| Elliott Smith – Don't Fear the Reaper (Blue Oyster Cult cover) Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Are Ceasarian Sections the whole point of Macbeth? Ghosts the full measure of Hamlet? | |
| Elliott Smith – King's Crossing Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I agree almost totally with your last statement, there. It's not something that you can analyze through a window (though Travolta did a pretty damn good job in a role that probably did its part, along with Kurt C, Layne, heroin chic,. and all the rest, not in glamorizing heroin, because it almost all ends in death even in those portraits real or not, but in accidentally giving it a "cool" taboo kind of image and turning on a good portion of the 18-24 "Haven't quite entirely figured their life direction out yet" crowd.) I feel, though, that this song also seems to be at some parts (It don't matter 'cause I've got no sex life, and all I want to do is inject my ex-wife, for instance) about the desire that Elliott must have felt at times after doing a huge, huge, shot for a layman (tolerance to heroin builds exponentially. Someone with no opioid tolerance could make a good Saturday night of $10 worth and maybe more if it's good and depending on what region they live in/how they administer it, yet $200-300 worth would have probably been just barely enough for a 24 hour period for Elliott or Kurt Cobain at their peak, or maybe even not enough for the former, from what I've read) Elliott felt tempted to simply give up ever trying to give up the emotional numbness/insulation and euphoria that heroin provided for him and to just keep at it till the end of the road. In this view, a line like "Seen the movie..." might well refer to Elliott knowing that this isn't sustainable in any realistic way at all, but still being tempted/wanting to go for it when the pressures in his life really added up. It's sad that his life had to end the way it did, and I'm just as against everyone interpreting all of his songs as being about heroin as anyone, but this one clearly is. King's Crossing is a walk through the pains and pleasures of the things that Elliott attempts to use to cope with his internal state, and of simply being Elliott Smith at the time and feeling very depressed. That "Because we love you..." always gets to me... |
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