क्या हुआ??

I’m at this strange point in my life. I’ve had certain dreams which were always at a distance because I always had some doubt whether they could be achieved. Now I can see certain things within reach…but therein lies the problem.

I guess you could say that my goals set in two separate realms. There’s the family/relationship realm and the personal achievement/career realm. In the case of the first, I have been absolutely determined since childhood that I will someday have a healthy family with someone I love and who loves me so as to end the pattern of dysfunction. 

On the other side I have my graduate studies which I may want to continue after my masters, which would necessitate semi-frequent travels to the subcontinent for research purposes. Then if I do someday end up searching out a job in academia, there are a limited number of places where I might acquire employment. If I do decide to end my education with my M.A, then there’s the possibility of joining the Foreign Service or the Peace Corp which would, again, require my presence in other parts of the world for long periods of time. 

The point is, one seems to be almost completely mutually exclusive from the other. If I decide to completely go after my personal achievement goals, I’d either have to go at it alone or find some mythical person who has absolutely none of their own plans and doesn’t mind going to random places or being away from me for months or even years at a time. But how do you develop a family like that? Where’s the stability? How am I EVER going to take care of my puppy if I’m moving all over the world?

I’m trying so hard to figure out where my priorities should be. I feel like I could be happy with either decision. But will it be a lasting happiness on either side? Will I feel eventually unfulfilled if I get married and give up the opportunity to do certain things with my life. Or will I still feel unfulfilled if I become this world traveler and just never end up finding that person who magically fits with everything.

Maybe it’s just that true perfect “happiness” is a myth. Maybe no one will ever have exactly what they want from life. That’s not to sound overly fatalistic or pessimistic. Whenever we decide to walk through one door, several may close and several may open. The best a person can do, I think, is form an outline for how they want their life to go and then make their best effort towards its realization. But there are always exceptions, wildcards and unexpected variables. Sometimes it turns out that what you thought you wanted for yourself is not even close to what will happen. I certainly thought I was going to get my B.A. in Spanish with maybe just a Minor in South Asian Studies for kicks. Well, here I am getting my M.A. in Texas of all places. Certainly didn’t see that coming. 

But knowing this doesn’t make my situation any easier. What should I be okay with giving up? Or is there still some way I can have it all?

This is going to be a nostalgic post, about a time long past but a time which will always be a time that I remember both fondly and…not so fondly. This post has been inspired by a song that just came on while I was listening to my iPod on shuffle. The Song?

“Glass and the Ghost Children” by Smashing Pumpkins. 

I can remember distinctly the season when this album came out. Machina/The Machines of God. I was in 9th grade. I was at the International School of Minnesota for my year of escape from the horrors of public education (which I would return to the next year because, surprise! private school was worse!). We’ll get back to this though…I need to rewind a bit further.

I was 12 years old and spending a couple weeks staying with my aunt and cousins in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. At that age, I hadn’t been allowed to listen to much more than the Christian station on the radio and whatever Christian rock albums I had happened to purchase. Everything else was totally devil music and I believe wholeheartedly in that assumption. My cousin was totally different, a rebel, free spirit, whatever you want to say. It got her in a lot of trouble eventually, but I completely idolized her because of all the friends and boyfriends she had, and she snuck out and just had so much FUN. She also had really good musical taste, though I didn’t fully recognize it at that point. She had two Smashing Pumpkins albums: Pisces Iscariot and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I completely hated it, I couldn’t stand Billy Corgan’s annoying voice and the loud guitars. Devil Music, says I!!

But the seed was planted.

I was a pretty dorky kid. I had a few Weird Al Yankovic albums which I listened to often and unironically. In one of his polka medleys he sang the chorus to Bullet with Butterfly Wings, an absolute classic. About midway through 7th grade, I finally started listening to the alternative station on the radio, having reached “that” stage of my adolescence. A song which I vaguely recognized…”Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a…” Oh! the Weird Al song! (durrrr) After some time, I convinced my mom to take me to best  buy and bought what I’m pretty sure was one of my first “secular albums.”

Mellon Collie became a central part of my existence for the next 2 years or so. I would listen to it all the way through (both discs) over and over and over, memorizing a good chunk of the lyrics. I would sit and try to scetch the liner art and for I while I even did my very best to write in the exact same font. I was an absolute superfan. I didn’t really have a whole lot of friends that I was close to at this point. Well, I had “friends,” but most of the ones I made during this time turned out to pretty much be pathological liars and leeches. The drama of school and the people who had been tormenting me since fourth grade started to take a toll on me by this time. That, mixed with the obvious difficulties of adolescence, absolutely threw me over the edge.

It was 8th grade, that infamous year, when the depression set in full force. I listened to pretty much nothing but the Smashing Pumpkins at this point. My parents became worried about the lyrics and whether they were helping me any.

 ”Intoxicated with the madness. I’m in love with my sadness.” 

I felt like they spoke to me, spoke to exactly what I was feeling. The constant rejection, the betrayals of “friends,” the disappointment and screams coming from my parents as my grades kept declining, the willpower to not do something really terrible to myself. It was an extremely dark time of my life. I was that girl with the eyeliner everywhere, the other kids at one point became afraid to make fun of me, because they didn’t really know what to make of me, I suppose. 

I found acceptance on the INTERNETS on Smashing Pumpkins message boards. I found people who felt all the cliche teenage angst that I did and found some solace through music just like I did. I read a lot about Billy Corgan…almost to stalkerish levels, but it helped. I knew that he was depressed too…I mean come on, obviously, can you sound so angry if you’re all kittens and sunshine? But I also read that he sought help, that he went to a therapist and saw the light at the end of the tunnel. It gave me at least some hope, that someone can struggle with life and their life can still be worth something. 

