Motley Moose – Archive

I’ve noticed the people on the Moose like to talk about music. I thought I’d share some info about my own favorite musician with you.

Sufjan Stevens comes from Michigan, my home state. He was born in Detroit and raised in the upper most parts of the lower peninsula. He started his musical career early, learning the scales and timings of music. He was playing Mozart-like symphonies on a toy piano at the age of 5 and progressively mastered over 25 (to the best of my knowledge) instruments, recording most of the instrumentation of what he puts on his albums. Sufjan went to Hope College in Holland, MI. and later enrolled in the masters program for writers at the New School for Social Research. He said in an interview, almost jokingly “I’m inspired a lot by the landscape of America, and it came up to do an album for every state in America.” He has progressed to be one of the most finely-tuned, multi-instrument wielding musical craftsman of this era. Much of his music is derived from stories he wrote while attending Hope College, but some draws from his Christian upbringing and Bible stories. He and his music have been the biggest influence in my own musical endeavors.

(Thanks for the editing help, Gramps)

Sure, when marriage was conceived, there was no liberation for the gays, so it was set in stone that marriage must be a man and a woman. This is asinine. As long as there’s love, there should be unity; whether it’s gays or not.

Marriage (in my eyes) is more of a promise. A promise to understand when you come home stressed from work. A promise to take the trash out when your back is bothering you. A promise to love you forever. Now why should that be determined right or wrong by sex?

Sure, some people may be going to Canada to get married, or the next bordering state, but why should you have to basically escape where you live in order to have your vows said and rings swapped?

The truth is, I think no-one really knows. People will hate just to hate, or truly believe that marriage is sacred and shouldn’t be touched or revised to accommodate gays. I think you should be able to share your love without other people telling you that homosexuality is not natural, when it is present in animals, human history, and, in essence, it’s as natural as the air we breathe, the love we share, or the love people think they shouldn’t be able to share.

Now, as I know, all of you won’t agree with me on this, but think of a man, who on his dying bed is waiting to receive his prescription for an herb to help his chemo-related loss of appetite, pain and general discomfort. Would you turn him down? Marijuana has been PROVEN a magnificent medicine for many different diseases and different ailments, but people are still stern that it’s just a “street drug”, with no purpose being distributed to people, legally, or not. I’ve read the stories, leukemia, chronic pain, AIDS, epilepsy, there’s so many different ones, but should they be punished with a class 1 drug for trying to better their lives? I think not. Marijuana could do tremendous things in my eyes with the economy, medical world, and peoples minds in general. It IS a drug, however, not a drug in the way most think of drugs. Marijuana is non-addictive (physically) and has very light effects on the body, maybe a little coughing, but I’d put that over a liver or kidney that has been destroyed by pills. Now I’m no doctor, but I’d give a prescription to medical-grade marijuana for pain over giving someone a prescription to vicodin or oxycontin, same being some of the most addicting substances known to man. What would you do? All I’m saying is, look at the facts, look at the plant, and realize what we’ve all been missing until recently; marijuana is a wonder-med.