Bedtime with Nick Drake

Every night before I go to bed, I scroll through my iPod and try to find an album to listen to that will put me to sleep. Not in the "this is boring" kind of way, but in the "cradle me like a baby until I pass out" kind of way. I must admit, my idea of the best bed-time music tends to stray away from the norm – I tend to pick toe-tapping, upbeat albums that many people would go insane listening to before bed. Last night, I got up three times to change the album before settling on one that fit my needs. At first I put on some Modest Mouse, to reminisce, as a sort of tribute to my high school years, then switched it over to Broken Social Scene, which worked for a while but then ended up failing miserably after a few unwieldy tracks, and then finally worked my way over to Elliott Smith, thinking that I could handle it, but quickly realizing that I was in a far too fragile state of mind to endure all his pain.

If this doesn't evoke some sort of emotion you may be a robot.

I was in a bind. My room was hot. My fan was on. The heater kept making these horrible clicking noises and I was starting to lose it. I couldn't figure out what to listen to, and I started to freak out a little silently – I split a room with another girl and I didn't want to piss her off anymore than I already had by playing DJ all night long and/or wake her up if she had managed to fall asleep. After a solid twenty minutes of Elliott, I was ready to make the fourth change of the night. I got out of bed, half sleepy, half awake, half depressed (thanks El) and made my fourth and final selection: Nick Drake.

My roommate perked up, "YESSSSSSSSSSSS, I LOVE HIM." I guess she couldn't sleep either. "I know, isn't he the best? He went too soon," I said as I draped my baby blankets over my head like a turban – hey, we all have habits/needs and mine happens to be my blankies. "What do you mean? Didn't he die, like, recently? In the '90s or something?" She was out of the fruit loop, and was coo coo for cocoa puffs, if you will. "No way, he died in...I wanna say mid '70s," I said like one of those dumb buff-types who insist on knowing all the facts about a sport or film or book or something. We went back and fourth debating over his death and when I was absolutely positive that I was right I insisted on looking it up. "That's it. I'm googling this shit," I said as I reached for my smartphone (I love technology!! Look at how useful it is to us!!!).

1974. He died in 1974. Suicide. He overdosed on an antidepressants. That poor BOY – he was only 26 years old. Such a tragedy. My roommate and I were satisfied that we figured it out, but as I went to bed I couldn't help but think about how sad his story was. "He had an angel face," I said to her before we drifting off into our respective sleeps. It made sense, after all.  Like Elliott Smith, his songs were sad and depressing, and any brief analysis of his lyrics could reveal that he was a deeply troubled soul. I first started listening to Nick Drake in the 9th grade, and have been a pretty avid listener ever since. I'm not going to lie, I don't jam out to him every day, but he's perfect for a stroll down memory lane.  Even still, it just didn't sit right with me, yet I somehow found comfort in the fact that his music is still being listened to today. I think that's one of my favorite aspects of music – the fact that we can listen to any genre, from any decade, at any time. There's so much great music out there and it's on us to explore it all.

Here's a gem from Nick Drake himself (there's also a cute monkey in this video):