i'm standing up the morning after

elliott smith (1969-2003)

no name # 6

"if only you could just change your luck."

say yes

"situations get fucked up,
and turned around,
sooner or later."

between the bars

"i'll kiss you again,
between the bars,
where i'm seeing you there,
with your hands in the air,
waiting to finally be caught."

angeles

"i could make you satisfied in everything you do.
all your secret wishes could right now be coming true.
and be forever with my poison arms around you."

clementine

"you drank yourself into slo-mo,
made an angel in the snow,
anything to pass the time,
and keep that song out of your mind."

miss misery (early version)

"but it's all right,
because some enchanted night,
i'll be with you."

miss misery

"to vanish into oblivion,
is easy to do.
and i try to be,
but you know me,
i come back when you want me to."

happiness

"what i used to be will pass away and then you'll see,
that all i want now is happiness for you and me."

i miss you, elliott smith. i wish i'd had the chance to see you play. i wish i could have baked you cupcakes and told you how much your music has meant to me. that there were nights either/or kept me going, kept me breathing, and made me feel less alone. more than anything, i wish you were still among us, making music, and finding your own bliss.

i hope you found it, wherever you are. thank you for the music. i miss you.

worth reading: everybody cares

man in the park read the lines in my hand

miss misery ~ elliott smith
miss misery (early version) ~ elliott smith
miss misery (live, mtv, video) ~ elliott smith

"next door the tv's flashing,
blue frames on the wall.
it's a comedy of errors, you see.
it's about taking a fall.

to vanish into oblivion,
is easy to do,
and i try to be,
but you know me,
i come back when you want me to."

i woke up this morning to the bleary-eyed recollection of the flickering television screen, and the near ending of good will hunting playing. i tuned in at about the point where will has his breakthrough, both with his best friend, and with sean. i ended up lying on the couch, under a blanket, crying my eyes out. there is a long list of reasons why it hit me so hard, and why in some ways it was what i needed most of all today.

the sun was not yet awake, and as the credits rolled elliott smith sang one of my most favorite songs of all-time. last week was beyond rough and my soul feels beat up right now. i feel discouraged and lost in ways that words do not articulate clearly, and i know i need to make my way through the fog and sort out what to do, but right now i feel defeated, and tired. part of me wants to just vanish into oblivion.

this song helps, as did the scene in the film, and music; always music.

i could be another fool

say yes ~ elliott smith

"crooked spin can't come to rest,
i'm damaged bad at best,
she'll decide what she wants.

i'll probably be the last to know,
no-one says until it shows,
and you see how it is.

they want you,
or they don't.
say yes."

andrea posted elliott smith this morning, which set me in the mood to play him all morning myself. there are so many things i could write about his music and what it has meant to me. how is tragic sonnets and lyrical refrains have intertwined with dreams and moments, written plots and felt emotions, sing-a-longs and jagged tears. i wish i'd seen him play live, just once at least. and, more than that, i wish he was still alive, that he was still among us.

i have many favorites. angeles, which andrea posted earlier, is definitely one of many that i love. say yes i discovered when i bought the album xo. i remember playing it on my computer, back when we lived in the upstairs apartment in fullerton, not long after we returned back to california, from michigan. it was the first song to stand out to me, to make me want to push replay and listen again, that first initial song-crush that one gets on the first spin of a new album.

i love the upside down duality in the lyrics. how this song at first feels like a love song full of hope and wistfulness. the morning after meeting someone you have a connection to, or the day following that first time you sleep with someone (or don't sleep with someone). on a second listen though the sadness comes through, the realization that this is more of an afterthought, a musing over, and missing of, a relationship that is recently lost. a relationship that has changed who we are, even when we did not realize the change was occuring when we were in it.

is there still a chance? is this poetry sung that will help in letting go, or will is it sung to win something back? a last ditch plea for the other person to turn around and say yes, again.

do you miss me

"next door the TV's flashing,
blue frames on the wall,
it's a comedy of errors, you see,
it's about taking a fall.
to vanish into oblivion is easy to do,
and i try to be,
but you know me,
i come back when you want me to."

i woke this morning with this song heavy in my consciousness, cloying, penetrating, like the oppressive warmth of the humid room, and the dry-from-thirst feeling in the back of my throat. i dream of songs sometimes, or at least they play their part, stroking my hair and nudging the surreal plot along. the dream, well its contents are hazy and i can only see the sketched outline of movement and feelings, as if i walked into a room right as the television is switched off, and all i see is the fading images, disappearing. is that what missing looks like then? the visuals switching off as our eyes narrow, trying to capture what we still want to see?

