I found out about The Smashing Pumpkins when I was 15 years old, and they’ve since been my favorite band, (I’m 19, now).  It was a fun time of my life; an age of discovery, thoroughly wrought with long nights spent alone in my room, listening to shoegaze, drawing and painting the nights away.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was the first CD I ever bought, (at the aforementioned age, at a Down in the Valley).  I brought it home and and studied every square inch of the jewel case / booklet whilst religiously listening to those 122 minutes on repeat, and found myself endlessly tantalized
by the artwork displayed on the back of the CD case… The sheer beauty conveyed in the piece was heartwarming to my young soul.  I decided I’d use it as inspiration for a drawing, (as, above all else, I’m first an artist).  So, I began the three-week-straight process of creating a wonderful pen and ink piece, appropriately named, “Horizon”.

At 15, and to this day, I considered this piece the “turning point” of my artistic endeavors.  It was when my art became an identity for me, really.  It marked the “growing up” of both me and my art; for no longer was I churning out mindless sketches of heads exploding and people eating eyeballs.  No, from that point on, my art became something greater.

I think this theme of “growing up” is prominent throughout the entirety of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and, thankfully it crept in and played its part in my life.  15 was also a very lonely time of life for me, and these themes are as well evident throughout the album.  I experienced my first love, and first breakup.  It was the age when most, if not all, of my childhood friends decided it best to abandon me for one reason or another.

However, through better or worse and through thick and thin, all of these things have played a huge part in creating who I am today, and that’s, at the very least, someone who’s alive and smiles often.

I think that’s the lesson that could be taken away from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.  It’s a wildly manic record that soars from the highest highs of, “Tonight, Tonight” to the gaping, trenching lows of “X.Y.U.” — from track to track, it’s always on the horizon of something new.

And, what is life if not that, exactly?

I don’t know, man.

P.S. —
one funny memory I have from first becoming a fan: I’d frequently play Smashing Pumpkins on my family’s Amazon Echo, and, because of this, turned on most of my 8 younger siblings to the band.  Due to this, I distinctly remember my younger brothers yelling, “Alexa, play “Rat in a Cage!“