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A Passing Feeling Lyrics
Everything is gone but the echo of the burst of a shell
And I'm stuck waiting for a passing feeling
In the city I built up and blew to hell
I'm stuck here waiting for a passing feeling
Still I send all the time
My request for relief
Down the dead power lines
Though I'm beyond belief
In the help I require
Just to exist at all
Took a long time to stand
Just an hour to fall.
I'm stuck here waiting for a passing feeling
Stuck here waiting for the passing feeling
Still I send all the time
My request for relief
Down the dead power lines
Though I'm beyond belief
In the help I require
Just to exist at all
Took a long time to stand
Just an hour to fall
And I'm stuck waiting for a passing feeling
In the city I built up and blew to hell
I'm stuck here waiting for a passing feeling
My request for relief
Down the dead power lines
Though I'm beyond belief
In the help I require
Just to exist at all
Took a long time to stand
Just an hour to fall.
Stuck here waiting for the passing feeling
Still I send all the time
My request for relief
Down the dead power lines
Though I'm beyond belief
In the help I require
Just to exist at all
Took a long time to stand
Just an hour to fall
Song Info
Submitted by
dragonflower44 On Jan 19, 2002
More Elliott Smith
Between the Bars
Needle in the Hay
King's Crossing
Twilight (Somebody's Baby)
A Fond Farewell
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Hmm, no one seems to think about this song like I do. In the beginning he talks about how a bullet was just fired. He has killed himself, and now he is waiting for something to happen. Obviously, no one knows what happens when you die. Hes waiting for whatever it is happens when you die. And I think the city he built up and blew to hell, is his own body. Think about it, he aged and grew up into an adult taking care of himself, then he just destroyed it with drugs. Hes sending drugs down his veins when he says hes sending his request for relief down the dead power lines.
the echo of a burst of a shell is a metaphor for the shooting heroin.
the echo of a burst of a shell is a metaphor for the shooting heroin.
the shell (charge) is shooting it. the burst is the rush. the echo is the feeling as it fades into the rest of the dull sensation.
the shell (charge) is shooting it. the burst is the rush. the echo is the feeling as it fades into the rest of the dull sensation.
and he's waiting for that passing feeling again. it's so short, it only exists in passing. yet that's what every junky wants. that passing feeling.
and he's waiting for that passing feeling again. it's so short, it only exists in passing. yet that's what every junky wants. that passing feeling.
You really have no idea about the person you're listening to. The city he blew to hell is his own life, everything he created crumbled, caused by the fuses he lit. If you had any sort of psychologically metaphorical way of interpreting things like Elliott did, you'd realize that when he says "Took a long time to stand, took an hour to fall", he means it took him a life time to build his city, his castle, but it took him only a very short time to destroy it all.
You really have no idea about the person you're listening to. The city he blew to hell is his own life, everything he created crumbled, caused by the fuses he lit. If you had any sort of psychologically metaphorical way of interpreting things like Elliott did, you'd realize that when he says "Took a long time to stand, took an hour to fall", he means it took him a life time to build his city, his castle, but it took him only a very short time to destroy it all.
Elliott speaks of a bigger picture, he's not...
Elliott speaks of a bigger picture, he's not just focusing primarily on one certain thing, like his drug addiction. You colossal fools who believe almost every one of his songs is about drugs, you just have no idea at all about who this man was or the meaning he was trying to get across.
This song could be about many things, loss, death, debt, friendships, relationships, life itself, but the first thing you somehow decipher from it is "DRUGS!", it really is quite demeaning to Elliott's caliber of lyrical quality and to your own lacking intelligence to assume such small-minded things.
@jimicobain I’m not sure if you’re directing your comment at me as well. I had no intention of making my comment seem like it was strictly focused on drugs, but I can understand why you might think that. I agree with you that Elliott’s lyrics were very broad and impressionistic. This song is about many aspects of ones life, I just included what line of two I thought could be interpreted as drugs. The whole song is extravagantly poignant and obviously much deeper.
@jimicobain I’m not sure if you’re directing your comment at me as well. I had no intention of making my comment seem like it was strictly focused on drugs, but I can understand why you might think that. I agree with you that Elliott’s lyrics were very broad and impressionistic. This song is about many aspects of ones life, I just included what line of two I thought could be interpreted as drugs. The whole song is extravagantly poignant and obviously much deeper.
Elliott has a way with making sad songs seem eerily happy.
The lyrics are usually pretty depressing, yet his voice and the instruments mask that.
