Dear Sufjan Stevens,

I loved what you did to your music at your concert in the colosseum theatre in Essen. You and your band took the essence of the songs, gave them enough room to unfold, then swirled and transformed them into their own reprises, occasionally letting things escalate in a multitude of layers beyond the moon and back, and at other times letting the sounds ebb and swell to Sufjan’s solitary softness of a voice.

And I loved the combination of light and video around the oddly shaped background canvas, the beautiful stills of soothing mountain sea panoramas, the childhood VHS videos, and the weirdly evolving geometric shapes.

And really, I was overwhelmed by you, Sufjan, because I never knew someone could deliver a song so meaningfully with the way they moved, sometimes little, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes with weird dance moves I am sure have some sort of tradition to them, and sometimes just moving unselfconsciously in line with the rhythm (which was kinda sexy).

And to top it all off, we could enjoy the concert sitting in comfortable theatre chairs… I wish to see a concert like this again, some day, but until then, I will try to keep this feeling alive in my heart.

Love love love,
Judith

– Here goes the album version of “vesuvius”, which does not do the thing at the concert justice, but nonetheless manages to evoke the atmosphere for me.