Why I Love 22, a Million
When I talked about Bon Iver before, I had big ambitions. My goal was to peel back all the layering of Bon Iver and reveal the true message at the core. Today, my goal is smaller. Well, maybe not smaller, but it’s different. I thought I could explain work that can only be fully understood on some level beyond what words can convey. There’s a reason that 22, a Million is an album and not a book. There’s something ineffable about Bon Iver, something more than words can really do justice to. I still basically agree with what I said about Bon Iver’s later work, but that previous article is too simple to really explain what Bon Iver means. Now, I only want to explain why I love Bon Iver’s third, bizarre album 22, a Million. I remember telling my cousin that it’s probably my favorite album, and he said, “Really?” like I was crazy. That’s a pretty normal reaction. It’s weird, and intentionally garbled but it moves me every time I listen to it. This time, rather than explain the meaning of Bon Iver at its core, I just want to do justice to what I hear in the wordless sounds.
Something I really love in a work of art is when the form matches the themes; when the structure and mechanism of the art put me in the same position as the characters in the art. For example, in Kazuo Ishigiro’s book Never let me go, the characters both know and don’t really know that they’re fated to die. Because the book is narrated in retrospect, I, as the reader, also both know and don’t know their fates. The structure of the narration puts me in the same mental space as the characters. Or take Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. She uses literal flights as an analogy for how jarring and discontinuous modern existence is, and the novel is a loosely connected series of short stories that sometimes get resolutions and sometimes are left hanging. The book is about jarring dissatisfaction, and is jarring and dissatisfying.
22, a Million is about alienation, and is alienating. Bon Iver won the Grammy for best new artist as an archetypical indie singer songwriter, carried by strumming guitar and pining falsetto. The immediate reaction to 22, a Million is that it doesn’t sound like Bon Iver. The expectation of a heartbroken indie boy in the woods is shattered. Instead there’s a barely held together electronic hellscape. The distinctive voice of Justin Vernon, clear and free on Skinny Love, is now layer on top of itself over and over, until it feels like a caged best throwing itself against its confines. 22, a Million isn’t what I thought it would be, and for the ‘character’ in 22, a Million nothing is what they’d thought it would be. Just like we have to struggle to make sense of Vernon’s voice, he’s struggling to make sense of the world. At the end of the song 33 “GOD”, a distant, distorted voice asks “Why are you so far from saving me? Why are you so far from saving me?”
This is the ultimate cry of alienation. The liner notes make the quotation explicate: Psalm 22, the psalm that Jesus cries out when he’s being executed:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
Vernon identifies himself with the same absolute separation from God that Jesus felt in the hour of his death. Jesus, who says of himself that “I and the Father are One,” feels utterly, and impossibly abandoned by his Father. He can feel the nails in his wrists, every lash across his back, and the thorns in his brow, but he cannot feel the Father who had never before left nor forsaken him.
2020 was the best and worst year of my life. I’ve felt love like I’ve never even suspected existed, and at the same time I’ve felt so much isolation and alienation, especially from some of the people closest to me. Part of my practice of Christianity is daily reading through the Psalms. I’ve never been so grateful for them. They give me the words and the freedom to say them, when I can’t imagine how I could ever speak. 22, a Million works for me in the same way. It gives a powerful voice to alienation when I don’t know how to process what I’m feeling.
And while I love the psalms for giving me a voice, they’re more than that. There are a lot of psalms I find very unsatisfying that say the good get good things, and the righteous are never abandoned. I like the psalms that are honest about the wicked succeeding in life, and the good getting nothing but sorrows from their goodness. Psalm 22 is one of the most powerful examples of those psalms. It is a cry of sadness and anger and alienation, but that’s far from all it is. It turns on the word yet.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.
Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”
Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother's breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother's womb you have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.
‘Yet’ is the perfect word in these psalms. Some translations use ‘but’ which serves a similar function in the sentence, but has a completely different meaning. Saying ‘but’ negates everything that came before it; ‘but’ makes the alienation seem small and inoffensive. ‘But’ is a blithe denial of the reality of evil and pain. ‘Yet’ says even in the midst of horrors and darkness, I know the sun will rise again. ‘Yet’ is full of patience and faith. It doesn’t attempt to deny or minimize the suffering and alienation that came before, yet nevertheless it turns and declares that despite the darkness and even though that first light has not yet come God is still there. ‘Yet’ is the encapsulation of my Christian practice. There is darkness, yet there is light. There is sadness, yet there is joy. There is doubt, yet there is faith. And like Psalm 22, I cycle. I can’t help but go back to the hurt and isolation that I feel, because those situations are still raw and unresolved. Yet, the psalms remind me that there are other truths. Jesus cried out the words of Psalm 22 as he died, yet he was raised again in power and victory, and that same God is my help when I am forsaken.
22, a Million is an album of profound alienation, yet that’s not all 22, a Million is. It also turns. Something happens in the album at 8 (circle). I’ve listened to that song dozens of times, but I don’t think I could tell you any of the lyrics. But something happens beyond what the lyrics say. Just like the psalm, 22, a Million calls out to God in hopelessness, yet somehow a change takes place. Something unspeakably good takes hold. And even though we don’t understand what’s changed or why it’s changed, even when we can only put it into words that are far, far too small for what they’re trying to convey, I’d say theophany, and Vernon says, “I’ve been caught in fire, without knowing what the truth is,” the end of the album and my own experience brings us to a place we certainly don’t understand, yet that doesn’t matter, because there is peace which passes all understanding.
T.S. Eliot said, “religious poetry is what it feels like to believe that religion.” I think Justin Vernon would consider 22, a Million to be religious poetry, but regardless, like the psalms it feels like what it’s like for me to believe in Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. There is darkness, yet light has come into the world, and the darkness has not overcome it. Warm, glorious light filled my 2020, and at the same time there was more darkness than I thought possible, yet I see God. Even though I can’t understand everything that’s happening, when I see God, I remember all his gifts and graces, and I know all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. I don’t know what that looks like, and I don’t know how I’ll get there, but until then, I’ll be reading the psalms and playing Bon Iver.
