Even something as small as an apple
It’s simple and somehow complex
Sweet and divine, the perfect design
Can I speak to the architect?—Kacey Musgraves, “The Architect”
At this year’s Grammy Awards, Kacey Musgraves and her co-songwriters won Best Country Song for “The Architect.” The Architect of the song is, with straightforward metaphor and without subterfuge, God the Creator. Country music has long been known as the mainstream genre most comfortable singing about God, but “The Architect” approaches the topic much differently than most Nashville singers do.
Musgraves starts by singing about the complexity of something as simple as an apple, “sweet and divine, the perfect design,” then asks, as she does at the end of each verse, “Can I speak to the architect?” This first verse plays on a brief, lyrical version of the watchmaker argument for God’s existence. When the singer asks to speak to the architect, the impression is that she is in awe of his work and wants to meet this great craftsman. We can imagine ourselves seeing an intricate, perfectly designed building or work of art and wanting to meet the artist to express our delight.
At this point, there’s an apparent faith and simplicity to the song. The second verse, though, quickly calls this into question:
And there’s a canyon that cuts through the desert
Did it get there because of a flood?
Was it devised, or were you surprised
When you saw how grand it was?
Here the existence of the Architect is still not questioned by the speaker—instead, what is questioned is the Architect’s design, or rather, whether the Architect really “designed” his creation at all. This line of questioning extends fully on the chorus:
Is it thought out at all, or just paint on a wall?
Is there anything that you regret?
I don’t understand, are there blueprints or plans?
Can I speak to the architect?
While the Architect’s existence is still taken for granted, the speaker now questions whether there are any plans at all—if there is objective meaning and order in the universe. “Can I speak to the architect?” takes on a new inflection, something more like, “Can I speak to your manager?” There is a challenge in this question that didn’t exist in the first verse.
It might be easy at this point to dismiss the questions of the song as insincere, to say that she’s been working toward this challenge all along. Any sincerity or belief floated in the first verse might seem like false positioning, a bait and switch. While there certainly is calculated design, artfully executed, in the way Musgraves flips the inflection of the same question to different ends, I don’t think she is attempting any sort of “gotcha” in the chorus.
With open honesty, Musgraves asks the kinds of questions all of us must face.
For one thing, the questions she asks in the chorus are familiar ones that pass in some form through the minds of even strong believers. I can’t imagine anyone walking through their entire lives and never asking—deep within themselves and with unimaginably high stakes—these same sorts of questions. Is there meaning to any of this? Is there a God who created all of this? If there is, does he know me? Does he care about me? If he is good and loving, why does he allow evil; why doesn’t he answer my prayer? These are the questions of Job, of human experience throughout time. With open honesty, Musgraves asks the kinds of questions all of us must face.
Throughout her career, Musgraves has been outspoken about her spiritual seeking, including the guided use of psychedelics and acid trips to deal with trauma and connect more deeply “to our planet and to humanity.” On Deeper Well, the album on which “The Architect” appears, Musgraves acknowledges ways she’s changed and ways in which she is still spiritually searching.
She has talked and sung about her marijuana use in the past, which has held an important place in her public image for her fans. In the song “Deeper Well,” she sings again about that fact with a hint of melancholy—“for a while, it got me by”—but sings that now she’s “gettin’ rid of the habits that I feel / Are real good at wastin’ my time.” She shows a willingness to change, to recognize that some things are empty or “lose their shine” and to keep looking for something that fulfills. In “The Architect,” she sings at one point that “the stars and the planets lined up.” The line sounds more credulous of astrological influence than merely a throwaway metaphor.
Back to the question Musgraves repeatedly asks: “Can I speak to the architect?” The answer to this question—an answer that I don’t know Musgraves knows yet—is yes, she can speak to the Architect at any time, which is an answer both insufficient and, in its own way, complete. As unbelievable as it is that the Creator of the universe is always ready and desiring to listen to us, it is even more inconceivable that there could be an architect of everything who is not able to hear us or to know us. But what Musgraves desires is not simply to speak to the Architect—she desires explanations and justifications. And while the truth is out there, and we may receive some answers and consolations if we ask in earnest, we don’t get to put God on trial and demand to receive an answer to every question that troubles us. Even if he gave us the answers, I don’t think we’d be able to understand, just like my three-year-old son wouldn’t understand all the explanations I could give him in response to a complex question.
In the song’s final line, Musgraves alters her refrain to “Is there an architect?” Coming at the very end of the song, the question doesn’t sound like a full rejection of the Architect’s existence, which has been taken for granted throughout the lyrics, but neither does it seem like a question that Musgraves thinks can be answered. As the final words of the song, the question is left to hang in the air, apparently unanswerable, with the other questions posed throughout the song. I have hope, though, that Musgraves’ spiritual questioning is sincere enough that she is not done with the question forever.
We should attend to the painful realities of the world and not shy away from asking difficult questions. But we must do so with a docile and humble spirit, willing to be instructed and willing to accept our own limitations.
When we seek, when we ask, let us ask in sincerity, willing to hear the answers wherever they come from, even if we don’t like what we hear. And if the answer to some of our questions is silence, let us recognize the chasm between our limited selves and the vastness of the cosmos, of the Architect—the reality that we can know some but not all. Let us accept the answers we do receive, and accept the mysteries that remain.