John My Beloved

Beloved my John is a reference to John the apostle, who was the beloved the disciple of Jesus. This song is a reflection on the Gospel of John and how Steven's has come to a new understanding of the text "Beloved of John, I get it all wrong I read you for some kind of poem" Perhaps his new understanding was spurred by the death of his mother. If you read interviews Steven's did about his album, you will find he had a difficult relationship with his mother. In the song, I believe he is trying to make sense of the past and is how he is unable to get over what happened. These feelings spur him to see a new meaning in the Gospel of John. "And when I am dead, come visit my bed My fossil is bright in the sun" He refers to memories as fossils, he understands how the Gospel of John is about making what is old, new. He is able therefore to make sense of his past.

This seems to be pretty clear it is about a relationship with Jesus. This song was hard to interpret, but here are a few things I picked out.

John was considered the "apostle Jesus loved", as is well known, and I won't get into that.

"Are we to speak, first day of the week Stumbling words at the bar" *First day of the week is Sunday - the day everyone goes to church. It can be awkward to speak with God and you don't always know what to say.

"Beloved of John, I get it all wrong I read you for some kind of poem" *Beloved OF John, probably referencing Jesus. He is saying he had read the whole story as just a pleasant sounding tale. It isn't so much that he didn't believe it, but it seemed distant, more like art than a relationship.

"Covered in lines, the fossils I find Have they no life of their own?" *I'm not as sure of this one, but the worldly things that take his interest, they seem dead to him.

"So can we be friends, sweetly Before the mystery ends?" *This seemed fuzzier to me, but at least one interpretation. Several times in the New Testament, it speaks of "the mystery", and here, the end of the mystery could easily be death, or kingdom come - the moment he goes to heaven.

The last verse seems to be from Jesus' perspective. "If history speaks, the kiss on my cheek Where there remains but a mark" Judas' kiss on Jesus cheek

"Beloved my John, so I’ll carry on Counting my cards down to one And when I am dead, come visit my bed My fossil is bright in the sun" Saying he's going to die, so come visit his grave.

Themes: the end of a relationship, digging up the past, the questioning of faith and roles

The sense I get from this song is one of mourning over an inability to get over past relationship issues and move on with one's life. The author struggles with finding new ways to imagine how relationships can progress, so he imagines the progress of his relationship through a series of different roles. The author is the beloved apostle John and the partner is Jesus. Then he is the Daedelus to his partner's Icarus. Next, the author is Jesus and the partner is Judas. Then the author is Jesus and the partner is John, the roles that the author finally settles on.

An interesting note about this song is the subtle but pervasive sense of the masculine in the partner. All the characters he compares his partner to are male. His tongue is on his partner's chest rather than breast. At the very least, his partner is someone with a rather masculine energy.

On to the lyrics.

"Are we to speak, first day of the week Stumbling words at the bar Beauty blue eyes, my order of fries Long island kindness and wine"

The author meets the Other at a bar on a Monday. The most mundane of circumstances. One thing starts to lead to another (beauty, blue eyes, kindness, inebriation, lust).

"Beloved of John, I get it all wrong I read you for some kind of poem Covered in lines, the fossils I find Have they no life of their own?"

The author sees the possibility of a new relationship, and in his excitement he imagines this person to be Jesus (the beloved of John) and places them on a pedestal, ascribing poetic virtues to them. He compares this person to his past relationships, and finds that these past relationships cannot compare, they are old and uninspiring. He ignores the lessons that they have to offer (the lines).

"So can we pretend sweetly Before the mystery ends? I am a man with a heart that offends With its lonely and greedy demands There’s only a shadow of me in a manner of speaking I'm dead."

The author is in love with love, and he knows that this relationship will lead nowhere, but wants to enjoy it while he can. He knows that he is terribly demanding, but he wants so badly for the relationship (any relationship) to work that he practically wills it in to existence as a way of ignoring the overwhelming emptiness at his core.

