原文出处：Sufjan Stevens: Carrie & Lowell (10th Anniversary Edition) Album Review | Pitchfork
Sufjan Stevens remains embarrassed by the raw grief of the 2015 album devoted to his late mother. For its 10th anniversary, Jayson Greene reflects on Carrie & Lowell’s place in his own life.
Only three sense memories remain from the night my wife and I came home from the hospital after our daughter died, 10 years ago this May. My brother, sleeping like a dog on the couch behind us, a miserable sentinel. The warmth of my wife’s hot tears and breath on my face, inches from my own. And something else, in the background, playing over and over again: Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell.
Why would we do that to ourselves? The album that opens with “Death With Dignity,” the one whose most memorable chorus is a whispered “we’re all gonna die.” And yet I kept returning to the record player, flipping the album over and over. The album functioned as the bleakest kind of prayer, the one that doesn’t even ask for things, just offers a beseeching glance skyward: Notice me. Feel me.
In the myopia of my shock and early grief, I barely registered the complicated and brutal autobiographical truth of the record. Yes, it’s an album with a Polaroid on the cover, clearly from a personal collection, paired with two first names. Yes, the lyrics are so specific to one man’s experience as to approach the forensic: “When I was three, three maybe four….” And yet the thumbprint of tragedy, the outline and silhouette of grief, was all I needed from Carrie & Lowell. I gulped at it, greedily, again and again. My relationship to an album has rarely been more intense. Until this month, I couldn’t bear to put it back on. To me, it had become like a death march, or a funeral mass: music for use.
But Carrie & Lowell, newly reissued by Asthmatic Kitty with a modest addendum of bonus tracks and a gorgeous 40-page photo album, survives my bloodshot fixation because it is so formally perfect. The arrangements feel inevitable in the way the harmonic motion of a Bach suite feels inevitable. There isn’t a single breath on the album that doesn’t feel drawn with specificity. Play the opening of “Death With Dignity” while staring at a creek, and the rhythms of the opening guitar figure will naturally match up with the flow of the water.
There aren’t many artists who can capture and preserve this intimacy and intensity. There is an obvious comparison to Elliott Smith, who similarly matched up a shaky and tender vocal with arrangements that felt like you could stare straight through them. But not even Smith bared his soul as directly, simply, and plainly as Stevens does here. Smith was often obfuscating or misdirecting in his lyrics even when it seemed he was confessing, but Stevens lays it all out: times, places, dates, car models. The familiarity that I get from these songs is the same I get from a short story collection rooted in a specific setting—the Nevada of Claire Vaye Watkins’ Battleborn, the Wyoming of Annie Proulx’s Close Range. Stevens’ memories become sacred the more granular they become.
Sufjan Stevens is embarrassed by this album. Mortified, even. He has been commemorating its re-release by disavowing it point-blank. In the essay that accompanies its packaging, he calls it “painful, humiliating, and an utter miscarriage of bad intentions.” He went on NPR recently and stood firm in this rejection in the face of the host’s hesitant probing. Didn’t he find some pride, comfort, or peace in the fact that his album reached so many people? No, he could only say. He attempted to write the story of his mother, another human being whom he never truly understood, and who had taken whatever secrets she held with her. He was just a lost boy, making patterns in the air from his grief. “I don’t have any authority over my mother and her life or experience or her death,” he said. “All I have is speculation and my imagination and my own misery… I still don’t feel good about myself for making these songs.”
Watching Stevens castigate himself for self-loathing by performing more of it in public is poignant and painful. He captured the essential hopelessness of making art to replace a person in fewer lines on the album itself: “Nothing can be changed/The past is still the past/The bridge to nowhere,” he sang on “Should Have Known Better.” “What’s the point of singing songs/If they’ll never even hear you?” he asks on “Eugene.” Lurking inside Stevens’ refutation of Carrie & Lowell, deep beliefs insist themselves: The dead keep their secrets. We are left with nothing when they go save for a handful of cherished misconceptions. Death is real, and it’s not for making into art.
