Elliott Smith is dead
2003 has been the year of death. It seemed like everytime I looked at the news or talked to friends another person had died. This was the first year I can remember going to a funeral and being overwhelmed with sadness. I don’t think I can say that it was some getting-older-feeling-mortal effect either. I truly felt a chunk kindof got ripped out of me and I had only known my step mom’s fatherfor about one year.
Now Elliott Smith is dead and I’ve never felt so sad about losing someone I didn’t even know. It’s never been about celebrity status for me, I’ve never found a role model in musicians. But I’ve taken their music. And Smith had an acute sense of the tragic and sad; he had ways of clarifying truth in the stories of his songs that stuck pins through your body. For anyone who has ever sat and mulled over a lost relationship, or a missed chance, Smith was an artist that knew all the right words describe it. He had the ability to make the most mundane things sound like the most beautiful. It wasn’t like he was some sweet folk peddler either, you could still rock out in the mirror with him. At the end of the day, his songs stood on their own.
He reportedly killed himself through a self-inflicted knife wound. And as Krysta said, “How much do you have to hate yourself to do that?” Maybe there wasn’t any hate involved. Maybe he was like any good music artist that has a good sense of the dramatic. But probably not, real life rarely imitates art.
After writing this I feel a bit foolish, like after you wake up after a night of drunken partying and realize what an ass you were the night before. I didn’t know Smith, he could have been an asswipe. But you can’t erase what he did and what he wrote.