The Paper, Not the Hand
The Paper, Not the Hand
An Interview with John Van Deusen by Abigail Sitterly
On (I Am) Origami Pt. 4: Marathon Daze
“Free me, break me, fill me up with all your holy water / ‘Cause I’m driving drunk in the night with one headlight.” There’s no hesitation as Marathon Daze, John Van Deusen’s fourth and final installment in his (I Am) Origami album project, begins. The record opens with this line from the song “Oh, Sweetest Name,” an unblinking acknowledgment of depression and the need for deliverance from self. It’s vulnerable, yet lyrically-opaque and accentuated by thudding percussion that roots Van Deusen’s struggle for spiritual surrender into stubborn persistence.
According to the album description on his Bandcamp page, this song is “a prayer. It’s a plea to God to help me be better and healthier and truer than whatever it is I am now as I careen recklessly through this frantic, modern existence. I started with this line because it’s the prayer I pray (in different words) every day of my life. ‘Help me because without You I’m…well, I’m something other than what I want to be; drunk and reckless in my self-propelled chaos.’”
Such tension is a familiar find for veteran fans of the Van Deusen catalog, one which may elicit a cathartic exhale in new listeners who have long-yearned for the kind of Christian artistry that refuses to compromise religious honesty for catchy melodies. The tension between doubt and faith, depression and joyful worship, pop punk and borderline arena rock is a common pulse in a Van Deusen record, and one he takes seriously.
He describes Marathon Daze as “all over the map thematically—not just sonically, but also lyrically. [There are] songs where I sing about my faith really openly, songs writing about mental health really openly, songs where I sing about drug use or just being an antagonist in my own story pretty openly.”
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Van Deusen’s story begins with his first band in ninth grade. When they won the school talent show, he knew there was no going back. “That was the moment where I thought ‘This is it, like, I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life. This is what I’m made to do,’” he recalled. “Everything else just kind of faded into the background for me, probably in good and bad ways.” Momentum grew, and soon Van Deusen was spending his senior year of high school on tour with his then-band, The Lonely Forest.
It was during these early years that Van Deusen, who grew up in a Christian home, renounced his loosely-tethered faith. Not long after, he “did some more critical thinking and reading” and decided he was something of an agnostic. But things went amiss. “In my late teens and early 20s, my life got really tumultuous. Essentially, as my music career went up, my heart health went down,” he recalled.
In 2012, The Lonely Forest supported Portugal the Man on Jaegermeister’s Music Tour. But this tour was different. “It felt heavier and darker than I was used to. And I had decided I was going to be a Christian at this point. But the problem was that my newfound faith didn't really equate to heart change. So it was weird—as if I had a head belief in Jesus, but I wasn't experiencing the change that I was told. By every outer metric, I was doing really well.” But the Hound of Heaven kept up the chase.
“I got home from this tour and, for the first time, I realized how badly I needed God. I decided I believed in Jesus, but I didn't realize how badly I needed saving from myself. And I started praying differently. I started saying things like, ‘God, I don't care what you need to do in my life. Whatever it is, you can do it. And if that means I never sing another song, like, go for it. I just need you to save me.’ And that is…kind of the moment where I began to change. I really accepted the reality that I needed Christ and I wanted Christ and I needed whatever Christ had to offer me.”
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Van Deusen is quite prolific these days, often writing a couple songs per week. He currently resides in Anacortes, a small coastal city on Washington state’s Fidalgo Island known for its vibrant arts community. He splits abundant family time with his wife Annababe and son Benji with his work as the Director of Music, Worship, and Arts for his local church. Many songs are written at his church office, while others are penned at his office space in another church just a few blocks away.
Van Deusen’s productivity serves a project like (I Am) Origami well. While the three prior albums (The Universal Sigh, Every Power Wide Awake, and a Catacomb Hymn) oscillate thematically between postures of angst and worship, Marathon Daze (released in June) is the series’ exclamation point. In the modern music market that pits the sacred against the secular, the record is hard to categorize. “I think I've always felt too Christian or too pagan as an artist,” Van Deusen expressed. “This, to me, means I'm too open about the ugly stuff in my world: my doubt, my mental health issues, or my struggle with an addiction, or whatever it is, while simultaneously being too open about how much I love Jesus. And in the indie rock world I grew up in, those are just no bueno. You just don't mix those things.”
Even the cover art is likely to rock the boat. The focal image is Francesco Fanelli’s sculpted work David and Goliath (1653)—a piece rife with potential energy as David prepares to kill his adversary. “I love it so much because it’s arguably a work of Christian high art from an era in which the church was funding most art in general,” Van Deusen impressed. “There’s this hero of faith who’s about to kill somebody violently and he’s fully nude. I like it because it’s not normal to put a full nude person on the cover of a Christian record. It’s definitely not normal to put an act of violence on the cover of a Christian record. And yet here’s a hero of faith in an act that a lot of Christians use as inspiration for overcoming their obstacles. I just find that fascinating. And it’s a work of Christian art; it’s somehow provocative and violent, yet also really beautiful and well done. It’s kind of a visual representation of the ‘too Christian, too pagan’ that I feel.”