It reminds me of how his life might have been. Hiding his problems with a happy fasade.
-Jason
the built-up city = getting clean (takes a long time) blowing it to hell = sticking a needle in your arm again (takes an hour if your dealer is picking up) dead power line = veins passing feeling = opiate comedown (sucks!)
is this obvious to everyone, or just users?
I too am a user, but I have more respect for Elliott than to demean him by believing this song is about just primarily one specific subject, he went deeper then that, he saw a bigger picture, I don't think people like you really understand him at all. So many of you seem to think this song and so many of his others are only about or mainly about drugs or his own addiction, that makes me feel so sorry for you all, you truly have no way of hearing Elliott like I do.
I too am a user, but I have more respect for Elliott than to demean him by believing this song is about just primarily one specific subject, he went deeper then that, he saw a bigger picture, I don't think people like you really understand him at all. So many of you seem to think this song and so many of his others are only about or mainly about drugs or his own addiction, that makes me feel so sorry for you all, you truly have no way of hearing Elliott like I do.
How about this? -
How about this? -
The built city...
The built city - His life(a friendship, a relationship)
Blowing it all to hell - Making a monumental mistake that cost him the life he was building, destroying it all with one unintentional reflex. I relate to this line quite heavily, as I too have caused much destruction in my own city, whether it's losing jobs, losings friends, losing loved ones, or losing yourself, I think that's the level Elliott was speaking to us on, and he takes all the blame for his mistakes, this is a song by a depressed man that doesn't forgive himself, not a drug-fucked junkie waiting for his next hit.
"I send all the time My request for relief, down the dead power lines" - I sincerely believe he means he has asked for help so many times, accepted so many hands, but now he feels as a boy who cried wolf, like he asked for too much, he can no longer get relief because he's sending his request down cut-off power lines, his life sources, he no longer receives, he just requests.
Passing feeling - Happiness itself, once you get to a stage Elliott obviously reached with depression and so on, being truly happy is an EXTREMELY rare occasion, trust me on that. But this line could mean many, many, many things, it's quite a wide metaphor, so I think it's very sad that so many of you just straight off the bat aim for it as a drug reference, really think about it, I mean, come on, if you know anything about Elliott and his lyrical style, you'd realize that he's quite subtle, yet he seems to send off a similar message through almost all of his songs, a lot of you seem to see it as a message about drugs, but I think you need to spend a bit of time in that mind of yours and start thinking a bit bigger, Elliott is not simplistic, he's a lyrical genius.
@JimiCobain , I realize this is years later for both of these posts and so this'lll go unseen, but felt I needed to reply to Jimi's reply. I understand the natural touchiness E.S. fans have about casual listeners thinking "every" song is just about drugs. However, he did OFTEN use substance abuse as a strong element in order to heighten narratives of other situations and emotions, and there ARE tunes where it is itself the core subject. This is one of them. "A passing feeling" refers to the unsustainable high, and the repeated "requests for relief" or, alternatively, "help to...
@JimiCobain , I realize this is years later for both of these posts and so this'lll go unseen, but felt I needed to reply to Jimi's reply. I understand the natural touchiness E.S. fans have about casual listeners thinking "every" song is just about drugs. However, he did OFTEN use substance abuse as a strong element in order to heighten narratives of other situations and emotions, and there ARE tunes where it is itself the core subject. This is one of them. "A passing feeling" refers to the unsustainable high, and the repeated "requests for relief" or, alternatively, "help to exist at all" are fairly obvious nods to the chasing of that escape through suppliers, now needed just to cope with reality rather than enhance it. Finally (and I'm purposefully not breaking down each section, though I could), even if you wanted to argue the rest was simply about deep depression rather than addiction, breaking free from depression normally, and then slipping back into it does not happen with the clockwork-like nature of "an hour to fall". It is, as illustrated in other Elliott songs which ARE just about depression, a layered and constant 'funk' which one does not enter into OR get out of with anything close to that speed or ease. That "hour to fall" is a specific and notable reference to the rapid vanishing of the false happiness generated by intoxication. The whole song itself is haunting and masterful, from the foreboding "bad shit coming" piano that opens, to the stuttering guitar and drum outro, to the words themselves. I understand being frustrated if people think every song is about a certain subject, especially if it's something you can't relate to, but some of them are. A song is NOT shallow merely because it is about substance abuse; in fact, thinking that that is the case, as you seem to, is shallow. Just take this song as an example: it is a deeply moving and poetic meditation on the buzzsaw cycle of suffering, craving, temporary peace and then even deeper suffering that is addiction.
