Upper Case “T”

I don’t know why but one of the few songwriters, who can consistently make me cry, if I let him, is Elliot Smith.  I simply believe him, and care when he tells a story.  The aural sensibility is pared down, tasteful, affirmative and the harmonies bathe you the way Beatle harmonies do.   He is my favorite song writer of the last twenty years.

And with a few swipes of my thumb, I queued up his entire discography on to my phone the other day.  Descending the stairs to the gym it occurred to me to he and all his work was now accessible once again.  So I threw ‘X.O.’ on.  And as “Sweet Adeline” turned into “Tomorrow, Tomorrow” I felt the tears swell and I pushed harder and more emphatically on the stair master.  No doubt there were taut facial gestures, grimaces and swoops of the hand to accompany.   And I had an epiphany that I should really try to turn my older daughter on to this album. 

This morning in the car ride over to school they had on Ed Sheeran who seems to me like a watered down, troubled with a lower case “t”, version of Elliot Smith.  Now Elliot Smith was clearly an upper case “T” role model for anything other than song writing.  And the songs are the view into a sensitive, emotive, car-wreck of a life.  But something genuine is required before the light bulb of authenticity, blinks on and it is clear that something is distinguished, from say Ed’s work. 

Now all this has to be handled very carefully or someone will dismiss it outright.  I’m open to the idea that perhaps I may not succeed at all.  I’ll take that risk.  I imagined that the car ride home from school might afford us a chance.  But as it turned out I had a guest accompany me for the ride, and she was bringing a friend home.  This wasn’t the time.  No point.   Later in the evening I asked her.  “Hey, you wanna . . . “  But she was busy.  “No problem.  Homework comes first.”  Perhaps ‘tomorrow, tomorrow.’