Elliott Smith Appears In My Dreams

I’m actually not quite sure why I’m making this post. Smith is certainly not indie music headline news (anymore), and New Moon has come and gone without me making even an attempt at a review. I guess I just felt like writing about him today (at 7 in the morning), and I wanted to talk about a very peculiar phenomenon regarding him.

Nearly 4 years after he passed, Elliott still finds one way or another to remind me of him. One interesting way is that he appears in my dreams at night. I’m sure there’s a psychoFreudian dude out there who will be able to neatly dissect these cameos - so I won’t. But what strikes me about these dreams is how completely, utterly ordinary they are. I was, like many, a huge fan. So I might have expected him to be some sort of super-human guitar hero in my sleep. You’d also think that the dreams would take place at a club or some other music-related venue.

Nope, usually he just appears as just another character in my dreams. Like last night, when he was a buddy at a family camping trip. Or a few months ago when he was at college with me taking an English midterm. He wasn’t giving me help or anything - he was just a friend taking the test with me. He’s always doing completely ordinary things.

To be sure, he does play the guitar and other musical instruments occasionally in the dreams. One time, he sat down at an upright piano and played an entire song that I’d never heard before. It sounded more like classical music than anything else. After I woke up, I wrote down the chords I could remember, and that became the last song on Shape of Trees. Strangeness.

Smith appears in my dreams infrequently, though he’s always just a regular character. I’m told that it’s extremely common to have people who have passed on appear in dreams. It’s just interesting because I think he is the only non-family or friend who regularly comes to visit.

There’s really no point to this post. In 2003, when I found out about his passing I was planning on writing a memorial post about the ways that his music and life affected me. I never got around to it - or perhaps more honestly, I wasn’t able to do it.

So this small blurb years after the fact will have to do for now. Elliott Smith passed on, but he became a part of my subconsciousness in more ways than one. I never met him in person, but I’ve gotten to know him through the endless possibilities of sleep.

Me doing a bad cover of Roman Candle in 2000
for the Head Full of Stars tribute

by Palebear