Culture Critique: Death With Dignity.

To preface this entry I want to clarify exactly what I mean by a “culture critique.” My senior year of high school my Apologetics teacher had an assignment in which his student chose any form of culture (movies, songs, books, words, etc.) and had to analyze them from the student’s worldview. As a creative, this assignment was like candy for my mind, so I want to continue this exercise on this blog. For my first media analysis piece I wanted to share a culture critique I wrote for my teacher around this time last year (January 26, 2024). It’s about the song “Death With Dignity” by Sufjan Stevens.

**********

“I was first introduced to this song in November of my sophomore year. I was trying to venture out into indie music (cue line about “not being like other girls"), and I came across an artist named Sufjan Stevens. The first song I listened to sounded like a mix between a classical composition and a teenage SoundCloud song. So I tried again. This one was tremendously worse (two words: polka rock). However, because of my deep desire to be more independent, I gave Stevens one more go-round. I am forever grateful that I did.

The last song I played was called “Death with Dignity” from the acoustic album Carrie & Lowell. Resonating with me in ways I could not even comprehend, this song helped me out of a dark season. Since then, it has been my top song of the year for two years now, and I anticipate it being up there for years to come. (2025 note: it was my top song again this year!)

"Death with Dignity” earns its title from the 1994 Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which allows for physicians to assist qualifying patients with euthanasia. In the major context of the album (dedicated to the healing process of years worth of relational struggles with his parents, Carrie and Lowell), the song indirectly tells listeners that Stevens’ mom’s death was made possible by this law. Though I did not know this at the time of my first listen, it was evident from the lyrics and tonal quality of his voice that her death was complicated and not natural.

With that context in mind, the song opens with the only instruments that will be found on this track—guitar and piano. It’s a simple song, but that’s exactly how the artist wanted it to be. Sufjan wanted the lyrics and their weightiness to overshadow the musical production of the song. This style is reminiscent of Bob Dylan or the Beatles.

“Spirit of my silence, I can hear you, but I’m afraid to be near you." (Yup. (This is indie poetry music, but hang with me.) In this first phrase, the listeners are introduced to the muse of this song and ultimately this album—his spirit of silence. Though there are many prevalent beliefs about what exactly this represents, I personally subscribe to the camp that this spirit of silence is his soul’s unspoken pain regarding the loss of his mother and the pain of their incredibly messy relationship. As a child, his mom had been absent, yet now she was truly gone, and this left an utter and complete silence in his heart. In this silence, he begins to enter a state of contemplation. He is left with the pain of an incredibly complicated loss, and now there is silence all around him, awaiting his entry. Yet, this reality is incredibly, INCREDIBLY scary. By entering into a spirit of quiet meditation, Stevens is escaping the “noise” of life, but now he must face the whispers of his soul—pain, hurt, insecurity, sorrow, and all his repressed emotions. Opening himself up to the spirit of silence means exposure and extreme vulnerability.

"And I don’t know where to begin.” Stevens uses repetition throughout this song as a means to emphasize phrases. In this verse, he elects to repeat the above phrase to display his apprehension surrounding writing this song. He is afraid to step into the vulnerability required in the creative process of forming art that is deeply personal.

“Somewhere in the desert, there’s a forest and an acre before us.” Stevens is trying to convey that, amidst his loss and the aftermath of his mother’s alcoholism, he feels as though he is in a desert. His grief is a wasteland. Yet, even amidst his utter emptiness, he has a glimmer of hope. Somewhere there must be a forest in this desert, an idyll of sorts. Stevens asserts that there must be some good left in this life. It is not all sorrow, and in fact, there is a lot of it in front of him (a whole acre).

“Again, I’ve lost my strength completely. Oh, be near me, tired old mare, with the wind in your hair.” To the artist, his mom was everything. She was his strength and light in seasons of darkness; though she was an alcoholic, he loved her as only a child can love his mom. He had experienced her absence, but with her death, the absence was made permanent. He is lamenting and wrestling with this reality, but “oh, be near me” implies he has not yet come to terms with the fact that she is fully gone. He is begging her to return. He understands that his mother had an exhausting life and was just trying to escape her own pain. Yet, by leaving this world and entering “greener pastures,” Carrie left Stevens without a parent figure. Stevens saw his mother as his only source of strength; now he must find a new strength to pull him through the searing pain of his loss.

“Amethyst and flowers on the table—is it real or a fable?” In this flashback phrase, the artist reveals his desperation. Seeking to bring their supposed healing properties to his mom, Stevens has placed amethysts on her bedside table and brought her flowers to cheer her up.He has resorted to fables and fiction to save his mother because he sees the writing on the walls, yet he refuses (as any human) to accept the painful truth of her impending death.

