All I knew about him was his music, but it's not like I've even known that for very long. I bought my first CD of his only two years ago, and I never saw him in concert. His albums weren't on heavy rotation in my collection--every once in a while, on some gray and cold day, I would think "This feels like an Elliott Smith kind of day," and I'd pop him in the player.

I wasn't his number one fan, or even his number ten fan, and yet when I heard the news of Elliott's suicide today, I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.

He was a great musician, an interesting lyricist, and all-around excellent songwriter. He wasn't a superstar, but he didn't seem to want to be one, and the niche he carved for himself in the music world seemed to suit him. He was about as popular as you can get and still seem indie. His music was for the most part pretty depressing and melancholy, even the happier-sounding songs, but there was a fragile hope in there too, of joy and beauty. I guess the hope part was a little too fragile, in the end.

Today Elliott's name is added to a long list of painters, musicians, and writers who have ended their own lives. What is it about very artistic people that makes some of them suicidal? It seems like the same part of the brain that makes it possible for them to be creative geniuses also makes something about this existence too much to bear. What could have been so unbearable about his life that would make him want to end it? It might have been mitigated by mental illness, or substance abuse, but it's pointless to speculate about the reasons after the fact. We only know that whatever it was caused him to wish so strongly to no longer be tied to this world that he stabbed himself in the chest and cut himself loose forever.

I stuck "figure 8" in the stereo this afternoon just to pay tribute to Elliott. I forgot how much I liked him. By the time the last track played, a haunting, instrumental piece entitled "Bye" that sounds like it's floating out of an old music box, I felt even sadder. He was good, he really was.

Our culture teaches us that the earmarks of success in this life are fame and fortune. He had a little of both. And his suicide in spite of having achieved those things tells us this truth: It's not enough, not any of it. Seek something else.

I believe that if someone is born with an extraordinary gift, and they pursue and express that gift in the way they were meant to, then they are worshiping God whether they know it or not, whether they even believe in God or not. Songs or paintings or books as accidental hymns and unwitting prayers.

Goodbye, Elliott. I wish you'd realized you were praying.