For some, the record is bound to induce a minor case of whiplash. Van Deusen understands, but is resolute. “Christians who are uncomfortable with certain topics and lyrics who, for better or worse, really just want to focus on what is true to them want to consume art that is life-giving.” he said. “And they might hear, ‘Oh, Sweetest Name’ on my new record and be like, ‘Whoa, I don't know what this means and it's really unsettling. And these lyrics are clearly opaque and confusing.’ It unsettles them. And then somebody who doesn't know Jesus, who has been living in our current culture and probably is very repulsed by Christian culture especially in the last few years, based because of the cultural divide, they hear ‘God Outside of Time’ at the end of the record, and they're like, ‘What is this? This is not what I want.”
“I guess I’ve just decided that that's what is the truest and most honest depiction of who I am and how I feel on a day to day basis. It would be dishonest for me to represent myself in a different way. That's just my own conviction. It’s bringing those things together and kind of cramming them together into one project. It's probably a terrible business move. But it has felt like that's what God is wanting me to do.”
But Van Deusen’s calling bears its own responsibility. “Sincerely, on a daily basis since releasing “Oh Sweetest Name”, my first single, I’ve been like ‘Ugh, have I made a big mistake?’ Releasing a song with such, to some people, provocative language…” He trailed off into thought, then added, “I think in the end I’ll be glad I did it. As soon as you start to sing about your mental health, or as soon as you start to sing about your doubt as a Christian, there is a responsibility to take the power of music seriously. You have to remember that if you’re going to sing about depression, then you have to be careful how you say it. Because some people, it might push them deeper into their depression. You have to be careful about how you sing about doubt, because it might push someone farther from Christ. That’s a scary thing for me.”
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When I asked if he had more advice for other artists of faith who find it difficult to navigate the sacred-secular paradigm, Van Deusen championed two guiding values: honesty and community.
“Walking that line is really hard. It’s not a formula for worldly success…,” he stated. “I do think that most people in the world, when interfacing with artists, can detect honesty; and in the same way detect, not necessarily dishonesty, but pretense and insincerity. [If you say] ‘I want to glorify God with my art but I also want to be honest about the things that I struggle with,’ I would encourage you to not be afraid to do that; and probably make sure you’re not doing that alone in a vacuum…You need other people in your life to sharpen you a bit and to let you know when they think you might be leaning too hard in one direction.”
Community played a big part in the making of Marathon Daze. Among the support of his family, financial contributions from fans, and creative collaboration with friends (such as his best friend and co-producer Jonathan Keane), the production also received help from Christian arts nonprofit Renew the Arts. Dedicated to restoring the value of arts patronage in Christian community, Renew the Arts made it financially feasible for Van Deusen to take some time off work to write and record. Accepting that help was not only a practical decision, but a spiritually tactical one.
“Because I love Jesus, and I work in the church and I’m a part of the church, I need to be held accountable cause I tend to heavily go in the darker direction,” he shared. “I have to surround myself with people who pull me back to the other side. Renew The Arts is a good example of me hooking people in: ‘Hey, I want you to be a part of this, not only because I need your help, but because I need to surround myself with good people.’”
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I caught up with Van Deusen a few months after the record release. According to John, the (I Am) Origami series went out not with a bang, but a satisfied sigh. “The release of Marathon Daze was very laid back,” he said. “I really needed to move on with my life. [I] also felt so exhausted by the strategies artists have to implement in order to get the listeners’ attention online. The older I get, the less I care about the online response to the art and the more I care about making art I love that connects with peoples’ hearts.” And connect, it did. “I’ve had many listeners reach out and express their love of the album and how it has encouraged them or helped them find new language for their faith journey. That means the world to me.”
(I Am) Origami wasn’t the only project this year Van Deusen has accomplished. He’s already finished recording his fifth LP (set to release next year on Tooth & Nail Records) and has a host of additional projects on the deck, including a “gentle, simple, and peaceful” Christmas album, In The Bleak Midwinter, which will arrive in time for plenty of holiday spin this season. Van Deusen hopes people will listen while decorating their Christmas trees. As if that weren’t enough in the works, his new band Telephone Friends, a collaboration with friends Tyson Motsenbocker, Matthew Wright, Patrick Dodd and Aaron Redfield, will drop early next year. I wonder how he does it all.
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In the description for Marathon Daze, Van Deusen elaborates on the concept behind the name. “I am origami because I am a substance folded to become something greater than my makeup,” he writes. “But I am not the hand folding the paper, I am only the paper; a created thing that owes all glory and honor and power to my Maker. That’s how I see it.”
In our most recent correspondence, Van Deusen concluded his reply with a call to put this belief into practice. “Today is my 35th birthday,” he wrote. “Here is one piece of unsolicited advice to anyone who cares to listen. Ask God daily to purify and sanctify your priorities. If you pray this with faith I promise it will change the way you live!”
Van Deusen’s mindset is that of Psalm 16:5-6: “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; You hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.” This is the kind of trust that invites self-renunciation, a surrender to a greater, holier will that knows better than we do. This trust welcomes each fold and twist, each wave of doubt or faith, slowly crafting us into the image He made us to be.
Abigail Sitterley
Writer & Musician
Abbey is a columnist for the Finger Lakes Times, Women’s Ministry Assistant at Grace Road Church, and Storyteller for Renew the Arts.
Find John Van Deusen’s Work Here