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Shoshana Socher's avatar

So much of the delivery of this number channels Nick Drake.

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Patricia M., ADHD Mom's avatar

"Casimir Pulaski Day" is my favorite song of all time, though it is devastatingly sad. It's so nice to read someone else's thoughts about this song, because I don't know anyone who has heard of Sufjan Stevens let alone this song, but I will always love it.

I grew up in an evangelical household. I still consider myself Christian but I'm part of a more mainline church now. Maybe this is just my projection because of my upbringing, but I sense more cynicism about religion in this song. When you're young and God has been framed as all-powerful and everyone seems to genuinely believe in things like faith healing, how do you reconcile that with the fact that very faithful people die untimely deaths and terrible things happen, even though you prayed that they wouldn't?

I don't think there's cynicism about God in the song; rather, a realization that God is far more mysterious and complex that the narrator's specific religious practices have accounted for or prepared him to understand ("and the complications when I see his face"). I do think there was an expectation that the narrator's prayers would be answered and his friend healed, and disappointment that they were not. But what is being criticized is the religious practices, not faith itself.

Anyway thanks, I loved this!

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