In honor of William Patrick Corgan’s birthday, aka “St. Patrick’s Day” I had everything Smashing Pumpkins set to shuffle on my i pod for pretty much the whole day, and the day after as well. No worries, I also wore green.
My sweet 9 year old son was helping me lay out fabric for a denim quilt I plan to start sewing any day now, when “X.Y.U.” from the iconic album “Melloncollie and the Infinite Sadness” started playing. I was deep in concentration and not really paying close attention to the song (otherwise I would have skipped it, because its not terribly appropriate for kids).
He made the simplest observation a few minutes into the song: ” this is an angry song.”
Good thing he got my attention when he did, because there was soon to be a need for precision coughing. From what I can tell that is the most effective way to edit a song when you can’t reach the skip button in time.
Mostly I just thought it was profound and adorable that he was able to so matter of factly pinpoint the emotion in that song. Kids notice so much of what is going on around them.
I thought about it a lot the rest of St. Patrick’s Day, especially when the song “Soma” was playing.
-and really as a side note if you are reading this from facebook you should click over to the real post so you can listen to this amazing song and as a bonus see Billy with hair-
The level of emotion needed to have written songs like that is a double edged sword. It fuels artists like Van Gough to cut off their own ear. In another way it inspired Billy Corgan to create Soma. So much beauty and depth seems to some how spring from deep (sometimes painful or hurting or angry) emotions. I think about this a lot, actually. On the one hand, I love what is created so much, and I am really happy to have it in my life as it enriches and inspires me. On the other hand, this work of beauty and art was paid so often with a high price on the artist’s behalf.
These days Billy is happy. His music has been greatly affected by it, and not all in positive ways. Except for (and I have to remind myself of this often): he is happy. He said something not too long ago about making the fans happy or him happy, but it was difficult to do both. It should be his turn, I’m glad he chose him. Now I enjoy some of the new stuff more than others, but its mostly lacking that core emotion. Its still really good, just….
Really, I’m just so glad I got/get to LOVE and BREATHE and LIVE to his beautiful music.
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