YouTube Pick Of The Week – ‘Angel In The Snow’ by Elliott Smith
I asked on Twitter the other day for some recommended ‘acoustic maestros’. I was getting that middle of the week need for something new and soulful to listen to. I was after something with some touching lyrics, a hint of the familiar and homely, but also the quirk of originality that makes such maestros stand out.
Consequently a gent I went to university with, recommended that I should stock up on a good dose of Elliott Smith. And a fine selection that turned out to be, as you can sample here with Angel In The Snow. It’s a delightfully warm and lightly-touching way to spend two and a half minutes of your day, passing simple yet striking lyrics softly to your ears and beautifully opening Mr Smith’s 2009 album New Moon. You should probably check that if you like this:
The Yearly – ‘Reasons To Abolish St Valentine’s Day’
Ain’t That Just The Way…
…that life goes down?
If I have children, I’ll be sure to tell them not to make any assumptions about life. Never take things for granted and never assume there are any constants or quantifiable dependables in this world. Taxes? Yes. Death? Yes. That really is it. Always, always, when you’re in the moment things seem to be trotting along, and then you make the mistake of considering where you are, where you thought you’d be and what you thought you’d do. At that point you’ll probably think ’shit, I was way off’. Here’s the list of three off the top of my head:
Never would I go to university – I did
Never would I work in London – I am
Definitely would move to London – I’m moving a mile down the road in Kent.
I don’t know – it’s probably all a bit of a coincidence, but all of the big things that I assume will happen either don’t, or the opposite does. And ‘assumption is the mother of all’ of course…But the need to not assume can be applied to everyone for serious matters – the unexpected deaths of loved ones for example (and my thoughts are with some people right now), the trivial – being randomly invited to play football in your favoured position after nine months out of the game, the fortune – finding money in a trouser pocket, and just the incredible stories of tragedy, hope, success and failure that echo around us on a day to day basis.
Socrates said ‘We are but dust in the wind’, and I’ve always had trouble with that. We have goals and we work towards them afterall, but in the working we get battered or soothed by currents and don’t always end up where we thought we would. Perhaps some of us are just better gliders?
I realise I’m rambling a bit now – but what I’m getting at is that really it seems assuming anything in this world is a fool’s game. I know people say it, but who really believes that they wont get where they think they will? Free will might be an illusion, or it might not. But I guarantee, even if nothing seems to happen of any ‘consequence’, when you look back you’ll probably think ‘Christ, how did get from A to B? I didn’t mean that at all.’
I’m writing all of this because it’s been too long since I’ve had time to think about how we progress through out brief moments on the planet. I’m thinking about it at the moment, because the last two weeks have been crazy for me. So many things happening and going to happen that it seems for the first time in ages things are shaking up. When of course they are going on anyway – shaking up daily. The wind never stops blowing. The days never stop coming. And we never seem to stop assuming. The thing is, just now and again at least, we need to stop doing that.
