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A song about American poverty and the desolation of loneliness. A man softly describes how he lives in America with a pair of Pay-less shoes, how the news keeps him company, how he lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (a place that boomed in the late 1800s and early 1900s with iron and copper mining and lumber, but when those resources were depleted the people went where the work was, like Wisconsin. Today there isn't always a lot of work up there, unemployment is high, as well as alcoholism). The man flatly describes how he saw his wife at the K-mart, how “in strange ideas [they] live apart”, that their all remnants of their relationship are gone and even though they may still love together, they live apart mentally. This also makes sense considering he sees her at the K-mart without knowing she would be there, that they don’t have any sort of typical interest where the other is and often do not know. Their relationship, mush like this man’s entire life, much like the U.P. itself, exists in a state of constant deterioration. The man goes on to describe how he lives in a broken-down trailer, its broken window symbolizing his broken perspective from which he views the world as a result of his poverty. The trailer is parked far away from the interstate, thus he will not be leaving anytime soon. Furthermore, his car is a snowmobile, making it impossible to leave even if he had the desire to do so. A snowmobile as his car also invokes a sense of frigid hopeless wandering, as this mode of travel relies on freezing snow, the ever-present cold weather, and could never yield any sort of significant travel beyond getting around town. He continues to tell that he drove all night to find his child who “in strange ideas, has been reviled”, marking the second time the phrase “in strange ideas” is used. This motif surfaces in the last verse as well- “In strange ideas, In stranger times, I’ve no idea what’s right sometimes”, linking the phrase “strange ideas” to a larger message conveying the moral complications present in this day and age, in “stranger times”. Applying this message to the verse about the man driving all night to find his child, we can interpret this metaphorically, that the man has come a great distance emotionally to find his child who has been reviled (“assailed with contemptuous language”) by these “strange ideas”, by moral complications. In the final verse, the man goes on to say that he has lost everything: his wife, job, life, and mind as a result of “these stranger times” that confute morality. We can interpret “lost” as literal – that his wife left him (probably due to his inability to financially provide for his family) – or that he lost his wife emotionally, that they have grown so distant they might as well live apart. The idea of “these stranger times” rounds out the song and shifts its meaning from a personal tale of poverty and depravation affecting one man, to a larger issue of how the less fortunate in the most powerful and rich country in the world adapt to our changing world, how we all adapt to a world where hegemonic morality rarely exists, if ever. (Sufjan seems to like shifting his songs’ focus from personal to more grand or vice-versa – see “Come on Feel the Illinoise” from the album by the same name). This song (“The Upper Peninsula”) is truly an amazing work. Musically, the electric guitar outro seems to represent the constant deterioration of the man’s life, relationship, mind, and the U.P. as a whole. Sufjan should collaborate with Jeff Tweedy sometime… |