Towards the end of 8th grade, my parents found out what was really going on. That as soon as I would get to school I would go in the bathroom and line my entire face with eyeliner. (They don’t call it faceliner, silly!!!!) That I would often just not go to class. That I would spend the entire class not listening, but drawing dark and angry things in my notebook. Then, of course, they e-stalked me and saw all the other dark and “goth” stuff I was getting into. I was grounded for a month and then sent to the same aunt’s house for the entire summer for some sort of….goth detox? I don’t know. 

The worst part of this was when they confiscated my Smashing Pumpkins albums. I had acquired quite a few by this time. Gish, Pisces Iscariot, Mellon Collie, Adore, The Aeroplane Flies High box set, I think I acquired Siamese Dream quite a bit later for some silly reason. I also had quite a collection rare bootlegs which were available on the INTERNETS. So it was all taken away, and hidden very obviously in my dad’s office’s closet! I snuck in there while my parents were working and secretly recorded every single cd onto audio cassettes, and then quietly stuck them back in as if nothing had happened. Nothing, my friends, nothing could keep Billy Corgan out of my life. Did I mention I was insanely and psychotically in love with him at this point? Don’t make fun of me, he’s hot. 

So after the trauma of middle school, my parents decided to send me to the International School of Minnesota. I hoped to God I could press the reset button and just get along with these people. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite that easy. I was still neck deep in the sewer of depression (nice metaphor, right?). Side note: This is when I wrote the great majority of my poetry.  Needless to say, Smashing Pumpkins were still a huge presence during this period of my life. 

What was different about this phase from when I was in 7th grade was that I was far more aware of the band itself. I had been too young to fully appreciate the releases of Mellon Collie and Adore. But by this point I was at full superfan capacity. This was also the year that the Smashing Pumpkins broke up. That spring was an absolute whirlwind for me. While any sort of social life at ISM blew right out the window and I dealt with exactly the same crap that I did in middle school, it was an exciting era for a Smashing Pumpkins fan.

Machina/The Machines of God was released on February 29th, 2000. Jimmy Chamberlain came back to drum, after dealing with his drug problem. I ordered the prerelease and got an extra disc with a bunch of rarities and unreleased tracks. I listened to both like they were lovingly created out of audio crack. The internet community was going crazy too. The lyrics were so cryptic and there were all these crazy code-like and secretive meaningful looking details in the liner notes. We spent months trying to crack this code that probably didn’t even exist, but it was a diversion. I would come home from school and was always excited to see what new developments there were that day, if Mr. Corgan himself had decided to make a post (which would send everyone into a frenzy). It was all really silly, but all us crazy Pumpkinheads because sort of a tight knit group over time.

That March, the impossible happened. The Pumpkins went on an autograph tour and made a stop in MINNESOTA! OH MY GOD OH MY GOD! If you’re guessing I attended, you would guess right. I don’t know what my parents were thinking, letting their 15 year old go sit in a skyway for 9 hours by herself with a bunch of punks and metalheads, waiting to meet her idols. But they did and it was absolutely one of the best days of my life. There was this comraderie between all of us, people looked out for me and we chatted for hours about our ridiculous theories regarding the internal meaning of Machina. The line began to move…oh god it moved… Of course at this point I was just one of the masses of fans, hoping for a millisecond of attention that might be unique to only them, that might be evidence that Billy really LIKED them. I never really expected that. I wrote him a letter about what he had meant to my life, which I’m sure was pretty cliche, but this was really more for me than it was for him.

I asked him for a hug, which he happil obliged, I told him he was such an inspiration and I “love” him (oh god, really?) and he replied with a “thanks baby!” Then it was over. I had my autographs, I had my moment. A month later I finally went to a live concert. It was all so perfect and those two months I will never forget for the rest of my life.

Then they broke up in May. The community sort of started breaking apart. We couldn’t follow the band anymore, but just be consoled with what had already been released and hope that there would be solo projects. (There were, but nothing ever compared with the best of Smashing Pumpkins glory) I still listened to them almost non-stop until around 11th grade, when I made an active effort to bring more things into my repertoire. I started listening to Weezer, Static-X, Third Eye Blind, etc etc. Still mostly heavy fare, but I was branching out.

After a while, by the middle of college, I wasn’t even listening to them that much. I would feel nostalgic sometimes, but my relationship with the band had changed. It’s like when two married people have been together so long, they don’t really need to say “I love you” to know that they do. That status is there, and will always be there, and nothing will change. I’ve listened to the Smashing Pumpkins for so many years, memorized so many of their songs, that I no long need to continue listening to them constantly to assert that they are my favorite band. There have been many bands which have almost reached that status, but the fact is that the spot is already filled and cemented in and completely not up for debate. This sounds absolutely over dramatic, I know, but really this is how much the music means to me.

So now they’re back together. At least half of the band. Billy Corgan is there, Jimmy Chamberlain is there. James Iha and D’arcy Wretzky are nowhere to be seen. I have to say, I haven’t been keeping up with them band as much this time. I’m not even sure what the names of the new band members are. If they come here, I’ll probably go see them. I have their new album and I definitely enjoy it. Perhaps I’m holding on to the Smashing Pumpkins of my youth. I don’t think things will ever be the same or “as good” as before, but I’m sure the emotional connection has a lot to do with that feeling.

However, apparently there’s a new official forum up…who knows, maybe I’ll go crack some more codes.