Critic's Corner

Review

Illinoise Sufjan Stevens is an indie musician best known for his low-key song “Mystery of Love,” which was featured in the film Call Me by Your Name — a gay romance set in Italy, based on a novel by André Aciman. This is why it was so strange to hear that Stevens’s album Illinois had become the basis for a Broadway musical titled Illinoise (with an “e” at the end). “A Sufjan Stevens Broadway musical” hardly seemed like a natural fit for Stevens’s understated style or likely to attract the kinds of people who typically enjoy musicals. Illinois, the record, was part of a project that Sufjan did where he set out to write an album about all 50 states. He only ended up doing two: one for his home state of Michigan and one for neighboring Illinois. After seeing Illinoise, the musical, twice, I can confidently say that it is the best musical or play I’ve ever seen. It’s more of an art piece than a musical, since it featured only his music, no dialogue, with dancers telling a story through …

Essay

The Desert is an Ocean

Keeler, California, is a town of six residents, two of whom are brothers

‘A car lay on its back outside, tires upward like the arms and legs of a helpless baby or a flipped-over armadillo’

Crazy Jay is a sweetheart, but don’t let him lock you up in that jail

By Norah Geiger

It was a cold day, but heat never really leaves the desert. The sun is always there to lick you, to make you sweat. Even in the desert night you feel it, the urge to sweat. The brothers were beet-red and angry. “I liked it because it was quiet down here,” one brother told me. “I’ll tell you something, though. The arsenic will eat your silverware, turns metal into white dust.” The windchimes were screaming. The second brother turned to the first, away from me, and added, “Tell that girl she’s got a Borg implant.” The ride home I felt feverish, worried I’d swallowed remnants of arsenic while sipping from their coffee cans. A part of me worried that there really was an implant in my head — that the second brother was some kind of a desert oracle. That he had seen a falsity, a deficiency in me. That it took living in the middle of nowhere and drinking arsenic to see the inside of a city slicker’s skull. I learned later he was referencing Star Trek. Keeler, California, is a mile-long town …

Critic's Corner

Crime Blotter

The Desert is an Ocean