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Richard Milward
Dependence Day
I like butterflies. More than just sophisticated moths, they’re almost like flying flower petals or teeny weeny floating abstract paintings. Undoubtedly the most aesthetically pleasing of all insects, the butterfly has been captured in song by many purveyors of pop – from the Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Bullet with Butterfly Wings’, to Flowchart’s lovely ‘Flutter By Butterfly’.
Personally, the one most worth chasing after is Elliott Smith’s wistful ditty ‘Independence Day’. To mark Independence Day 2008, I couldn’t resist sticking a pin through Elliott’s gorgeous ‘future butterfly’, flagging up one the most delightful songs these ears have ever captured.
Elliott’s music touches me in ways no other art does, like having your heart massaged by teddybears, or being given mouth-to-mouth by fairies. It’s a music full of glorious contrasts – the anxious lyrics floating about like dark summer clouds; the sublime singalongs underpinned with the most obscure, intricate guitar arrangements.
Sometimes it feels as if Elliott grew up sharing a house with Kurt Cobain and Paul McCartney. The man himself seems to be a mix of contradictions – the macho Frankenstein tattoos, the effeminate harmonies, the suits, the heavy metal t-shirts, the heroin, the time he plaited his hair like a Red Indian. It’s like doing a butterfly-painting at school, but the wings of the butterfly coming out completely different once you’ve pressed the paper together.
‘Independence Day’ is crushing and life-affirming in equal measure – the story of a butterfly that only lives a day, ‘but it’s brilliant anyway’. Possibly it’s a metaphor for the ‘soaring high and crushing down’ of the drug experience, or perhaps it’s about the fleetingness of mortality itself, like the lives of those lovely butterflies Damian Hirst sticks onto canvas. We’re only on Earth a very short period of time, in the grand scheme of things – surely the idea is to celebrate it as much as we can?
The song looks at the naivety and ‘beautiful confusion’ of being hatched into a world full of filth and joy, through the eyes of an innocent insect. ‘Independence Day’ was partly the inspiration for a chapter in my novel Apples, where a beautiful blue butterfly observes the young protagonists Adam and Eve meeting for the first time, before getting violently munched by a birdie. It’s always interested – and scared – me, the way very important moments in our life are so fleeting, either forgotten forever or transformed into wishy-washy recollections, never to be touched or revisited ever again.
Much of Elliott’s music appears to be about bad dreams, women, and drinking – some of my favourite pastimes. We all know he used to stick pins through himself but, like exotic butterflies pinned in a display-case, the lovely music will be preserved forever. I, for one, depend on it.
– July 2008
Personally, the one most worth chasing after is Elliott Smith’s wistful ditty ‘Independence Day’. To mark Independence Day 2008, I couldn’t resist sticking a pin through Elliott’s gorgeous ‘future butterfly’, flagging up one the most delightful songs these ears have ever captured.
Elliott’s music touches me in ways no other art does, like having your heart massaged by teddybears, or being given mouth-to-mouth by fairies. It’s a music full of glorious contrasts – the anxious lyrics floating about like dark summer clouds; the sublime singalongs underpinned with the most obscure, intricate guitar arrangements.
Sometimes it feels as if Elliott grew up sharing a house with Kurt Cobain and Paul McCartney. The man himself seems to be a mix of contradictions – the macho Frankenstein tattoos, the effeminate harmonies, the suits, the heavy metal t-shirts, the heroin, the time he plaited his hair like a Red Indian. It’s like doing a butterfly-painting at school, but the wings of the butterfly coming out completely different once you’ve pressed the paper together.
‘Independence Day’ is crushing and life-affirming in equal measure – the story of a butterfly that only lives a day, ‘but it’s brilliant anyway’. Possibly it’s a metaphor for the ‘soaring high and crushing down’ of the drug experience, or perhaps it’s about the fleetingness of mortality itself, like the lives of those lovely butterflies Damian Hirst sticks onto canvas. We’re only on Earth a very short period of time, in the grand scheme of things – surely the idea is to celebrate it as much as we can?
The song looks at the naivety and ‘beautiful confusion’ of being hatched into a world full of filth and joy, through the eyes of an innocent insect. ‘Independence Day’ was partly the inspiration for a chapter in my novel Apples, where a beautiful blue butterfly observes the young protagonists Adam and Eve meeting for the first time, before getting violently munched by a birdie. It’s always interested – and scared – me, the way very important moments in our life are so fleeting, either forgotten forever or transformed into wishy-washy recollections, never to be touched or revisited ever again.
Much of Elliott’s music appears to be about bad dreams, women, and drinking – some of my favourite pastimes. We all know he used to stick pins through himself but, like exotic butterflies pinned in a display-case, the lovely music will be preserved forever. I, for one, depend on it.
– July 2008
