this song will always remind me of when i fell in love in chicago. the lyrics don't even fit perfectly, but they all remind me of chicago and how it was the happiest time of my life.

i think about it literally everyday when i think about him. it's so sad, but i absolutely love it.

thank you, sufjan

the song is obviously about me.
he fell in love with me again(I live in chicago)
we sold our clothes to the state, because we won't need clothes anymore in paradise, no shame.
h emade a lot of mistakes, until he knew i came to take him and recreate him.

it's all about me folks, he loves me.

i'm his friend in the van, we slept together in parking lots.

he loves me!

i love sufjan stevens..but i never liked this song. it is absolutely not his best song or its not catchy. i dont know why its so popular. i wished he would not have mentioned new york cus that takes glory from chicago.he could have done a better job

ha.
in almost every song, sufjan talks about his past, his feelings about his own actions and the actions of those he's known... and his standpoint in view of God. he's very spiritual, and it surfaces in nearly every title... when he says "you came to take us, to recreate us" he's talking about Christ. he's got pain and mixed feelings. needed to run away for i while. i feel him!

yeah i was a little annoyed when he mentioned new york... but the song's a journey. i mean if he was in love with the place, he couldve really written a song just about it. he probably has, he's just saving it for his ny album. or, he might have included it cuz it makes the lyric pattern, the form or whatever, flow better. first verse, mention chicago cuz its the name of the song - lots of songs mention their title at the beginning - second verse, different place... and he could have continued w/ that pattern, but that wouldve been even more annoying. plus the song's long enough anyway.

its about self-actualization

Compared to Sufjan's other songs, this one is completely overrated. For me other songs from this album definitely overshadow this one. I would probably like it more if it was by someone else, but sufjan has done better than this many times. It frustrates me that most people know him by this song, because it is really mediocre compared to some of his other songs, such as casimir pulaski day, the predatory wasp of the palisades, the upper peninsula, all the trees of the field will clap their hands, etc.

Ok here is my deluded take on this song:

Although there are many religious typey things, to me this song has literal meaning. Growing up in the northern suburbs of Chicago, it was always an appealing dream of just taking a car or train to Chicago. In my head this city was an escape. Chicago gave peace, a place a away from all of the things in your life. So the lines of falling in love with a place in my mind and going to Chicago and leaving everything behind clearly reflects the ideal place in ones mind. This may be too literal/personal but I think the general theme is universely identifiable, especially from the perspective of outside looking in.

I was in Burger King the other day and this came on the radio! I was extremely excited and had to rush home and listen to him... wow.
:)

He's fantastic.

The 'You came to take us...' part always sounds to me like the apostels singing to Jesus. He recreated them when he took them with him. 'All things go' means as much to me as we will follow you wherever you may take the journey, it doesn't matter what will happen. 'We had our minds set' means something like we were living our own lives before you came around and changed it all in this interpretation.

this song makes me cry it's so beautiful
or want to run in a flower field lol
idk.
i'm sorry
i just love it.

I've heard that this song is about John Wayne Gacy, a Chicago based serial killer.

This song is about realizing mistakes in our minds and mindsets.
Like being in love with a person, or a place, is often very much an illusion,
an illusion that comes and goes... And Sufjan knows that it all eventually goes.
These illusions become attachments, and that is why Sufjan cries for freedom
from himself. He is realizing that all these material things, like clothes and
where he sleeps, don't matter to him. He is also realizing that all things
know, that all things have consciousness. When he says "You came to take us..."
I think he is addressing something or someone - whether it be a Buddha, or a friend,
or a rock, or a flower, or "The Self" - which guides us to enlightenment,
by helping us recognize our own mindset and showing us that
everything grows, changes, and goes.

This song is about knowing God. As in, Jesus Christ. When He comes back, everything will go, be recreated again. God will give those of us who know Him new bodies, a new chance at life(living in a non-fallen state; Heaven). When Sufjan drives around, he's noticing all the different beauties of the world, and he's also noticing that all these things will eventually go. God will come to take us, even those of us who's minds are set against Him. Those who have their minds set that God does not exist, will eventually know that he does exist, when He comes back. When He comes again, everything in creation will confess that He is Lord. He will recreate us, give us new bodies and a new place. All things go.
Sufjan notices that he's made mistakes, and God forgives, and will make him new.
This song is absolutely gorgeous.

"You came to take us / recreate us" seems like a reference to the idea of God taking us in death. It reminds me of the last line of Casimir Pulaski where the songwriter angrily rails against God for the death of his friend: "And He takes and He takes and He takes".

Chicago is a great city, but I'm betting Sufjan, being from Michigan, has been there many times and is familiar with it. So I like that he takes the van to New York City on a perhaps impromptu road trip with his friend. And when they get there, even though they are sleeping in parking lots, and are basically homeless, near clothesless refugees, he "was in love with the place / in my mind."

That's because New York captures the imagination in a vastly different way from Chicago. There's the idea that you can come to New York City and recreate yourself. Artistic, creative, and intellectual freedom is celebrated. Totally different from Chicago - "Hog Butcher for the World... City of Big Shoulders" (Carl Sandberg) and again, the Casimir Pulaski song has a couple of references to shoulders.

You probably have a preconceived idea of New York in your mind, from movies and books and tv. Think: Salinger, Gatsby, Poe, Dylan Thomas, Damon Runyon, Henry James, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Woody Allen. On and on really. People who come here are usually already in love with an idea of New York not rooted in their own personal experience with the place.

So when he talks about crying for freedom from himself "and from the land" I think he is relieved to be out of the land-locked familiar Midwest and in the New York City of his imagination, a harbor city surrounded by water that looks out to the world.

And a nonjudgemental city that welcomes refugees of all manner. ("Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!")

I love that he cries for freedom "from" himself, it's taken me a while to get into that concept. I still hear it freedom "for" myself. Which is just my own trip where I'm very independent and libertarian and individualist I guess. But the "freedom from my self" is key to what Sufjan's about: his quest for spiritual transcendence from the material world, and getting through his own past, faults, and mistakes, his old mindsets, and probably from his sometimes-ambivalence toward his own Christian faith.

And the ambivalence is gorgeous. He doesn't say he WAS crying. He says IF he was crying... which to me means he asks us to see him vulnerable, crying, in a strange city, practically clothesless, homeless, in a van, in a parking lot -- a pitiful scene really -- and then he asks us to suspend our pity and believe that at that moment he's crying in JOY!! for finally getting to where exactly he needed to be on his own particular spiritual journey - true FREEDOM! Beautiful.

I love the meditative, repetitive "all things go" which seems like a Buddhist nod.

Simply gorgeous song.

I think this song is a lot more simple than a lot of these interpretations. To me it is about two people (maybe more) travelling and living life. And enjoying the beauty of adventure and different places and different experiences.

I get this most from the verse

"If I was crying
In the van, with my friend
It was for freedom
From myself and from the land"

Maybe there's a tinge of regret/remorse? Maybe he has lost the person he was doing this with? Maybe he does not really have these opportunities anymore? Maybe he misses the memories? I dunno.