― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 11:06 (twenty years ago) link
― mark p (Mark P), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 11:20 (twenty years ago) link
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 11:21 (twenty years ago) link
― Rob Bolton (Rob Bolton), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 11:21 (twenty years ago) link
― mark p (Mark P), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 11:22 (twenty years ago) link
― Rob Bolton (Rob Bolton), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 11:23 (twenty years ago) link
i was just told that elliot smith stabbed himself in the stomach and killed himself.
Anyone heard otherwise ?
http://www.sweetadeline.net/ - Official Fansite
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 11:24 (twenty years ago) link
― mark p (Mark P), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 11:24 (twenty years ago) link
I guess the fact he won't be around to read that serves as some sort of consolation.
― DJ Mencap (DJ Mencap), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 12:04 (twenty years ago) link
― joan vich (joan vich), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 12:15 (twenty years ago) link
What Nate said about that moment in Tennenbaums = totally right on and holy shit I don't think I'm gonna be able to make it through that scene in that film again for a long time.
― nickalicious (nickalicious), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 12:20 (twenty years ago) link
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 12:26 (twenty years ago) link
― mark p (Mark P), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 12:27 (twenty years ago) link
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1479869/20031022/smith_elliott.jhtml?headlines=true
― Stephen Morris, Wednesday, 22 October 2003 12:47 (twenty years ago) link
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/22/obit.elam.ap/story.elam.ap.jpg
Jack Elam died.
― Phil Freeman (Phil Freeman), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 12:54 (twenty years ago) link
― DJ Mencap (DJ Mencap), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 13:06 (twenty years ago) link
"Smith (real name Steven Paul Smith) had battled drug and alcohol addition throughout his career."
― Al (sitcom), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 13:11 (twenty years ago) link
I have to say, the only time I saw Elliott Smith was at the Mid East in Boston in 1996 I think, and he was amazing, just captivating. I guess he had a reputation for sucking live, but he didn't suck when I saw him.
― scott m (mcd), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 13:22 (twenty years ago) link
― Ben Dot (1977), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 13:29 (twenty years ago) link
― bucky wunderlick (bucky), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 13:48 (twenty years ago) link
― zaxxon25 (zaxxon25), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 13:54 (twenty years ago) link
I'm really bummed.
― w_l, Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:19 (twenty years ago) link
― DJ Mencap (DJ Mencap), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:21 (twenty years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:24 (twenty years ago) link
― Emilymv (Emilymv), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:25 (twenty years ago) link
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:31 (twenty years ago) link
― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:32 (twenty years ago) link
― Baked Bean Teeth (Baked Bean Teeth), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:37 (twenty years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:43 (twenty years ago) link
elliot smith is a bit of a wusselliot smith is purely coincidentalelliot smith is one of the year's most important discoverieselliot smith is still musing in the shade of an afternoon bar with a softelliot smith is looking for an indie label to record new material after working out an agreement with current label dreamworkselliot smith is wearing a telliot smith is outelliot smith is that his own lyrics are intensely personalelliot smith is the most brilliant songwriter to come along since a guy named bob dylanelliot smith is that none of the songs on the album may ever be played on commercial radioelliot smith is happy right where he iselliot smith is sorrow and loveelliot smith is the perfect acoustic martyrelliot smith is that if you've never seen himelliot smith is getting oldelliot smith is doing it nowelliot smith is still his old indyelliot smith is playing "rose paradeelliot smith is starting in fifteen minutes in key arenaelliot smith is a multipleelliot smith is really greatelliot smith is probably a name youíre going to hear a lot fromelliot smith is the king of the worldelliot smith is supposed to be so goodelliot smith is most definitely an acquired tasteelliot smith is kind of pretentious but i hear he's good liveelliot smith is representative of the lovemint view of females and the worldelliot smith is an excellent songwriterelliot smith is a kindred spiritelliot smith is the name chosen by airman 1st class glen and kimberly smith for their