And yet: What if we belong to other people as much or more as we belong to ourselves? What if our real secrets are not a palmful of baubles we keep inside some protected box, but the stories the loved ones who followed us with their eyes, who lavished their wondering love on us, told themselves? In this view, we don’t take secrets with us when we die; we scatter them upon the earth in our passing like a flower releasing pollen. Maybe Sufjan holds more of his mother’s secrets than he takes credit for.
Or maybe the dead do abscond with all their mysteries intact, and we’ll always be outside, in the cold, yearning for the warmth of what they know. Maybe the songs Stevens wrote and recorded with his mother’s name and face on them represent the only way those of us left living generate warmth for ourselves. Stevens’ voice was the only sound I allowed to follow me into the darkest cavern. Even if his story was only ever for us, and never for his mother, we are transformed immeasurably, and for the better, by it.
翻译：
苏菲扬·史蒂文斯（Sufjan Stevens）至今仍对自己在这张 2015 年献给亡母的专辑中所展露的原始悲痛感到难为情。值此专辑发行十周年之际，杰森·格林（Jayson Greene）撰文回溯了《Carrie & Lowell》在其个人生命中留下的印记。
十年前的五月，在我们女儿夭折后，我和妻子从医院回到家的那个夜晚，如今只剩下三种感官记忆。我的兄弟像条狗一样蜷缩在身后的沙发上睡着了，像个悲惨的哨兵。妻子滚烫的泪水和呼吸扑打在我的脸上，近在咫尺。还有另一种存在，在背景中一遍又一遍地回响：苏菲扬·史蒂文斯的《Carrie & Lowell》。
我们为什么要这样折磨自己？这张专辑以《体面的死亡》（Death With Dignity）开篇，它最令人难忘的副歌是一句轻声呢喃的“我们终将死去”（we’re all gonna die）。然而，我却不断地回到唱片机前，一遍又一遍地翻转着黑胶。这张专辑就像是一种最凄凉的祈祷，它甚至不奢求任何回馈，只是向苍穹投去哀求的一瞥：看到我吧。感受我吧。
在震惊与早期悲痛造成的“盲目”中，我几乎没有察觉到这张唱片中复杂而残酷的自传体真相。是的，这张专辑封面上印着一张拍立得照片，显然出自私人珍藏，还并列写着两个名字。是的，歌词对个人经历的刻画细致入微，简直到了法医取证的地步：“当我三岁，三岁也许四岁时……”。然而，悲剧的指纹、悲痛的轮廓和剪影，便是我从《Carrie & Lowell》中所需的全部。我贪婪地，一次又一次地将其吞咽入喉。我与一张专辑的联系还鲜有如此强烈的时候。直到这个月，我都不忍心再次播放它。对我而言，它已然变成了一首死亡进行曲，或是一场安魂弥撒：一种兼具实用功能的音乐。
