When I was 17 years old, I wrote Elliott Smith a fan letter.
It was the year 2000, and I was a high school senior in Dallas. I had never written a fan letter to anyone, but I felt connected to Elliott, despite the fact that we didn’t really have that much in common.
He was, after all, a man in his 30s who had tattoos and wore an assortment of black band tees, while I was a teenage girl who shopped at Abercrombie & Fitch. He sang about drinking and drugs; I hadn’t even tried my first beer.
He had the aura of a defiant nonconformist, while I was a pleaser and overachiever, writing for the school paper, singing in the choir, and joining an endless stream of extracurriculars and clubs to pad my college applications.
But Elliott seemed like the quiet type, and so was I, with high social anxiety and low self-esteem. He seemed like an outcast, and I often felt out of place and lonely in the Texas suburb where I grew up, even with family and friends around me.
But what really mesmerised me most about Elliott was his vulnerability. He laid himself so bare in his music, and when I listened to his songs, it felt like reading a diary. It wasn’t just the lyrics – it was his soft singing style, his careful finger-picking, the way he layered vocal tracks so tenderly. I felt like I knew him, like I was a friend he trusted with his secrets.
I wanted to reach out to Elliott to thank him, and convey how important his music was to me. I found an address for his record label, Kill Rock Stars, in the liner notes of one of his CDs, and I mailed the letter. And then I waited.
Months passed, and no response. Maybe I sent it to the wrong address, I thought. I never really expected to hear back, but I did wonder if he even got it.
Graduation came and went. I headed off to college. Elliott didn’t release any new albums.
And in 2003, he died violently and tragically at the age of 34.
The subject line read “Fwd: Elliott Smith biography.” My former boss had passed along a message that was sent to my old work email – the one associated with my maiden name, which no one had called me in years. It was 2023, and I had recently turned 40.
The email was from a writer named Jamie Fisher, who said she was working on a biography about Elliott Smith.
“I’m wondering if you’re the same Kirby Van Amburgh who wrote a fan letter to him around 2000,” she wrote. “His family still has the letter, and I was wondering whether you got a response.”
I sucked in my breath. This means Elliott got my letter! I thought. He must have read it, right? And if he kept it, maybe it meant something to him.
I responded to Jamie immediately. Even though I hadn’t gotten anything from Elliott, she still wanted to talk to me, so we set up a time to chat on the phone the next week.
Source: Read the original article on www.huffingtonpost.co.uk
