Over on the Asthmatic Kitty‘s Sidebar, Sufjan Stevens tells the story of how he almost changed his name, and how in college he started writing a “series of songs for names.” And he shares a charming little banjo song that’s well worth streaming.

My older self, glancing back over simple chords and hazardous poetry, likes to think I’m older, wiser, more mature, more eloquent, more artful, more poignant, more contemporary. But that’s unfair. The concept has changed but the approach has always been the same: to become so completely entrenched in something that it becomes a great big clumsy mummy outfit wrapped around all arms and legs: a metaphysical form of suffocation. Sure, back then, I was young, naïve, unenlightened, untraveled, virtuous, good-natured, and always on time. But the world of youth was where I tried on new ideas, new outfits, new names, and new rhyme schemes—a world where the banjo was my journal, where Sofia Coppola was my imaginary confidant, and where singing out of tune was perfectly OK!

Here’s hoping Stevens goes out on a solo banjo tour to promote this song!

Sufjan Stevens: iTunes, Amazon, Insound, wiki.

Via the Fork.