you don't deserve to be lonely

i have a soft spot for the broken souls in this world, which is probably a reflection of my own somewhat tattered self. when i was nineteen a good friend of mine said that if she put me in a room with hundreds of people i would immediately be drawn to the one with the most pain; perhaps she was right. but, in all honesty, we all have scars, we all have stories, we all have scattered and shattered pieces inside. i suppose i like to believe in hope, in redemption, in the part of all of us that rise above what hurts within us. and, that hope, i think it is so beautiful. i wish that elliott smith had stuck around long enough to find his moment of begin again.

angeles

going nowhere

needle in the hay

say yes

twilight

some enchanted night i'll be with you

ten people i knew in the world survived. knew is a strange word, though. the ten, well i knew them in that face in the crowd way, not the knowing with any real consequence sort of thing. the girl who rang up my morning coffee who had her bottom lip pierced, and fought every wednesday with her boyfriend on her mobile; trying to text unnoticed under the counter, but whispering each word as her thumbs slammed the tiny keys. she is among us now. the boyfriend may be here come to think of it, but those kind distinctions have become quite hard to tell. coupling lines blur, and bodies cling without much regard to the propriety of love.

there is that boy i dated once. for a week, i think. he had a summer green tint to his once blonde strands; the tell-tale sign of an orange county boy with too much time on his hands, and chlorine soaked in his hair. we drove to santa monica and sat under the pier while i came down off my latest and greatest escape hatch. he let me scream into his hands, and i let him slip his dick into me. a fair trade, it seemed. i tossed his number into the third bin from the left, behind his apartment, as i walked home with sand itchy on my skin. i wonder if he still tastes of peppermint schapps and marlboro lights, or if he has either he would be willing to share.

the rest are nameless. images peeled off of a blueprint memory, faces from train passes and elevator rides, doctor office receptionists and the gas station attendant who used to sing foreigner's urgent out loud and sold me discounted cigarettes with his number slipped inside. it is hard to tell if they recognize me, or what story they try to attach to my skin, pinned on like a kindergarten reminder. we all forget everything eventually, or at least feign at it, posed and smiling as if all this dark was just the contents of a normal day. anymore now they all back away and turn their eyes from mine, afraid that the things i see above will rub off on them, poison the well, so to speak. they huddle in misconceived safety and try to re-write the world. i am not interested in any of the fabrication.

i used to be the girl in the back of the class chewing her nails, and looping letters into lyrical refrains; i would have traded my grandfather's bicentennial coin collection to live within the confines of a song. clumsy and awkward, gifted my life span's height before i hit puberty, towering over all the skinny blondes who fit right into that everybody wants you mold. my first sexual experience was with a shy boy two years trailing behind me, his braces left tears in the inside of my bottom lip, and he kissed with as much grace as two elephants with tied-together trunks.

most days i was just invisible, fading into the grey walls and missed opportunities. it was hard to grow up with the beautiful people when your body screamed ordinary, and hopefully refundable. now my invisibility is just their desperate grasps at denial. no one cares to admit cowardice, or to look the community martyr straight in the eyes. even the ones who empty and re-fill my veins avert my gaze, leaving gashes in my arms, but nothing more. or the ones no one mentions, who gave me the job in the first place, and the names; how they send their troops when my head is blood loss fuzzy, their masks barely registering in my view, just the sharp sting of what they take from my body as i lay their motionless, more dead than the last time. it was one of them who gave me my afterworld name. i can still hear it slithering out of his razor thin lips, burning the skin as he pressed them too close to my ear. we all have them, all the old ones tossed aside like the regret, like yesterdays.

none of us are who we were before.

***

"is this an actual record player?" my voice in a half-whisper of awed reverence as i stare ahead, wanting to slide my fingers across the grooved surfaces, lift the arm and prick my finger on the needle; become some sort monochromed sleeping beauty. i held back though, half-holding my breath as i always did when we shared space.

i could feel him moving across the room before i caught a glimpse in my peripheral vision, his pallor glowing like chunks of moonbeams turned to flesh. the only colour came from his lips, a sudden splash of rose in sharp contrast to the rest of him. later i would write him as a black and white film strip, cary grant caught in a still frame that someone took a permanent marker to. the burst of red came from a recent feed; it would soon spread across his face into a school girl's blush. life temporarily breathed into him from my bloodletting.

miss misery (early version) ~ elliott smith