Depression and Elliott Smith Songs

Like most fans who have studied his life and listened to his music, I don't buy the media-perpetuated notion that Elliott was little more than a depressed junkie. I think the following quote puts things in a certain perspective:

"His depression was a fundamental part of who he was, which is not to say that he moped around. On the contrary, at times his suffering enabled him to understand the suffering of other people. At times he was able to draw upon his experience as a means of relating to others, and part of his depression enabled him to provide others with a vocabulary for talking about things they themselves didn't understand completely. When he was depressed he felt, as he would often say, more like himself than when he was not depressed."

Garrick Duckler

As someone who deals with depression and anxiety on a daily basis, Elliott's music is therapy for me. As the quote indicates, Elliott has the ability to write lyrics that resonate with those of us who have felt things we have never been able to find quite the right words for. Sometimes those things seem less than hopeful. But more often than is reported, Elliott expressed what many folks who deal with depression feel - an almost constant tension between making it and not making it, between coping and quitting...

I'm here with my cup
Afraid to look up
This is how I spend my time
Lazin' around, head hangin' down
Stuck inside my imagination
Busy making something from nothing
Pictures of hope and depression

-from the song, New Monkey

I may not seem quite right
but I'm not fucked, not quite

-from the song, Bled White

One of my goals in writing about Elliott here and elsewhere is to turn more people on to a man who was (and is) such an amazing talent. His music should be shared, especially for those who it can help by letting them know that someone else out there gets what they might be going through.

I plan on writing a series of hubs looking a bit deeper at the lyrics of Elliott and others...