Pitchfork: You originally performed Planetarium live in 2012—why release the project as an album now?

Sufjan Stevens: We didn’t intend on waiting so long to make it available, but I’m glad we did, because it makes a lot of sense now—it feels relevant to where we are in the world to be thinking about really fundamental, primal things like peace and war, good and evil, the sacred and the profane. Because in the worlds of Roman and Greek mythology, there’s such an investigation of meaning.

If you just read the Planetarium lyrics, with all your allusions to gods and goddesses, you wouldn’t even really know the planets were involved.

Yeah, well, it really isn’t about the solar system. That’s just a superficial concept, a way of organizing it. When we were developing ideas for Planetarium, we were basically all just contributing sketches, and then collaborating and recording them, and then categorizing them. We had to give them names to post on the Dropbox, so we just started using astrology terms, and that actually influenced me when I started writing the lyrics—I just started riffing off of astrology, and then eventually that segued into mythology. Then I thought, Fuck it, let’s just sing about the planets. It’ll give us something very solid and substantial and iconic to meditate on while we develop this project.

We couldn’t call it The Planets, though, because Gustav Holst’s The Planets is just so historic, important, and canonical. So we called it Planetarium, which is like a man-made environment. Anything could happen in a planetarium: They do performances in there, there could be presentations about dark matter and energy, or a specific planet, or even about the history of the Earth. It was a nice open-ended opportunity for us to think big.

And then to construct all the lyrics I had to think really small and specific, to minerals, gases, helium, hydrogen, the red dust on the face of Mars. I remember carrying around a dog-eared reference dictionary of Greek and Roman mythology, highlighting all kinds of strange four-syllable words to use in the songs. Sometimes it would just be an obsession over a phrase, or a word. In the song “Venus,” the description of Venus’ buttocks is “callipygian,” which means “well-shaped ass.” I was like, “I’ve got to use that word.”

Roman and Greek mythology is based on magic and fantasy, but also combined with science and astronomy. It’s like fable and science. It’s an exciting and strange explanation of the universe.

At this point, it feels like ideas of science and faith are often at odds with each other—did you see the recent March for Science?

It’s so strange that that’s necessary. There’s a polarization that’s occurring now that is really oversimplified: There is a God or there isn’t a God. We’ve lost the management of accommodation for multiple readings of the world. I think it’s because social media, TV, and everything creates a chaos that’s somehow cultivated this weird duality of you either believe or you don’t believe. You just become isolated in your opinions.

You’ve always let your work do the heavy lifting as far as your overall worldview, but considering your recent blog posts touching on immigration and faith and decency, do you feel more comfortable putting yourself out there in that way right now?

I do feel that, now more than ever, we have to take responsibility for ourselves and our beliefs, and be able to manage our own personal doctrine. We have a responsibility to communicate that now because there does seem to be an attack on common sense and dignity. My work speaks for certain convictions and persuasions, and I don’t want to muddle that with any soapboxing or politicizing, but at the same time it’s important to provide reminders of what’s valuable, just in case we’ve really sunk so low that we’ve forgotten the true essence of what it means to be a human and to be humane.

My work speaks for that, but now it’s important for artists and musicians to stop and take stock of what we’re saying and doing, and how we’re living. Does it measure up? Is it substantial? Does it matter? Is it meaningful? Whether I like it or not, my role is to communicate my beliefs, my convictions, my stories, and my own personal narrative to a listener. There’s a responsibility in that mode of communication. I can no longer be frivolous about what I say, and what I sing, and how I speak.

Your Washington Post piece began as a post on your website, right?

Yeah, it was just a blog rant.

But nothing is just a blog rant anymore.

Yeah, if a Tumblr rant becomes an op-ed piece, then what does that say about the world we live in? We have a president who’s tweeting nonsense. The bar has been lowered, so I might as well get involved. It’s like, shit or get off the pot, really—say something meaningful or get out of the way and let someone else say it. That’s how I feel now. I have nothing to lose. So what if I lose some fans? It’s fine.