@leadmyskeptic One of the things that always struck me about Elliott Smith's songs about addiction, in particular, was his remarkable capacity to take addiction and its agonies and make them both clear and relatable to straights. A really quality lyric, at least to my taste, is often really about how much we, as humans, can empathize with each other even when our experiences differ. Elliott Smith was so brilliant at that particular skill that most people will refuse to see what they're even relating to. I've had people argue that songs can't be about drugs because that would be "shallow" for way too...
@leadmyskeptic One of the things that always struck me about Elliott Smith's songs about addiction, in particular, was his remarkable capacity to take addiction and its agonies and make them both clear and relatable to straights. A really quality lyric, at least to my taste, is often really about how much we, as humans, can empathize with each other even when our experiences differ. Elliott Smith was so brilliant at that particular skill that most people will refuse to see what they're even relating to. I've had people argue that songs can't be about drugs because that would be "shallow" for way too many artists I love. Drives me mad. You can be deep and a heroin addict at the same time, kids. A song can be deep and be about drugs simultaneously. Just like songs about any other subject can be deep or shallow, layered or straightforward. Personally, I like artists that show me I can relate to thieves and junkies and all manner of people Different From Myself. Broadens my world. (So somebody saw what you wrote anyway, heh.)
Suicide.
Moron.
Moron.
The guitar line at the end is one of my favorite parts of any song ever.
This song is so pretty, if you don't really pay attention, it'll end and you'll think, "Well, that was pleasant." I listened closer and thought, "My god, that poor man." Then I listened to it in the midst of a depressive episode and everything clicked together like tumblers in a lock.
Everything is gone but the echo of the burst of a shell
And I'm stuck waiting for a passing feeling
In the city I built up and blew to hell
I'm stuck here waiting for a passing feeling
Still I send all the time
My request for relief
Down the dead power lines
Though I'm beyond belief
In the help I require
Just to exist at all
Took a long time to stand
Just an hour to fall.
This song fires up the water works like nothing else. It makes me glad Elliott's dead for his sake, and envious of him at once.
I don't think this song necessarily had to have been about staying clean or suicide. I think it was more about the endless struggle to maintain anything, and no matter how much you try, everything is eventually going to fall apart, and you just have to move on. A lot of the time you don't want to move on, but you have to.
I couldn't understand the lyrics from listening. Now, after reading them, I see how freaking depressing they are.
It's true, ES has a way of making everything sound like faintly interesting conversation.. Even suicidal feelings. Especially suicidal feelings.
I found this to be really interesting, you probably will too. From Elliott Smith's last interview before his untimely death he made these comments on this song: "I was really into staying up four or five days at a time while recording. Some of them didn't take to long like this one. There was a co-producer early on but he didn't really co-produce. He just walked angrily in and out of the room because I knew what I wanted to do. I'm playing every instrument on this one except one. There's also a fill in this song that's almost all kick drum and sounds really funny."
i have listened to this song many times and also know that elliott was into heroin off and on throughout his career (heavy-up toward his untimely end). it is my guess that this is a song about using heroin and the radical downside to the drug. "dead power lines", i'm convinced, alludes to the over-used veins in his arm and the lack of "relief" he ultimately experienced through the injection of the drug. additionally, the idea that it "took a long time to stand/took an hour to fall" i believe alludes to the drug and his fight to get...
i have listened to this song many times and also know that elliott was into heroin off and on throughout his career (heavy-up toward his untimely end). it is my guess that this is a song about using heroin and the radical downside to the drug. "dead power lines", i'm convinced, alludes to the over-used veins in his arm and the lack of "relief" he ultimately experienced through the injection of the drug. additionally, the idea that it "took a long time to stand/took an hour to fall" i believe alludes to the drug and his fight to get over it; that is, recovery is slow and hard and relapse using the drug "took (only) an hour to fall."
Musicians don't write and pour their heart and soul out to tell you about the drugs they are on. They are analogies relating to his life. Every Elliot Smith song on here has comments that says he's talking about frickin heroin. I believe he could have written this song with no intent in having the listener think he was on heroin. There's a bigger message here people.
Musicians don't write and pour their heart and soul out to tell you about the drugs they are on. They are analogies relating to his life. Every Elliot Smith song on here has comments that says he's talking about frickin heroin. I believe he could have written this song with no intent in having the listener think he was on heroin. There's a bigger message here people.