sonelliot smith is plainelliot smith is an extraordinary singer/songwriterelliot smith is capable ofelliot smith is to red stripe as guided by voices is to pabst blueribbon? hmmmelliot smith is working hard in long beachelliot smith is a prime example of that sort of thingelliot smith is nearing completion of his next albumelliot smith is greatelliot smith is in complete accordelliot smith is not afraid to admit that he is what they are best known forelliot smith is my favoriteelliot smith is on it's wayelliot smith is one of my favorite musicianselliot smith is a tough tough manelliot smith is working on aelliot smith is an acquaintanceelliot smith is one of my favorite songwriterselliot smith is a really quiet singer and it was annoying because you could hear them talk over the musicelliot smith is notelliot smith is signed toelliot smith is goodelliot smith is on the cards? delliot smith is hereelliot smith is on alternative radio and birddog got himself a band and a record on sugar freeelliot smith is a kind of real loser lost in hollywood but howeverelliot smith is great for the daytime driveselliot smith is recording his fourth solo albumelliot smith is fast becoming one of my favorite artists out thereelliot smith is always my big favoriteelliot smith is playing the tromboneelliot smith is a god and anyone who doesn't agree needs toelliot smith is a beautiful guyelliot smith is such a genius cos this iselliot smith is an impressive songwriterelliot smith is the evil kate abusing me songelliot smith is a fuckingelliot smith is the celebrity that i have a crush onelliot smith is searching for a true representation of the brainelliot smith is doing his best to overcome themelliot smith iselliot smith is one groovy catelliot smith is a couch surfer complaining that you don't get hboelliot smith is on 88elliot smith is selling his 1984 2+ 2 300zx asking $2elliot smith is definitely goodelliot smith is leather loveelliot smith is in mineelliot smith is rapidly becoming a modern day pop legendelliot smith is an amazing performerelliot smith is currently studying english at cambridge university
― Dean Gulberry (deangulberry), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:48 (twenty years ago) link
― mark p (Mark P), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:48 (twenty years ago) link
― mark p (Mark P), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:49 (twenty years ago) link
― DJ Mencap (DJ Mencap), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 15:52 (twenty years ago) link
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 22 October 2003 16:04 (twenty years ago) link
It was cute the way he cut all the songs short halfway because he was too embarassed to play the solo.
What a shame. Never a fan of Figure 8, but I kept checking the 'net to find out when the new one was coming out.
― Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 16:16 (twenty years ago) link
― Dean Gulberry (deangulberry), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 16:34 (twenty years ago) link
― Dean Gulberry (deangulberry), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 16:35 (twenty years ago) link
― david mc, Wednesday, 22 October 2003 16:48 (twenty years ago) link
― Sean (Sean), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 17:30 (twenty years ago) link
― Daniel (dancity), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 18:15 (twenty years ago) link
― A Nairn (moretap), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 18:16 (twenty years ago) link
:(
― despres, Wednesday, 22 October 2003 18:17 (twenty years ago) link
― Felcher (Felcher), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 18:21 (twenty years ago) link
― scott seward, Wednesday, 22 October 2003 18:21 (twenty years ago) link
― Sami (Sami), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 18:26 (twenty years ago) link
― Jonathan (Jonathan), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 18:35 (twenty years ago) link
I'm filing through my Elliot Smith memories now. All the times I've ever said his name to anyone, or vice versa. They're all positive.
― David Allen, Wednesday, 22 October 2003 18:42 (twenty years ago) link
― peanut (peanut), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 19:06 (twenty years ago) link
I wonder where he was. I've been in some rotten moods in my day, and have imagined slipping away into calm oblivion, but not once EVER have I thought that things might be better if I STABBED MYSELF IN THE FUCKING HEART! And what the fuck kind of knife gets through a breastbone? Did he take a running start? That's extreme violence, extreme pain, extreme punishment. It's so grim, it's fascinating.
― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Wednesday, 22 October 2003 19:16 (twenty years ago) link
i shared a smoke with him once, then went inside the venue to realize --hey thats elliot smith, i guess he doesnt have bleached hair anymore. it was a small going away gig for lou barlow moving to la. 75 people there maybe. everyone sitting on the ground. acoustic set. heavy metal horns, then elliott. he kept skrewing up chord shifts. but it didnt matter. mark p on the money. his guitar playing was so fucking out there.a very sad day.
