I had another temp job today. I snuck on to the internet briefly, and saw the headline that Elliott Smith was dead. And, I had no one to tell, or call, because I was there to answer phones. I don’t want to sit here and eulogize or try to make some pop culture place for the whole event. It just is really sad. I know I’ve probably spent this same space talking about other extremely moving and gifted musicians who have touched me, but what I remember about the music of Elliott Smith is that it will always remind me of a certain time in my life—Fall, Boston, 1997, living alone for the first time, leaves on the ground, taking the T to work, getting coffee at Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, trying to get over a boyfriend that wasn’t a boyfriend anymore. And, how I had no choice but to go out and buy the soundtrack to “Good Will Hunting” because the one thing that stuck in my head through the whole movie and the Robin Williams spaz-outs were the songs. And, the lack of ego behind each song—like talking to a friend about something you couldn’t quite define. Okay, so I’m getting murky and maybe gushy here. . . well screw it. We all know we feel down sometimes, and we all know we reach for music to make us feel better, and now the music just seems a little further away. I remember this summer, I kept trying to get Daryl to listen to Elliott Smith, because Badly Drawn Boy reminded me a lot of his music. So, he listened to it, and that was it. I don’t remember if he liked it or not, or if his music even makes a blip on the whole post-post-garage-punk-irony-music thing we seem to be going through—I mean, he isn’t cheeky like the Strokes or White Stripes, or as maudlin-euphoric as Coldplay, nor as dreamy as Nick Drake. So who knows. All I know is that it made me sad, very sad to read about it on Yahoo! News while the office shuffled by and the phone rang, and time dragged on.
Read this (thanks, Tina!) if you want to see how quickly his death can be filed under “tortured artist”:
http://www.salon.com/ent/music/feature/2003/10/22/smith/index.html
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