The last two tracks on XO are “everybody cares, everybody understands” & “i didn’t understand.” i think that just about says it all.
by krisis
Archives for November 2000
Elliott Smith is one of those people that craft songs that sound immediately familiar. Of course, i’m not just realizing that now, since i’m already achingly familiar with his last disc, XO. I first came across it while in Anastasia’s bedroom. We’d just sit on her floor every sunday for hours, talking and watching movies and listening to tori and other music. Our big difference in taste was that i liked women, and she liked men. … Musically, that is. But, slowly we infringed upon each other’s taste. Suddenly Anastasia was listening to Dilate, and i was borrowing her copy of XO and listening to it in a stunned silence as i wondered how Elliott found noises for those empty places inside my own heart. Two years later i just bought two of her favourite discs from my senior year, and she’s in college somewhere in New York. And Elliott still invokes those familiar aches.
Or maybe i’m wrong. I’ve spent years now learning and teaching my peers about HIV / AIDS, and really this is the first season in half a decade i’ve spent totally removed from such a community. Is it any less in my thoughts? No, not at all. I’ve known people who have died from aids, and met some of the bravest people in the world who live with the disease. In fact, if statistics are to be believed, i have at least three or four friends who suffer from HIV or will in the near future. Of course, i pray to myself that the statistics are as wrong as statistics tend to be, but i suppose i’ll hardly ever know until it’s much too late. Maybe silence is a way to show how AIDS effects your world, but it isn’t the way to show how it has effected mine. But, no matter how it’s changed you, i encourage you to support World AIDS day as well, even if it’s just by wearing a tiny red ribbon. They aren’t as fashionable as they used to be, but red will be in season until HIV is not.
I think it’s an empty gesture, because silence is the real reason that people are now dying from AIDS by the tens of thousands. It isn’t over, it’s more pervasive then ever, and all of us being silent for a day isn’t gonna get us anywhere. Instead, i am either going to spend the day volunteering with Manna to help get food to shut-in AIDS patients, or donate a dime for every word i blog. You see, there are times that silence only contributes to the problem…
But, now that Miss Janet has left my computer, now i’m here alone with Elliott Smith’s fragile voice and lush beatles-esque production. Oh, what will i do with myself now…