― kephm, Wednesday, 22 October 2003 19:34 (twenty years ago) link
Gotcha.
Your post above seems to want to reduce the suicidal mindset to a rather simpler thing than it actually is. The "bullshit pills" reference a few posts up seems misguided at best: lots of people who don't take antidepressants wrongly think of them as "happy pills." What they do is address the biochemical issues that are thought by many to have at least partial responsibility for chronic depression that hasn't responded to therapy. E.S. had suffered from both depression and addiction for ages. Neither condition is a simple thing: it's not like E.S. woke up one fine Portland day and said "Fuck it! I'm gonna be a depressed guy, 'cause that's how I like it!" Treatment for this condition isn't "bullshit," nor is refusing to get treated "keeping it real" by any stretch of the imagination.
To use a related example. When I was a psych nurse I had a bunch of patients who were dispomaniacs i.e. who couldn't stop drinking water. You find this thing a lot with chronic schizophrenics, which is what most of my patients were. One guy we had was so far gone that if you let him shower alone, he'd just stand underneath the shower head and drink everything that came out. EVERYTHING. Which will kill you pretty quick, as your electrolyte balance'll get all thrown outta whack and then your blood pressure gets so low that it makes your heart work too heart and kablooey. So, under doctor's orders, we nurses did everything we could to stop him, including restricting his water intake and monitoring his intake & output of all fluids.
From the sounds of it, you'd say we were "restricting his freedom" or something. But he didn't wanna die! Something was wrong with his brain! And depression, despite the way western countries romanticize the hell out of it, isn't some deeper metaphysical understanding of the universe. It's a malfunction of the organism. Sometimes a little of it can be healthy: adversity breeds character! When it makes you wanna kill yourself, then it's time to call it what it is: an ILLNESS. And treat it, regardless of whether or not "alternative" types might sneer as how "false" one is being by choosing happiness over despair.
― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Sunday, 26 October 2003 13:48 (twenty years ago) link
in the sense that depression doesn't do any good to your organism this is certainly true. but somehow i don't buy this reduction of a psychic problem which a depression obviously is to purely physical causes. those antidepressants seem to me like a treatment of the organic symptoms and not the real causes which are psychic. i am no expert on this and i am certainly depressive too at times but i would get very angry if someone forced me to take pills or whatever to cure my so-called depression.
what i don't like about this discussion is that suicide per se seems to be interpreted as the final effect of an illness. and that's certainly not correct. nobody has chosen to live in this world. so everybody is free to take his life. of course there might be cases of people who would kill themselves without wanting it and need help like the water drinker you mentioned but that certainly must be pretty rare.
― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Sunday, 26 October 2003 14:44 (twenty years ago) link
"Depressive at times" - as I say, this can be quite healthy! For people who suffer CHRONIC depression, though, it's a whole different ballgame. Their ability to act in their own interest suffers. I mean, look: if you bought a car, and the car's CPU caused it to drive into a wall every time its tank was a little low, you'd get it fixed, right? I think you have a romantic idea about how psychotropic medications work & about what they do. NB I'm not saying they're not overprescribed - they are - but overprescription doesn't equal "they are horrible," and they certainly don't "change" people's personalities.
― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Sunday, 26 October 2003 14:54 (twenty years ago) link
X with John, who, once again, I agree with.
― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Sunday, 26 October 2003 14:56 (twenty years ago) link
― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Sunday, 26 October 2003 14:57 (twenty years ago) link
― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Sunday, 26 October 2003 14:58 (twenty years ago) link
― N. (nickdastoor), Sunday, 26 October 2003 15:13 (twenty years ago) link
as for him not wanting to. . .it's just my gut feeling here. Attempts don't always mean you want to die just that you don't see other options. Sometimes these attempts reveal other options you were missing all along.
I don't want to speculate on or discuss this individual anymore. It's too heartbreaking for me.
― A Girl Named Sam (thatgirl), Sunday, 26 October 2003 19:53 (twenty years ago) link
― lolita corpus (lolitacorpus), Sunday, 26 October 2003 21:36 (twenty years ago) link
Actually, this is precisely what I suspected - the accounts of recent performances suggested an increasing loosening of associations, etc.
― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Sunday, 26 October 2003 21:46 (twenty years ago) link
― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Sunday, 26 October 2003 21:50 (twenty years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 26 October 2003 22:05 (twenty years ago) link
― RJG (RJG), Monday, 27 October 2003 01:32 (twenty years ago) link
― Ian Grey (Ian_G), Monday, 27 October 2003 05:19 (twenty years ago) link
Grieving does nothing for the dead. We grieve for ourselves, for what we can no longer have. Elliott Smith got exactly what he wanted, and we can give and take nothing else from the man. Because it provided a sense of approval and connection, Smith's old concerts can now be remembered as sacred events. But what a failure of the imagination: all moments are equally rare, whether someone is playing a guitar or not, whether Smith is alive or dead. Those on the message boards who are grateful they saw him perform live are fully vested in the lie that somehow the story, the man, and the experience of the music are all bound together, that the aggregate pleasure of thousands can be summed up into one living soul, one ex-addict with a beating heart, and now his entirely solitary act—seppuku without the second—can be seen as some kind of communion, a concluding act to his oeuvre of bitter depression. A pair of round cracked eyeglasses on an album cover, and a ticket stub from 1998. A bit of cloth dipped in his blood, a fragment of the true cross. It's all abouttakingthe easy way outfor you,I suppose.
― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Monday, 27 October 2003 22:37 (twenty years ago) link
(yes the 14 year old is back)
― Caitlin O'Neil (kurdtkobain205), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 03:20 (twenty years ago) link
― Francis Watlington (Francis Watlington), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 04:54 (twenty years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 28 October 2003 18:40 (twenty years ago) link
Everyone says they’re happy pills. They’re not. If I’m having a shit day I still have a shit day. But it’s not like a shit day/week/month/half-a-fucking year like I used to have. I used to wake up every morning thinking about death.
Not in a wanky self-absorbed romanticised ‘everyone will miss me when I’m gone’ kind of way. More like an animal that knows it’s gonna die soon. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, be around a dying dog.
My conscious mind was in denial about suicide, my unconscious mind was running amok. I was dreaming about how I was gonna go. I had preferred method, location, time – all ‘hypothetical’ of course. The shadows that took me at night were always present in my waking time. Turning ‘the act’ over and over. Refining. Planning. Don’t tell me that‘s a fucking normal state of mind,
People think of suicide like an act. It’s more like an unstoppable motion, a whirlpool event that becomes irreversible at a certain point down the spiral wall. You can see clearly where it all went wrong, back at the outer reaches before you went down the flume. At this point you’re at the mercy of the beast. It either spins itself out or you go down the hole. Depression is cyclical. Next time round it may not be so benevolent.
I was lucky. I got help in time and made it through the potentially dangerous first 2 weeks of treatment. My dosage is now reduced although I accept that I may have to be on medication for the rest of my life. Life still has it’s attendant miseries and humiliations – ho, ho. Still,I can deal with them better without this dark ambient noise that drowns out everything else.
― P.Penn, Tuesday, 28 October 2003 21:06 (twenty years ago) link
― squirlplise, Tuesday, 28 October 2003 22:18 (twenty years ago) link
― Colin Meeder (Mert), Wednesday, 29 October 2003 09:23 (twenty years ago) link
― janni (janni), Friday, 9 January 2004 20:13 (twenty years ago) link
ten years gone
― Johnny Fever, Monday, 21 October 2013 20:35 (ten years ago) link
47 minutes gone hahahahaha never change ILX
― rip van wanko, Monday, 21 October 2013 21:23 (ten years ago) link
maybe i was a little misguided upthread. i don't think i would romanticize suicide as much anymore. in any case i still believe there are situations where suicide may be a relief. like when you have a tumor which eats up your brain. like this guy for example.
― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Monday, 21 October 2013 21:51 (ten years ago) link
Would have been 50. RIP.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 7 August 2019 00:48 (four years ago) link
Man everyone was so mean 15 years ago
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 7 August 2019 01:11 (four years ago) link
I knew better than to read posts, this was just the first non album Smith thread I saw.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 7 August 2019 01:57 (four years ago) link