“Well, I suppose a friend is a friend, and we all know how this will end.” As a chronic alcoholic, Carrie had faced a tremendous amount of pain in her life. She had hurt people, and people had hurt her. Stevens is acknowledging that perhaps her death was a friend to her, as it saved her from herself. He doesn’t judge her, as he knows that, ultimately, all will die. Everyone knows the ending of this life.

“Chimney Swift that finds me, be my keeper/silhouette of the cedar.” Chimney swifts are a type of bird that is incredibly social. They are very rarely seen without another swift; Stevens longs to be a part of a community that can keep and attend to him. His mother was never able to be his stronghold, and now he is wrestling with the consequences of his isolation. Returning to the concept that he is inhabiting a barren desert, Stevens states that all he can see is a silhouette of the cedar. Though he can see the outline of an oasis, it is too far to touch. In his loneliness, he admits that any hope of coming joy is a mere silhouette. He is too deep in this desert to touch the trees of the hopeful oasis.

“What is the song you sing for the dead?/What is the song you sing for the dead?” Stevens, in his creative process, is grappling with the fact that all will die, so therefore any music he creates is in a way for the dead. He has entered deeply into a state of depression and sees no light at the end of the tunnel.

“I see the signal searchlight strike me/In the window of my room/ Well I got nothing to prove./Well I got nothing to prove.” Searchlights seek to find; they illuminate darkness in pursuit of finding the hiding object. If this light enters a small room, it is incredibly invasive and bright. (Think helicopter light in a true crime movie.) For Stevens, the spotlight of grief has landed on him in a deeply personal way. The loss of his mother has irradiated his repressed emotions and hurt. Listeners would expect the following line to state, "Well, I got nothing to hide,” but instead he chooses the word prove to show that he acknowledges that his pain is real. He is no longer hiding it, and the spotlight of silence has hit exactly where he is most vulnerable. Acknowledging this takes incredible humility, often forged by immense hurt.

“I forgive you, mother; I can hear you; and I long to be near you.” Making the first direct response to his mother in the song, Stevens declares that he does not blame his mother for leaving him like she did. He understands her suffering and why it hurts. This phrase is also reminiscent of the first line of the song, “Spirit of My Silence, I Can Hear You." In processing his own grief, he has taken a major step in the healing process: he has identified the source of it. He loves his mother, but she was absent in the moments he needed her most throughout his life. He has yet to fully reconcile his past with her and may never will, but through the album, he will try to take a step closer to mending this hole. He longs for this. He longs to forgive his mom, whom he loves deeply but who has wounded him deeply. And that is an incredibly complicated place to be.

“But every road leads to an end. Yes, every road leads to an end." The meaning of this lyric is twofold. One, it communicates how Carrie’s death was the final ending of Stevens' tangible relationship with her. This is not the first time she has left her family, but it is the final time. Two, Stevens’ is grappling with his inevitable mortality. There is no way he can escape death, and because of this, he must expedite the creative process. He can no longer stall the album that he is writing because to do so would be to sacrifice the rest of his time on Earth. He is an artist (clearly), and so to prevent himself from processing his emotions through his art would be stifling both creatively and emotionally.

“Your apparition passes through me in the willows/Five red hens." Stevens' genius is revealed in this lyric. By comparing his mother to an apparition, he highlights her lack of presence in his past, their lack of substantive relationship, and her now permanent absence. This little word perfectly summarizes her presence in Steven’s life. It’s masterful wording. The five red hens describe his family when he was a child. The Red Hen tale is one of hard work while others laze away. Stevens asserts that this was what life in his family of five was like; everyone worked for their place at the table, and home was not a place of rest.

“You’ll never see us again. You'll never see us again.” The closing lyric is the simplest to understand. That’s intentional. In the grieving process, this feeling of finality is one of the most poignant. Stevens’ is asking his mom if she considered the fact that she would never see her family again once she died. The second time, he is lamenting the fact that he will never see her again.

“Death With Dignity” is a song that coincides with my salvation story. Though Stevens’ life has been filled with an incredible amount of pain and grief, anyone who has gone through a season of any sort of pain can resonate with his humble yet powerful lyrics. One detail that I left out of my introduction/background section of the song is the fact that Sufjan Stevens came to Christ during this season of his life. In the contemplation of his “spirit of silence,”the Spirit of God made Himself known to Stevens. He found his only hope amidst the darkest season of his life. I did not know that the first few times I listened to that song my sophomore year. I was just enthralled by the beautiful (and somehow soul-quieting) music and honest lyricism. But knowing that now makes me all the more grateful that this song was playing on repeat while I was beginning to dip my toe into a real relationship with the LORD.

