Sufjan Stevens - Muziekgebouw Eindhoven May 21st 2011

Sufjan Stevens is definitely in a league of his own. A colleague just asked me what kind of music it was and I honestly couldn’t tell her. His music before ‘The Age of Adz’ was kind of folky with a twist, and a bit too sweet for my taste most of the time.

The present is different. The shy boy has blossomed into a blazingly proud swan. Flapping his gigantic white wings, he owns the stage and commands his audience into rapturous delight. They’re dancing, albeit on the square half yard that the sold out venue condemns them to.

He dances too. The flickering UV lights create an eerie vision of a mechanical puppet from the neon colour blocks on his black clothes. He jumps up and down to the relentless beats left and right, two drummers working miracles with the complex material of the demanding songs. I stand in awe of all these fine musicians, trombones, keyboards and guitars too. Like a big band but edgier and smoother at the same time.

‘I want to be well’ gets my goose bumps on with its palpable intensity. Sufjan’s gaze is serious. It must be hard to bare your soul to people you barely see, let alone know. The crowd welcomes his honesty with appreciative attention and loud cheers afterwards. A gentle acoustic song about his sister (and anyone’s sister for that matter) makes for a bittersweet intermezzo. We catch a chatty side to the singer. But the best is yet to come.

You can hear a pin drop during the first tentative notes of ‘Impossible Soul’, Sufjan’s magnum epos that clocks in at 25:34 minutes on the album. We all couldn’t believe he would be able to pull this one off live but there it is. And it’s absolutely breathtaking! This is not a song, it’s a cosmos with all its melodic intricacies and stories of love and loss, and Sufjan even dons a cosmonaut costume that reminds me of Peter Gabriel in early Genesis (giving away my age there). More wings and wigs, more jumping fun, dancers taking front stage, a pink rabbit playing trombone. If this sounds like mayhem, think again – this show with all its fascinating projections on see through drapes is fabulously orchestrated and controlled. It’s the party you always wanted to attend but never got invited to.

And balloons! Hundreds of them, big ones and small ones coming down on the ecstatic crowd. Loved it! Whatever could succeed such a climax? We’re made to believe nothing will and the final (?) applause goes on for over ten minutes. Then Sufjan and his troupe, changed into their daily gear, take ‘Chicago’ (yes, the folky hit song from his 2005 album ‘Illinoise’) into one big sing-along encore.

So what kind of music is it? It has beautifully crafted songs with complex structures, layers of singing and not your average instruments. It borrows from rock, folk, funk as well as classical music. I’d suggest you just give it a listen.

Like or fave?

There’s this flourishing ‘like & fave’ culture in social media that intrigues me. Different media use it in different ways and a ‘like’ on one site seems more important than a ‘fave’ on another.

I was one of the first Flickr-users, way back in 2004 and as far as I recall, it was the first time I came across the possibility to fave a picture. Until this day it has been one of the most useful features of this site for me because it allows me to: a) show my respect for somebody’s work, and b) build a nice collection of favourite pictures from all over Flickr. A pretty organised collection at that as I can search and filter it in various ways. YouTube faves work in a similar way but YouTube offers an extra: you can ‘like’ a video by giving it a ‘thumbs up’.

Twitter also lets you ‘fave’ someone’s tweet to build a collection but for me it’s too fleeting a medium to use that collection the way I use it on Flickr. The tweets I’d like to save in any way usually involve links that I can bookmark – so why save the tweet?

Facebook has many ways to show your preferences. You can like anything: a status, a video or picture, a whole page, even a comment! Now this is where a true ‘like & fave’ culture is developing, with its own meticulous rules. You can like a video or picture in the same way you would on YouTube but you cannot fave them to build a collection. In that case you will have to ‘share’ the link on your own profile, which is of course the ultimate ‘like’ as the original poster will see that you liked it enough to want to share it on your own wall with your own contacts. That way it becomes a personal ‘fave’.

You can like a status to indicate that you’ve been there or that you agree. And liking a comment can mean anything from ‘I agree’ to ‘I wish I’d come up with that’ or just ‘I hear you’. Liking a page (or a group) is like subscribing to a YouTube user’s account or adding a contact on Flickr: you get to see their updates/videos/pictures on/in your wall/stream/email. It filters the information on your wall to suit your interests.

Facebook also has ‘incoming’ likes from other websites. I see increasingly more pages that use this feature where you can not only ‘share’ the page or website (which is often a tad too much honour) but also ‘like’ it so that it appears as a simple statement on Facebook or Twitter.

Finally, there’s the call for a ‘dislike’ button on Facebook. It’s obvious why Facebook doesn’t offer this – they want to keep things positive. If you don’t like it, just ignore it or don’t click on a link. Sometimes however, you wish to show your appreciation but because of the nature of the message it seems inappropriate to ‘like’ it. How to handle this without risking abuse of the button?

It happens every day on YouTube which does offer a ‘dislike’ button. This button (the ‘thumbs down’) isn’t used to indicate that you appreciate the posting while disliking the nature of the message. It’s largely used to vent frustration, like so many comments on YouTube videos. The ‘if you don’t like it, just ignore it’ doesn’t work quite the same here. I even suspect some people take pleasure in seeking out videos they can put abusive comments on. I know it forced me to publish my videos friends only.

All in all, it looks like all these Facebook features offer the most detailed ‘diary’ on your wall. It shows your status, your activities & likes, both on FB itself and incoming. With all the liking, sharing and filtering going on, you can easily imagine using it as your homepage to keep updated on all things you care about. It’s the Daily You, tailor made.