不过，由 Asthmatic Kitty 厂牌全新再版的《Carrie & Lowell》（适度增加了一些附赠曲目，并配有一册精美的 40 页相册），之所以能从我那布满血丝的执念中幸存下来，是因为它在形式上是如此的完美。其编曲给人一种命中注定般的必然感，就像巴赫组曲中的和声走向那样不可避免。专辑中的每一次呼吸，都让人觉得是经过精准雕琢的。当你盯着一条小溪播放《Death With Dignity》的开篇时，你会发现吉他前奏的律动会自然而然地与水流的节奏完美契合。
没有多少艺术家能够捕捉并封存这种亲密与浓烈。一个显而易见的对比是艾略特·史密斯（Elliott Smith），他同样将颤抖而温柔的嗓音与那种仿佛能让你一眼望穿的编曲结合在一起。但即便是史密斯，也不曾像史蒂文斯在这里这般直接、简单、毫无保留地袒露灵魂。史密斯的歌词常常具有迷惑性或误导性，即便他看似在坦白；但史蒂文斯却和盘托出：时间、地点、日期、车型。我从这些歌曲中获得的熟悉感，就如同我阅读那些扎根于特定背景的短篇小说集时一样——比如克莱尔·瓦伊·沃特金斯《战地生还者》中的内华达州，或是安妮·普鲁《近距离》中的怀俄明州。史蒂文斯的记忆越是颗粒分明，就越是显得神圣。
苏菲扬·史蒂文斯对这张专辑感到难为情。甚至可以说是羞愧。他通过直截了当地全盘否定它，来“纪念”它的再版。在随附包装的短文中，他称之为“痛苦的、屈辱的，是一次由糟糕意图造成的彻头彻尾的流产/失败”。近期他在接受 NPR 采访时，面对主持人试探性的追问，依然坚定地表达了这种排斥。难道他没有因为自己的专辑触动了这么多人而感到一丝自豪、安慰或平静吗？没有，他只能这样回答。他试图写下他母亲的故事，一个他从未真正了解过的、带着她所保守的秘密离去的另一个生命。他当时只是一个迷失的男孩，在空中用悲伤盲目地勾勒图案。“我对我母亲、她的生活、她的经历或她的死亡没有任何发言权，”他说，“我所拥有的，只是揣测、我的想象以及我个人的痛苦……我至今依然为创作了这些歌而对自己感到不满。”
看着史蒂文斯在公众面前展露更多的自我厌恶来惩罚自己，是一件令人心酸和痛苦的事。他在专辑里用寥寥数语，便捕捉到了那种试图用艺术创作来替代一个活生生的人所包含的本质上的绝望：“一切都无法改变/过去终究是过去/一座通向虚无的桥”，他在《Should Have Known Better》中这样唱道。“既然他们根本听不到/唱歌又有什么意义？”他在《Eugene》中发问。在史蒂文斯对《Carrie & Lowell》的拒斥背后，潜藏着一种固执的深层信念：死者保守着他们的秘密。当他们离去，除了留下少数几个被我们珍视的误解，我们一无所有。死亡是真真切切的，它不该被拿来做成艺术。
然而：如果我们在属于我们自己的同时，也同样或更多地属于其他人呢？如果真实的秘密并不是我们锁在某个保险盒里的一小把廉价珠宝，而是那些一直用目光追随着我们、将惊叹的爱倾注于我们身上的挚爱之人，讲给他们自己听的故事呢？从这个角度来看，我们死时并没有带走秘密；我们在离去时将它们像花朵释放花粉一样，洒落在大地上。也许苏菲扬所掌握的母亲的秘密，远比他自己愿意承认的要多。
又或者，死者确实带着所有完好无损的谜团潜逃了，而我们将永远被关在门外，在寒冷中渴望着他们所知晓的那份温暖。也许，史蒂文斯冠以他母亲的名字和面容所创作录制的这些歌曲，代表了我们这些被留下的生者，为自己获取温暖的唯一方式。史蒂文斯的声音，是我允许跟着我走进那座最黑暗洞穴的唯一声响。即使他的故事从来都只是为了我们，而并非为了他的母亲，我们也已经无可估量地、真真切切地被它往更好的方向改变了。
翻译转载自网易云用户“enjoyyourblood”：
Sufjan Stevens至今仍为那张献给已故母亲的专辑所流露出的赤裸悲痛感到赧然。这张专辑发行十周年之际，Jayson Greene回顾了《Carrie & Lowell》在他自己生命中的位置。
十年前的五月，我和妻子从医院回到家，女儿已经离世。那晚的记忆，如今只剩下三种感官印象：我弟弟像条狗一样睡在我们身后的沙发上，像个悲惨的哨兵；我妻子滚烫的泪水与呼吸扑在我脸上，相距不过寸许；还有一样东西，反复播放着，萦绕在背景中：Sufjan Stevens的《Carrie & Lowell》。
我们为什么要这样折磨自己？那张以”Death With Dignity”开篇的专辑，那张最令人难忘的副歌是一句低语——“we’re all gonna die”的专辑。可我却一次次地走到唱机前，把唱片翻过来，再翻过去。这张专辑就像一种最黯淡无光的祷告，它甚至没有开口求什么，只是抬起头，用乞求的目光望向天空：看见我，感受我。
