I am fast becoming one of the neighborhood's weirdos. In fact, there is probably someone sitting at his or her computer, writing about that tone-deaf cripple who sings the same Elliott Smith song over and over while hobbling down the street. Personally, I wouldn't mind if someone belted out a little Figure 8 outside my window now and then. (It would be better than the Girls track someone was playing loudly yesterday. Like I really needed to hear "Lust for Life" and its fatherless lyrics first thing in the morning.)
Anyway, Elliott Smith's music always feels like an appropriate soundtrack for those transitional weeks between fall and winter. It's sad-bastard music, yeah, but it isn't hopelessly sad. There's a difference between exploring melancholy and drowning in it. Today I had a Twitter reader scold me for asking what song makes them cry every time. She told me that I should be asking about happy songs and making the world a better place. Since this conversation happened through work, I couldn't say what I wanted to say: that tears aren't always borne of sadness, that even the brightest lives need to turn down their lights sometimes, and that doing so is necessary for making the world a better place. But you can't really explain that in 140 characters.
For the record, the song that makes me cry every time is not an Elliott Smith song. Today, Elliott Smith was all about triumph. But this Cash cover has turned me into a puddle ever since I saw the video a year ago. To me, the original felt comically melodramatic in its whispered self-loathing. Even as a wildly depressed teenager, I heard it and thought, "You hurt yourself to see if you still feel? Oh, come on." But the gravitas and gravel of Cash's version, recorded a year before his death, shifts the lyrics into something more meaningful. So when I cry over this song, it's not necessarily out of sadness, but of universality. I'd sing it on the way home, but if I'm going to be a neighborhood weirdo, I'd rather people not think that I like Nine Inch Nails, too.
Anyway, Elliott Smith's music always feels like an appropriate soundtrack for those transitional weeks between fall and winter. It's sad-bastard music, yeah, but it isn't hopelessly sad. There's a difference between exploring melancholy and drowning in it. Today I had a Twitter reader scold me for asking what song makes them cry every time. She told me that I should be asking about happy songs and making the world a better place. Since this conversation happened through work, I couldn't say what I wanted to say: that tears aren't always borne of sadness, that even the brightest lives need to turn down their lights sometimes, and that doing so is necessary for making the world a better place. But you can't really explain that in 140 characters.
For the record, the song that makes me cry every time is not an Elliott Smith song. Today, Elliott Smith was all about triumph. But this Cash cover has turned me into a puddle ever since I saw the video a year ago. To me, the original felt comically melodramatic in its whispered self-loathing. Even as a wildly depressed teenager, I heard it and thought, "You hurt yourself to see if you still feel? Oh, come on." But the gravitas and gravel of Cash's version, recorded a year before his death, shifts the lyrics into something more meaningful. So when I cry over this song, it's not necessarily out of sadness, but of universality. I'd sing it on the way home, but if I'm going to be a neighborhood weirdo, I'd rather people not think that I like Nine Inch Nails, too.
Labels: music
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