are now, so I’m hopeful about that. I wish we could put ten-year olds in power.” He sighs again, before forcing optimism. I wish that we could rewrite our constitution. I wish we could break it all down and build it all back. “Well the thing’s just so disappointing to me, I wish there could be a revolution. I bring up the upcoming presidential election and he sighs. We have this tendency to mythologise the American identity of the past, but now those mythologies don’t really align with the reality of the situation so people get angry and resentful and fearful.” “Self-absorption? Entitlement? An inflated sense of worth? Inability to change? That’s really tough. When I ask what he considers indelibly American today, he starts laughing. When he released ‘Tonya Harding’, he described her with pride as ‘indelibly American’. She’s just one character in this story of the American consciousness,” he says. “She’s the manifestation of the great American anti-hero. As recently as his 2017 single ‘Tonya Harding’ he drew from that deep American well. Over the past two decades, he’s intertwined his music with the country’s sprawling mythology, writing delicately crafted and literary songs, populated by UFO enthusiasts and serial killers. I felt like the messages must be clear and coherent, almost editorial.” “No stories, no characters, nothing representational, no metaphor and no self-mythology. “I had to do away with all my previous tropes,” he says of his new album The Ascension. Its fabric, made up of folk tales and legends, is tattered past the point of restoration. Score the rank of Gold in the “Path of Ascension” challenge mission, by losing 10 units or less.The America that has always informed Sufjan Stevens’ music is mid-collapse. Score the rank of Silver in the “Path of Ascension” challenge mission, by losing 20 units or less. Score the rank of Bronze in the “Path of Ascension” challenge mission, by defending the Pylons. Have your zealots intercept the marauders.Īchievements Path of Ascension: Bronze
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