Elliott Smith commits suicide

You probably don't know who Elliott Smith was. He was a legend in the indie-rock community, and a guitarist/songwriter for the band Heatmiser early in his career. He was one of the most critically acclaimed artists of the last decade, whose "Miss Misery," included on the Good Will Hunting soundtrack, was nominated for the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song in a Film. Director Wes Anderson used Smith's "Needle in the Hay," a frighteningly honest song about heroin addiction, as the backdrop for Luke Wilson's attempted suicide in 2001's The Royal Tenenbaums. And yet, most people reading this probably aren't familiar with him at all.

So, for most people, the fact that Elliott Smith killed himself on Oct. 21 at the age of 34 probably didn't even register. Most people didn't scour the Internet for hours, wanting to know why, how, when he did it, while at the same time dreading that knowledge. They didn't shake with grief or stare ahead in shock when they found out that his death was the result of a single self-inflicted stab wound to the chest that fractured the breast plate, and that the most likely scenario was that he laid there on the floor of his apartment and bled to death. They didn't shudder at the thought of being his girlfriend, who came in from work and found him laying there in a pool of his own blood, like something out of a Greek tragedy. They didn't wonder what kind of deep-seated depression and dementia must dominate a person's mind to make them subject themselves to such hurt. They didn't wonder why a man who had a series of drug and alcohol problems would choose such a gruesome and brutal way to end his own life, why he'd rather start cutting than just pop some pills or fix a hit.

They didn't do any of that. It was all the fans who did that, subjecting ourselves to our own psychological pain. And we should stop. We shouldn't obsess over that kind of stuff, analyzing every last lyric to try and find meaning in the sadness and trying to attribute our rationale to an obviously very troubled soul. This happened; it's horrible; it's done. To say any more about it would trivialize the man and the music more than it would shed any light, so let's pass over the rest in silence and just remember the sounds.

I'll remember Elliott Smith's talent for writing lyrics that clung to you like a second skin that you couldn't shed if you wanted to (mostly, you didn't). I'll remember how every song sounded ready to collapse at any minute, and how when a song ended, you were glad that it didn't fall apart, but you never wanted it to stop.

I'll remember the bruising, masochistic experience of listening to his hard words and weird chord changes, the feeling that you were getting a sneak peek at the inside of a sad man's head, and the thought that maybe you shouldn't be there. I'll remember that when one of his albums finished-you didn't skip a track, unless you were insane-you felt like you'd just lived inside of it, and despite the discomfort, tough images, and obvious raw nerves, its honesty and unflinching beauty made you want to go back. So you did. A lot.

I'll remember that the first time I heard his music I actually got scared, because I'd never heard anything that exposed so much emotion and communicated it so candidly; here was somebody who sounded utterly broken, and wasn't afraid of putting that into every strum of a string or whisper of a word. Even Nirvana wasn't this open a wound.

I'll remember that he's got three entries on my list of the best records of the 1990s (1995's Elliott Smith, 1997's Either/Or, and 1998's XO), and that the two best songs he ever wrote weren't on any of them ("See You Later" and "Not Half Right," both on Heatmiser's 1996 farewell, Mic City Sons). I'll remember that his least compelling solo albums were still worlds better than the Dashboard Confessionals and Ryan Adamses of the world.

But mostly, I'll remember that pound for pound, song for song, Elliott Smith was the best songwriter of my lifetime (apologies, Kurt), that it's going to take something awful special to knock him off that pedestal, and that I know I'm not the only person who feels that way. You might not know who Elliott Smith was, but he's pretty important to me. Ultimately, as a legacy, that's all that matters.