I was thinking about my brother-in-law. No real reason. He was 20 years older than I am and he died 5 years ago of cancer. When you break up with someone, you see your life together as a finite period of time and you can drop into different parts of the relationship whenever you want to: one moment she is whispering in your ear that she secretly loved you too, as she leans across a barstool, then you can move to a different part, her driving away from you as she reaches for a cell phone, she doesn't look back. But why bother with the later, right? When you can move with ease between the good times with such ease.And it is the same with my brother-in-,law, I don't think of the terrible pain and sorrow of his end, instead I am 15 year old boy on summer vacation in Scotland, listening to Simon And Garfunkel's Greatest hits in the back of the car while my sister sits besides him singing tonelessly to the music.
Again, think of a romance that last six months, you can stop and remember any day of that romance -who wants to think of the break up?, or a life, the time you knew somebody. I don't want to stop at a morphine filled Sam ravished by cancer and dying… why would I stop at that moment? The same way, I am forced to stop at that one moment, the final moment of his life… people don't want to think about it because it isn't where they want to stop.
Why do I mention this? Because it explains a central problem to writing about Elliott Smith's still unsolved death. Did he kill himself? Was it an accident? A crime of passion? I don't want to think about it, I don't want to return to that moment in his life. Especially since I don't have to. I can return to moments in the music, I can watch him at the Oscars,… I can choose my moments and who wants to choose that one?
I don't. I'm tired. Why not let poor Elliott alone. What difference does it make. When I did that séance a couple of years ago (a goof, true), Elliott "said" he wasn't after revenge on any one, he just wanted people to know he didn't kill himself.
OK, let's say he did kill himself. All that would prove is that in that moment he didn't want to live. As thorough as stabbing yourself in the stomach is, it is not the self-annihilation of blowing your head off with a gun. The proof is, he didn't die immediately and if Chiba had got him to a hospital quicker he might have live
And again. Stuck in that moment. There are others. Liam Gowing spoke to me about being at a Birthday party for Smith and how happy he was, there's one. And for the hell of his childhood there was the grown up Smith paving a career as a pop star to contact it. To think of Smith is not to want to think of that knife… was it shoved in his stomach? Absolutely. By him or someone else?
So I glance at it and pass it by. After awhile all I want to do is pass it by because when you get unstuck in a moment, even somebody else's, you are lady Lady Havisham in Great Expectations, in the same wedding dress, the same room, the same world you were forsaken in 20 years before. And that's a bit what happens with Elliott. You keep on returning over and over. Perhaps it is like a Phillip K Dick novel, where you return to the scene of Elliott's death and you walk around, you put your ear outside the bathroom door listening for Chiba showering as Smith bangs against the door, warning he will kill himself. According to chiba. Or maybe, you go back to that medium we contacted and instead of that scene playing out, there is another, where Smith throws Chiba out for being unfaithful and she kills him in a fit of rage.
Or neither. Maybe it is like a Mom who lets go of her sons and in a shopping mall, turns round and he is gone never to be seen again. The mother is left to relive the moment only this time she doesn't let go of his hand.
This is how it plays out, writing about Smith's end. A creepy, disturbing, upsetting,pointless dance in the space between reality and imagination. And it would be nice to just give up. and concentrate on the music because the difference between a concerned fan and a conspiracy theorist is only time, we change from one to another even while neither the facts nor the players change at all.
In the end all Chiba, or the police really, all they ahve to do is nothing and they can sweep that day away. Smith will become Cobain and the last image will be that of tortured genius filled with self loathing. But we who want the case reopened have to make something happen -we have to push someone to action. And our enemy is the LAPD's friend. Time. Time isn't on our side. Over and over again, we return to that day and all we want to do is miss it. Elliott Smith is unstuck in time.