Many testimonies have a moment of silence in them; this moment of quiet is when God reveals Himself to the humble listener. This quiet can be filled with sobs, laughter, or praise, but it's a stillness of the soul that is necessary. However, Satan hates this quiet and still. It’s a time where not only do humans have to face their own depravity and brokenness, but it's also a time where the Spirit steps in and reveals the answer to our own inability to save ourselves. It’s why we are called to “be still and know that [He] is God.” Listening to the voice and movement of the Spirit is a decisive act of spiritual warfare, and it is exactly why the enemy loves to keep us busy. C.S. Lewis puts it perfectly in his satire The Screwtape Letters. “‘Distract them from gaining hold of their Savior and maintaining that vital connection throughout their day!’ ‘How shall we do this?’ his demons shouted. ‘Keep them busy in the nonessentials of life and invent innumerable schemes to occupy their minds,’ he answered.”

The enemy hates us with a burning passion we cannot even begin to comprehend. He longs to keep us as his slaves and is in a state of guilt, shame, hopelessness, and brokenness. He keeps us busy so that we will not experience God's healing through his Spirit in our silence and stillness. It's not that God can’t work in our business. He is God and can use all circumstances to bring glory to Himself, but it is tremendously difficult to acknowledge your own depravity if you are constantly in a state of go-go-go. To enter into my life, the LORD forced me to be quiet and still for ten minutes. Those ten minutes were some of the most important of my life (if not the most).

Another tactic the enemy uses to keep us from our loving Father is isolating us from the ones we love or coercing us into isolation. With the loss of his mother (in particular because of the way that she died), Stevens felt utterly alone. How could the world relate to him? How could anyone relate to him? He was on an island. He was stuck in a desert that no one could help him out of. Yet Jesus understood him. Jesus had experienced soul-crushing, life-draining separation from His Father. On the cross, he proclaimed it loud and clear. “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?” Stevens was not the only one who had experienced the loss of a parent, and so Jesus could perfectly empathize with him and speak into his grief.

We are truly never alone. With Christ, we are fully known and, yet, fully loved. His love is so much greater than parental love. I mean, my parents do not fully know and understand me. They do not know every thought I’ve had, every word I’ve spoken, or every step I have taken. Yet my heavenly Father does, and he still loves me. Because of my thoughts and brokenness, I did not think that I could ever be loved by the Creator of the universe. How could he love me?

The enemy had trapped me by convincing me it was better to bottle everything in and push everyone out because my deepest thoughts were repulsive. “If people knew you and what you were struggling with, they would never accept you,” was the lie he continued to tell me over and over and over again. In the depths of my “desert” of feeling unknown, the Spirit stepped in. He showed me an image of a forest—an acre—before me. Through the words of

Psalm 19, I realized that, though I couldn’t hear or feel my Father, I just needed to look around. I looked up and saw the stars (“The heavens declare..."), and I looked down at the slip of paper in my hand (“worthy."). Satan had tried to isolate me, to drown my spirit, to take me out, but God said I made these stars, I made the sky, I made the whole universe, and yet my son came to save you. Jesus came to save every little vapor that's soul cries, “I’m here, God. I need you. I don’t want to be alone."

Stevens looked to external sources like gemstones and flowers to mend the pain his mother was facing. He tried to pretend that, through his own efforts, he could save Carrie and put a smile on her face. The enemy loves to encourage us to think that we are more capable than we are. If we can forget our humanity, we can forget our need for God. That is why, so often, when we are faced with immense and overwhelming despair, he enters in. One of the most dangerous places to be is in a position where you believe you are “good.” Our greatest friend can be a slap in the face. “There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one.” God reveals our need for himself by humbling us to the point where we can finally see our desperate need for Him. All humans have the same end to their story; we cannot save ourselves from our own fate. God steps into our fears and weaknesses and says, “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.” We must stop believing the lie that we can save ourselves.

We long to be known. We long to be loved. Just as Sufjan Stevens longed to be with his mother, we long to be loved by our heavenly Father. Yet, our Father is blameless and perfect.

He has never done anything to separate himself from us or emotionally abuse us. Every road and every life does lead to an end, but we have hope. This life is not our end. “For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” Our knowledge that we have a future with our Creator does not minimize the pain of our suffering, but it does give us lasting and fulfilling hope amidst the pain.

The song “Death With Dignity” is the first song on an album expressing the grief of loss and abuse, but to me, it displays the lies the enemy has told me throughout my life. I only wish that I would have been still and knew that He had always been my loving God.”

*************