Elliot Smith concert video (2003)

The goal for this paper is to talk about Elliot Smith and why I feel melancholy and strangeness when I listen to him. And, yes, this may be a cliché in the sense that Smith was depressed, had the “tortured artist effect” happening, and ultimately died in a bizarre stabbing death that was not ruled a suicide and is still open to speculation. But Smith’s music really moves me since I am transported into his waiting world to glide around and slip and slide in his own melancholy and suicidal angst. Perhaps for one to create great art, one has to be in it and inspired by something that is larger than any of us- the cosmic void, the ethereal stream that has been moving and flowing before any of us ever existed and will be moving and flowing after we exit this planet.  In a sense, Smith became the path that many have tried to walk on and by becoming the path, he shed any pretense of being inauthentic though ironically he needed to be inauthentic as a drug casualty to survive. And because I have not been able to shed my own pretenses to walk the path, I am still a spectator watching and feeling Smith’s art and having the melancholy strangeness happening every time I listen to him.

I was perusing YouTube and I downloaded an Elliot Smith concert from 1/31/03 at the Henry Ford Theater in Los Angeles, California. Basically, it is just Smith and an acoustic guitar playing and singing some of his songs to an audience who seems to be into it and shouting out to him in between songs.  Smith is clearly wasted and slurring his speech while talking back to the audience and saying “I can’t feel my knees” and “times like these are strange.” And, to me, the strangeness is that he is even able to play and sing in this wasted state and as the concert goes on I start to think that this guy needs to be wasted to help numb him from feeling the intensity that his songs are conjuring up. Smith is in touch with something bigger than all of us and is tapping into it and playing and singing his words. For example, during the song “Twilight,” Smith sings:

But you're already somebody's baby
I could make you smile
If you stayed a while
But how long will you stay with me, baby?
Because your candle burns too bright
Well I almost forgot it was twilight
Even if I think that you are right
Well I'm tired of being down, I got no fight
You're wonderful
And it's beautiful

I see this lyric as summing up the vibe that Smith feels about life in general. He can’t play the game of being fake because he feels emotions very strongly and when he sees beauty he is moved. The sadness is that he wants to be with people because he sees beauty in them but it is hard when those people do not understand that he is enjoying their beauty and do not open themselves up to him.  Thus, it seems to Smith that people have brightness inside but seem to be living in twilight where darker shadows hide this brightness by having to live an inauthentic life and living a pretentious existence. And I think Smith has brightness inside of himself, but seems to be too insecure with sharing it with other people because people seem to not understand him. The irony is that it seems that he is the happiest playing his songs which is a vehicle for sharing his brightness with people who sit divided in an audience watching him as a spectacle playing depressing songs. And I think that his melancholia and depression comes from him not being able to share his brightness with other people face-to-face in an authentic way.

There always seems to be a yearning inside of Smith to connect with people, as he writes about it in many of his songs, but he seems to realize that he will never be able to connect with people because people do not understand his brightness.  His candle is too bright for people to understand. Tellingly, before he introduces “I Better Be Quiet Now” he says “If you can’t fail then you have to always win.  I don’t think you can always win” and then goes into the song and sings:

It was easy when I didn't know you yet
Things I'd have to forget
But I better be quiet now
I'm tired of wasting my breath
Carrying on, and getting upset
Maybe I got a problem
But that's not what I wanted to say
I'd prefer to say nothing
I got a long way to go
I'm getting further away

And here we see the irony and futility of trying to live an authentic life in a world of inauthentic people. Smith seems to want people to be authentic but once he gets to know them he sees their inauthenticity, puts up a wall, becomes quiet, and realizes that to have that connection with another person he has a long way to go but in this putting up walls, he gets farther away from his goal of union. And I think listening to Smith’s tension of going back and forth between connection, disappointment, trying to tear down erected walls, and taking steps forward and backward, I feel my own angst, strangeness, and melancholy of living in a world where people have to always win and be things that they are not. Listening to Smith’s music makes me realize that I hide my brightness by trying to be things that I am not or having to act certain ways in certain situations that are clearly not me. Smith’s music feels authentic to me and thus strange since I live an inauthentic life worrying about how to exist in an inauthentic world. To be in touch with our authentic brightness is a hard thing because this means that we are open, no walls, and bare live wires. And it seemed to be hard for Smith since he drugged himself to numb it but was still able to have his brightness come through the haze which, to me, shows that he had a lot of brightness to compensate for the tragic life he led. His brightness inspires me to reflect on why listening to authenticity feels strange and melancholy which in turn helps me realize my own inauthenticity to ultimately tear down walls that I have erected that keeps me from sharing my brightness with others. The goal is to not be afraid of what has always been inside of us and to not numb it with silliness and things that keep us apart from each other.  We can metaphorically kill ourselves everyday by being scared but if we are open to why we are scared, we might be able to come out from the walls we have made to realize that we do have something good to give to the world instead of consuming and taking from others. Smith came out long enough from his walls to play an emotional concert and by giving us some of his brightness, hopefully we can do the same for each other.

 

Reviewed by Mike Czech 12/4/12

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