My name's Chris. When I was once asked to pick three words to describe myself,
I wrote need more words, which got me into a great deal of trouble.
antipode n. \ˈan-tə-ˌpōd\
I am scared of Elliott Smith because when he sings, I hear my own voice. The one I have taught myself not to listen to, the one that tells me that all demons are untamable and that all loves are impossible. I will always be alone, the voice sings. I am deeply unlovable, unfixable, undiscoverable. Everything I touch turns to ash. The voice's rhymes are cruel and beautiful and sung with a calmness that comes from speaking a simple and hard truth. Even when he covers "Thirteen," a sickly-sweet adolescent love ballad in its original form, he transforms it into a desperate, self-pitying plea: "Would you be an outlaw for my love? / If it's so, then let me know / If it's no then I can go / And I won't make you."
Elliott Smith didn't go into decline, didn't disappear into obscurity or mystery. There is no mistaking where his path leads. He stabbed himself in the chest with a knife after an argument with his girlfriend. He left a suicide note written on a Post-It.
His music is a siren song. I know this. I still listen.
"Going Nowhere" from New Moon
I bought Sigur Rós's "Takk" a month after my grandfather died. I loved him very much, and it was the first funeral I ever went to; I didn't know how to begin to think about death. The day I bought it, I was trying to work something out in my mind -- I don't remember exactly anymore, it was a problem at work and I was mired in that state where you know what the problem is but still have no idea how to approach it -- and it was raining gently. I popped the CD into my car stereo and it felt like a part of my brain that had been asleep a long time woke up. As I listened to the first song, more an invocation than a melody, I saw shapes in my mind rotate and connect. As I drove through the rain, I knew exactly how to solve my work problem, but more than that -- I felt a happiness that had been remote, that I had been in danger of forgetting that it existed.
I had found angry music while I was dealing with my grandfather's death. It's easy to find, and some of it is really good. But what I needed was happy music. I think happiness, genuine happiness, is the hardest thing of all to capture in art.
Sigur Rós creates the most joyful music I have ever known. It is wordless. Some of their songs are in their native Icelandic. A few are said to be in English but I can't understand. And a large portion of them are sung in what Jónsi Birgisson, the lead singer, calls Hopelandic: a babble of sounds that approach language, but never fully become it. The songs don't really have titles, either -- there are ones printed in the liner notes, but they feel unnecessary, and their 2002 album ( ) has no song titles at all. Language is only a burden, a set of bulky clothes that only prevent you from experiencing the world as human beings ought to.
It is music I want to dance to with the woman I marry.
"Heima," performed live
Elliott Smith didn't go into decline, didn't disappear into obscurity or mystery. There is no mistaking where his path leads. He stabbed himself in the chest with a knife after an argument with his girlfriend. He left a suicide note written on a Post-It.
His music is a siren song. I know this. I still listen.
"Going Nowhere" from New Moon
I bought Sigur Rós's "Takk" a month after my grandfather died. I loved him very much, and it was the first funeral I ever went to; I didn't know how to begin to think about death. The day I bought it, I was trying to work something out in my mind -- I don't remember exactly anymore, it was a problem at work and I was mired in that state where you know what the problem is but still have no idea how to approach it -- and it was raining gently. I popped the CD into my car stereo and it felt like a part of my brain that had been asleep a long time woke up. As I listened to the first song, more an invocation than a melody, I saw shapes in my mind rotate and connect. As I drove through the rain, I knew exactly how to solve my work problem, but more than that -- I felt a happiness that had been remote, that I had been in danger of forgetting that it existed.
I had found angry music while I was dealing with my grandfather's death. It's easy to find, and some of it is really good. But what I needed was happy music. I think happiness, genuine happiness, is the hardest thing of all to capture in art.
Sigur Rós creates the most joyful music I have ever known. It is wordless. Some of their songs are in their native Icelandic. A few are said to be in English but I can't understand. And a large portion of them are sung in what Jónsi Birgisson, the lead singer, calls Hopelandic: a babble of sounds that approach language, but never fully become it. The songs don't really have titles, either -- there are ones printed in the liner notes, but they feel unnecessary, and their 2002 album ( ) has no song titles at all. Language is only a burden, a set of bulky clothes that only prevent you from experiencing the world as human beings ought to.
It is music I want to dance to with the woman I marry.
"Heima," performed live
