John My Beloved

“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.