"Such a waste, your beautiful face Stumbling carpet arise Go follow your gem, your white feathered friend Icarus, point to the sun"

The author wants their partner (Icarus now) to fly free, but knows the peril of doing so. Having fostered this love, though, he can't take it back; by pretending to be in love, he has molded his lover in a particular way. He has crafted their wings out of wax and set them on a trajectory. He knows it is doomed (such a waste), and also knows that what has been set in motion is now destined to come to pass (Icarus' fall).

"If history speaks of two baby teeth I’m painting the hills blue and red They said beware, Lord hear my prayer I’ve wasted my throes on your head"

This reference feels ancient, maybe Roman, especially when in the same breath as hills and just after Icarus. Blue and red could be a reference to melancholy and anger. Two baby teeth suggest teething problems, the early issues in a relationship. The hills (a reference to all things timeless) are the ones who are telling him to beware, that his effort in the relationship is a waste.

"So can we be friends, sweetly Before the mystery ends? I love you more than the world can contain In its lonely and ramshackle head There’s only a shadow of me in a manner of speaking I'm dead."

The mystery here is another reference to faith. More pointedly, to the mystery of love and the faith in it. The author really does love his partner, but knows the relationship is ending. He wants to end it amicably, but has no hope since the world (the whole of his existence) is lonely.

"I’m holding my breath My tongue on your chest What can be said of my heart? If history speaks, the kiss on my cheek Where there remains but a mark."

The author is afraid to speak this truth, that he knows that the relationship cannot survive based on this lie. He's engaged in lovemaking, but his heart is not in it. He thinks his lover will inevitably betray him, and holds his heart back out of fear. He casts himself in the role of Jesus, and his lover in the role of Judas.

"Beloved my John, so I’ll carry on Counting my cards down to one And when I am dead, come visit my bed My fossil is bright in the sun"

Here, we see another shift; having decided the relationship is over, the author can see his former partner in a more accurate light. He realizes that his partner has been John all along, worshiping and dutiful. Life has become tedious and depressing, and death something to be embraced. "And when I am dead, come visit my bed" implies a desire to still be in a relationship with the other person but only on the author's terms. "My fossil is bright in the sun" is an absolutely brilliant double-entendre. The author suggests he will still lust after the other even on his deathbed, but that a relationship cannot happen with him in his current state (he has to go through a literal or metaphorical death first).

"So can we contend, peacefully Before my history ends? Jesus I need you, be near me, come shield me From fossils that fall on my head"

The author wants resolution, and sees no hope in the future. He pleas to Jesus for absolution; he is haunted by guilt for not paying enough attention to the lessons offered by past relationships.

"There’s only a shadow of me in a manner of speaking I'm dead"

The ending note of the song. The relationship has gutted him. Even if he succeeds in learning from his mistakes and forgives himself, it hardly matters, since without the other person he doesn't even know who he is anymore.

On the whole, there's a suicidal feel to this whole song, as if we're looking in on something horribly intimate; either a preemptively protective Dear John letter (subtly suggested by the song title, note that it's John my Beloved and not Beloved my John as per the lyrics) or a suicide note. It's a delicate bauble left in your hand that you don't dare drop, but don't know what to do with it either, so you just have to hold it until the moment has passed.

This comes off as his account of his final encounter with his mother, who he has said he had a loving but distant relationship with, on her deathbed.

Fossils - this that are ancient and buried, no long relevant, that emerge?

Humorous comments...john day fossil beds...Oregon is the thread, parents are the needle and you are the result.

“Beloved, My John” is the story of how Sufjan Stevens coped with the aftermath of his mother’s death.

In an interview with Pitchfork (“True Myth: A Conversation with Sufjan Stevens”), Stevens revealed his distant relationship with his absentee mother, Carrie. Suffering from mental illness, Carrie believed herself to be an unfit mother, and left Stevens when he was an infant. Stevens corroborates: “She left when I was 1... She felt that she wasn't equipped to raise us...she suffered from schizophrenia and depression [and] was an alcoholic. She did drugs, had substance abuse problems. She really suffered…”

Despite this, Stevens describes her as a good mother when she was present, and deeply desired to be closer to her. “...when we were with her and when she was most stable, she was really loving and caring, and very creative and funny.”