在震惊与初丧的近乎盲目状态中，我几乎没有察觉这张专辑所承载的复杂而残酷的自传式真相。是的，这是一张封面印有宝丽来照片的专辑，显然来自私人相册，并用两个名字命名。是的，歌词细节如此具体，仿佛在做法医式的调查：“When I was three, three maybe four……”但对我而言，《Carrie & Lowell》中那悲剧的指纹、哀伤的轮廓与剪影，已经足够。我贪婪地一遍又一遍吞咽它。我与一张专辑的关系，很少如此炽烈。直到本月以前，我都无法再将它拿出来重听。对我来说，它已然成了送葬曲，或是一场安魂弥撒：是一种被动使用的音乐。
但《Carrie & Lowell》经由Asthmatic Kitty的重新发行得以幸存于我那布满血丝的执念之中，这次版本附有几首新增曲目以及一本精美的40页相册。它之所以能够幸存下来，是因为它在形式上几近完美。它的编排像巴赫组曲的和声进程那样显得不可更改，仿佛一切都是命中注定。专辑中没有一口气是不带有具体感受而呼出的。你若一边望着小溪，一边播放”Death With Dignity”的开头，那段吉他旋律的节奏会自然而然与水流同步。
能够捕捉并留存这种亲密与强度的艺术家并不多。人们自然会想到Elliott Smith，他同样用颤抖而温柔的嗓音搭配几乎可以让人凝视穿透的编曲。但即便是Smith，也从未像Stevens在这张专辑中那样赤裸、直接、平实地袒露自己的灵魂。Smith的歌词常常模糊、误导，即使听起来像是在告解；而 Stevens却一览无遗地摊开一切：时间、地点、日期、汽车型号。这些歌曲带给我的熟悉感，正如我阅读某个特定背景下的短篇小说集时感受到的那种熟悉——比如Claire Vaye Watkins的《Battleborn》中描绘的内华达，或Annie Proulx 的《Close Range》中描绘的怀俄明。Stevens的回忆越是具体，就越显神圣。
Sufjan Stevens 对这张专辑感到羞愧，甚至是难堪。他在纪念重发行时，干脆全然否定了它。在随专辑附赠的文章中，他称其为“痛苦、羞辱，是一种彻头彻尾的恶意误产（miscarriage of bad intentions）”。最近他在NPR节目中接受采访，在主持人小心翼翼地追问下，他仍坚定地重申了这种否定。主持人问，他是否会因为这张专辑触及了这么多人的内心而感到一丝骄傲、慰藉或平静？他只说“不”。他只是想写下关于他母亲的故事——一个他从未真正理解过的个体，一个将所有秘密带走的人。他不过是一个迷失的男孩，用悲伤在空气中画出图案而已。“我对我母亲、她的人生、她的经历、她的死亡没有任何解释权，”他说，“我所拥有的，只是猜测、想象，还有我自己的痛苦……我至今仍为创作这些歌而对自己感到不安。”
看着Stevens在公开场合用更猛烈的自我否定来惩罚自己的自我厌恶，这种景象令人心碎而痛苦。在专辑中，他用更少的字句道出了用艺术替代一个人这一行为的根本无望感：“Nothing can be changed / The past is still the past / The bridge to nowhere，”他在 “Should Have Known Better” 中这样唱道；在”Eugene”中，他发问：“What’s the point of singing songs / If they’ll never even hear you？”隐藏在 Stevens 否认《Carrie & Lowell》的背后，有一些深信不疑的观念：死者保守着他们的秘密。他们离去之后，我们所拥有的，仅是一小把珍藏的误解。死亡是真实的，它并不是用来被艺术化的。
然而，我们是否真的只属于自己，而不是同样或更大程度上属于他人？如果说，我们真正的秘密，不是那一把藏在某个被保护起来的盒子里的小饰物，而是那些深爱我们的人在注视我们时，在他们充满疑问的爱中所构建的故事呢？在这种理解中，当我们死去时，并非带走了秘密，而是像花朵释放花粉那样，将它们洒落在尘世之间。也许Sufjan掌握的，远比他所愿意承认的要多得多。
又或者，死者确实带着全部的谜团离开了我们，我们注定永远站在外面，在寒冷中渴望着他们所知世界的温度。也许那些Sufjan以母亲的名字和面容创作并录制的歌曲，就是我们这些仍活着的人，为自己生成温暖的唯一方式。Sufjan的嗓音，是我允许陪伴我走进最黑暗深渊的唯一声音。即便他的故事最终只属于我们，而非他的母亲，我们也因此而发生了深刻的变化，并变得更好。
