When Stevens wrote a song about Detroit, he mentioned specific landmarks and places to comment on how the once-great city is crumbling from within.

“Chicago” doesn’t have those specifics, because it’s not about the Windy City itself. Stevens has said in interviews that Chicago represented something different from Michigan, his home state. It was a vibrant, living city with many paths of escape. It’s something that many of those who have rown up closer to the city can relate to.

The title city is not a destination for Stevens. It’s a personification of his desire to find that place we dream about when we’re young. He best expresses this desire with the line, “I was in love with a place in my mind,” as he spends his nights in a parking lot.

If the song’s message could be distilled to one line, it would be: “If I was crying … it was for freedom / from myself and from the land.”

As graduation approaches, I take this song to heart because it speaks directly to what many of my fellow students feel. We want to break the shackles of our many years of school and go out and find our own freedom, be it in Chicago or anywhere else. But, to use a well-worn cliché, it’s not where we go — it’s how we get there.

“All things go,” Class of 2008.

From the album “Illinoise” (2005).