My 500 is better than The Rolling Stone
In September 2021, esteemed rock mag Rolling Stone published a list of what they believed to be the 500 best songs ever. Gauntlet thrown sufficiently downward, and fuelled by a lifelong addiction to lists, lists of any kind but especially music lists, lists being the way in which a young me made sense of the world, I decided to make my own. Anyway, I did and there’s a playlist.
In October, bored and listless, I decided to write a little about each song. Something that it provoked in me. Not always a critique, not always a memoir about my relationship to that song, sometimes it would be fiction, or poetry. I hadn’t yet decided. I would do a song at random, the Spotify shuffle would be my muse…
#276 – Waltz – Elliott Smith
There is a feeling that I used to really like, a feeling I got only a couple of times, but it’s one I’ll probably never get again, being too old to stay the distance now. It’s a feeling you get maybe 6 or 7am and you’ve been out all night. It’s probably midsummer. There’s only been a little bit of darkness. You’ve drunk a lot and you’ve done other things too. You’ve been out to some place you never went before, met some cool people and ended up back at theirs, drinking and listening to music and talking and feeling like you’re connecting with somebody important, ignoring the chemicals rattling around your system and thinking this might be a profound moment and wanting to hold on to it, not wanting the night to go or to end, but knowing it has to and feeling when you’re in the back of a taxi, with the window slightly open and the sky all pink and shy outside, feeling like you’re in a polaroid picture taken by something bigger than you, that the moment was beautiful but it’s gone and there’s no point in being sad about it, there’s nothing to mourn, everything is temporary and that, like this taxi journey, it’ll soon be over. You’re just a figure framed in a moment already gone. Maybe you’ll be alone in the taxi except for the driver. Maybe there’ll be a friend with you. It’s not important. What is important is that feeling, it’s a little short of love, but it’s close, a kind of nervousness and excitement just at life. A fleeting burst of satisfaction tinged with the recognition that it doesn’t come around too often, this feeling.
The taxi will turn into your street and it’s still early and
you get out and you suddenly feel very tired, the feeling is going already and
every now and then you’ll get a little taste of it, a little déjà vu thing, a
little snapshot of a sensation you had a couple of times. There was a night in
London where I met a group of people from the internet for the first time, and
we had a lot of drinks, and when we left there was that trapped city heat still
there, two in the morning, keeping us happy and laughing. I had that feeling
then, like I could see the picture of it and me in it.
Another time I ended up in Newport with my friend Bev, this
boxer and his girlfriend, and they had Elliott Smith on and I’m strung out on whatever
we’ve done and this boxer’s girlfriend takes me up to their bedroom and starts
mopping my brow and singing to me on her bed. Nothing happens, I’m just very
tired and high and far from home, and besides there’s a boxer downstairs, and
then I’m in a taxi and it’s that feeling again, where you and the taxi driver
are the only people in the world and Cardiff looks like New York as you shoot
through and you can’t explain it, you just lock it away until it’s time to
think about it again.
I don’t know what that is but I call it The Elliot Smith
feeling.