Unfortunately, Carrie was mostly absent throughout Stevens’s life, and contact with her was sporadic until her death. When she was diagnosed with stomach cancer, Stevens met her at the ICU, and was distraught to find how the distance impacted their relationship: “It was so terrifying to encounter death and have to reconcile that, and express love, for someone so unfamiliar. Her death was so devastating to me because of the vacancy within me. I was trying to gather as much as I could of her, in my mind, my memory, my recollections, but I have nothing.”

In the aftermath of her passing, Stevens was devastated by the emptiness he felt during their final moments, and the loss of a relationship he could no longer pursue. As a result, he turned to the same destructive behaviors of his mother in an effort to be closer to her: “I was so emotionally lost and desperate for what I could no longer pursue in regard to my mother, so I was looking for that in other places… In lieu of her death, I felt a desire to be with her, so I felt like abusing drugs and alcohol and fucking around a lot and becoming reckless and hazardous was my way of being intimate with her.”

However, Stevens quickly learned – or perhaps knew – that this was futile, and was more of a means of “rebelling” or coping with loss. “I quickly learned that you don't have to be incarcerated by suffering… I came to realize that I wasn't possessed by her, or incarcerated by her mental illness. We blame our parents for a lot of shit... but it's symbiotic. Parenthood is a profound sacrifice.”

“Beloved My John” walks us through Stevens’s struggle to cope with loss. Speaking to his deceased mother, Stevens divulges how he is destroying himself – through drinking and the misery of reliving the past – in an attempt to get closer to her.

In the first verse, Stevens wonders if he will find his mother through his drinking, or by reflecting on the “fossils” of their shared past. He details his actions, his drunkenness (“stumbling words”), his frequency of drinking (“first day of the week”), and the way he reflects on the memory of Carrie (“I read you for some kind of poem”). However, in the chorus, Stevens shows self-awareness and answers his own question with another: “...can we pretend sweetly before the mystery ends?” The “mystery” – of whether he will find her or not at the bottom of the glass or in obsessing over memories – isn’t exactly a mystery. He is tormenting himself, pretending that his self-destruction is a means of getting closer to her, and – as a result – is a shadow of his former self. In a manner of speaking, he is “already dead,” a figurative death being the closest he can ever get to his mother.

The following verses are more up to interpretation, and contain cryptic imagery. The second verse could be a message for his mother’s soul to depart peacefully (“follow your gem...”). The allusion to Icarus could also be a message to himself: to follow the path of self-destruction and fly too close to the sun. The following images of “baby teeth” and “blue and red” hills are ambiguous, but could be interpreted as reflections on Stevens's youth, his travels to see Carrie, or just a way of lamenting his suffering (“I’ve wasted my throes...”).

Less ambiguous, though, is the motherly imagery of the third verse. The “tongue on your chest” is an allusion to breastfeeding, while “the kiss on my cheek where there remains but a mark” is a fragment from his childhood. The question, “What can be said of my heart?” could be interpreted as Stevens reflecting on his reasoning for wanting to be close to Carrie. Does he desire her simply out of an unconditional, motherly love? Or – if childhood fragments like a kiss on the cheek fade away – is it out of a desire to suffer? There are several ways to read these verses, but it ultimately implies that Stevens is reflecting on his grief, his relationship with his mother, and extracting his own meaning from them.

The choruses leave less to mystery. The second chorus states his unconditional love for his mother (“I love you more than the world can contain”). The third chorus closes with the acceptance that his few memories of his mother will continue to torment him (“fossils that fall on my head”). In the end, Stevens resigns himself to the suffering that comes with grief, and ultimately, the state it has left him in.