"I'll fake it through the day with some help from Johnnie Walker Red."
As an opening line, Elliott Smith reveals so much about his state of mind in "Miss Misery," perhaps his most well-known song.
Monday marked 10 years since the death of the singer and songwriter, known for compositions that were raw and vulnerable.
Many times, Smith's voice hovered just above a mumble. Listeners could hear his hands drag across the guitar strings, as though the weight of his depression were so heavy that lifting a finger to tell us his tale was a hassle.
His songs felt like a dull, familiar ache, a palpable melancholy as warm and snugly as a treasured hoodie.
Among those is "Miss Misery," known for its inclusion on the "Good Will Hunting" soundtrack. For his work, Smith earned an Oscar nomination.
That opening line drags us kicking and screaming into the middle of Smith's struggles with alcoholism, depression and heroin addiction. It's a single phrase that walks us into an entire universe.
What's beautiful about "Miss Misery," like so much of Smith's work, is how his tone serves as an invitation. That meek voice roped in so many listeners.
It made him relatable. I think that even people who don't struggle with addiction can find something about those words to understand and appreciate.
It's noteworthy that he doesn't sing "I'll make it through the day," a change of a single letter that would reverberate through the entire phrase. That would read less like an acknowledgement than a confession.
No, "I'll fake it through the day" tells us he feels his every action is a front and that he knows alcoholism is a vehicle to carry the underlying issues, not the road on which they drive.
I don't think I spent a great deal of time thinking about the line or how revealing it was until I'd listened to it for years.
It's appropriate, too, that it's forever tied to "Good Will Hunting." I remember seeing the film in the theater. When the credits rolled, I told the girl I with whom I saw it that I felt like Damon's title character in a way I had difficulty describing. I still wonder if she thinks I was trying to say I believed myself to be a physically abused mathematical genius.
What I meant was that I related to the part of Will who seemed alone and isolated. I think it's fair to say I connected with Will for the same reason I connected with Smith's character — if it is, indeed, a character — in "Miss Misery."
I think the reason many enjoyed Smith's works is because he was honest about himself in his songs. Whether it was addiction or depression, he put it out there.
That resonates. There's a part in all of us, for reasons we don't always know or comprehend, that can feel disconnected from our lives and from the people around us and Smith knew that.
"I'll fake it through the day" is an admission that sometimes we masquerade through our own lives, acting how we want people to see us as opposed to how we truly feel.
It's at this crossroads where I still find Smith's work, even 10 years after he's gone. Though he died of multiple, possibly self-inflicted, stab wounds to the chest in 2003, his legacy is a gift telling listeners that they aren't alone, that other people deal with pain, hurt, loss, isolation and more.
Perhaps he never found the peace of mind that his recordings continue to give others, but, if nothing else, Smith's honest, vulnerable body of work serves as an emotional salve, a reminder that we are not alone in the hardships that we all sometimes endure.
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