Sufjan Stevens has Guillain-Barré syndrome

It is very scary. It paralyzed my sister who spent 6 months in intensive care. The only voluntary movement she could make was blinking.

Lots of famous people got it: Andy Griffith, Joseph Heller (Catch-22) wrote about it in his autobiography 'No Laughing Matter', Luci Baines Johnson, Scott MacKenzie died from it at age 73.

Gacy's real final victim!

Shame. Such a lovely guy.

Wonder if he's conflicted about his sexuality.

I thought he came out?

He has made a lot of good music over the last 20 or so years. I hope he's doing better.

Oh no! A few years back in an interview he said he had been stricken by a strange illness. Perhaps that was the beginning.

This was saying he got it this year, but his previous illness may have played a role in how he got GBS

GBS often follows the flu and to a lesser extent flu shots. The immune system is kicked into high gear and then starts attacking healthy nerve cells. There was a slight increase of GBS during the 1976 swine flu innoculation program. To be clear, getting the flu puts you at slightly greater risk than the flu shot, and both risks are small.

GBS and COVID-19 vaccines CDC monitors multiple vaccine safety systems to determine if GBS is occurring more among those who are vaccinated than the general rate of GBS in the population.

Recent CDC studies based on data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) have found evidence suggesting an increased risk of GBS among adults 18 years and older after J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccination but not after Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccination. CDC will continue to monitor for and evaluate reports of GBS occurring after COVID-19 vaccination and will share more information as it becomes available.

He (finally) came out. Sadly, his partner died in April. The latest album is dedicated to him.

Wow, I was thinking Sufjan might never officially come out.

Here is the obituary for his partner, Evans Richardson. The funeral was held in Missouri, and the obit makes no mention of Sufjan. I don't see any mention of the cause of death anywhere.

I downloaded his new album this morning—it’s beautiful and one I can see myself replaying a lot over the next few weeks. His post actually made me cry a little. It’s extremely moving. No idea when exactly the album was recorded, before or after his partner’s passing, but there’s a lot of grief in the lyrics, although overall it’s a curiously uplifting record. My heart really goes out to him.

😣😖 After years of DL speculating about his sexuality, I'm surprised there's not a separate thread

I did think about it, R12. His coming out is a big thing, although given it was in context of a horrible bereavement I thought it might be a bit crass. Poor guy.

There is a separate thread—

R10’s link is not working for me. Isn’t it strange that there’s so little information about Richardson online? He had a prominent position at the Studio Museum in Harlem, but a Google search only turns up results about the album Stevens dedicated to him and almost nothing about his life.

[quote] [R10]’s link is not working for me.

The obituary was taken down not long after I posted the link. Here is a cached version from the Internet archive (hope the link works).

The obit says, "He was very successful in school and enjoyed a Christian education, graduating from Westminster Christian Academy."

When listing survivors, it says, "Evans is survived by his father and mother, Evans and Betty Richardson (nee: Jones), a large family and many friends."

No mention of Sufjan or even that he had a partner.

I may be reading too much between the lines, but I get the impression that his parents and family may not have accepted the fact that he was gay and that Sufjan was his partner.

Yup, that’s my impression too. If so, that’s tragic in so many ways. There’s also some speculation that Sufjan and Evans had broken up prior to his passing, evidenced by some of the album lyrics (it very much comes across as a breakup record). Either way, it’s clear Sufjan was still in love with him.