A Passing Feeling Lyrics

Lyric discussion by anomie 

Cover art for A Passing Feeling lyrics by Elliott Smith

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

  • I can't think of anything but what triggered the depression.

And I'm stuck waiting for a passing feeling

  • My loved ones try to console me. - "It gets better." I know it does, but I always end up like this again. The "better" part is the passing feeling.

In the city I built up and blew to hell

  • "the city I built up" is the fragile state of optimism I cobbled together at the insistence of those who convinced me to try, because, "It gets better." I "blew [it] to hell" when something triggered my depression and I wasn't strong enough to overcome it.

I'm stuck here waiting for a passing feeling

  • Again, I know it'll get better, but once it gets better, it will pass, and I'll be right back here again.

Still I send all the time

  • I try to help myself.

My request for relief

  • I try to convince myself that it really does get better.

Down the dead power lines

  • That thought process goes nowhere.

Though I'm beyond belief

  • They keep trying with me, in spite of the obvious truth that it's pointless.

In the help I require

  • It must be exhausting for the people who try to deal with my mental state.

Just to exist at all

  • Indeed. I only exist due to guilt.

Took a long time to stand

  • Working out of depression is incredibly difficult, and it takes a long time.

Just an hour to fall.

  • Falling back into it happens with ease and immediacy.

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.

My Interpretation