Pitchfork

While the rest of us were running amok at SXSW, good old Sufjan was calling himself a "failed writer" and penning more content for Asthmatic Kitty's Sidebar.

This time we get an essay on the concept of "Friend Rock", which Sufjan defines by example: "You are going to a show not so much as a fan of the music, but as a fan of your friend, the musician, on stage." From the sounds of it, Sufjan's been doing the Friend Rock thing quite a bit lately, and he sounds a little annoyed by it.

As he concludes, "It's just that you were our friend first, and an aspiring musician second" and presents a list of friend-ish activities he'd rather engage in with such a person: flying kites, dodge ball, falafel sandwich, holding hands, and the like (the lack of grammatical parallelism clearly intentional). So we're wondering which acquaintance is riding the Suf-man's coattails hard these days? It's that guy in the chicken suit, isn't it??

Peruse Sufjan's complete "Friend Rock" essay here, and revisit more of the failed writer's winning prose here, here, and here.

Believe it or not, Sufjan still does that music thing too. Watch him do it live at Calvin College in Grand Rapids on March 30.