2 invaluable lessons, The Smashing Pumpkins, and a stanky-ass basement

I don’t remember hearing many albums for the first time. But I remember the first time I heard The Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness like it were yesterday.

I was in early high school, having a sleepover at my friend Joe’s house.

He had somehow managed to weasel his way to moving his bedroom to the basement of their home, likely due to his recently picking up the electric guitar. Needless to say it didn’t smell great down there, but for a 14-year-old, this new space was paradise. Two distinct memories of that basement have stuck with me for the last 18 years—one from each of the two nights I spent there.

If you’re hoping for a hilarious, Super Bad style story of drunken high school hijinx, or an embarrassing first kiss, you’ll be sorely disappointed. The story I tell most often from that basement is the first and only time I hallucinated.

No, not from drugs.

From exhaustion after pulling an all-nighter playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

I was very cool.

Eventually, I found myself in the parking lot of a Meijer grocery store with my mom and brother insisting my brother take something from my hilariously empty hand. Righteous.

The other memory is of The Smashing Pumpkins.

As fun as it was to play Tony Hawk in his basement, I didn’t always love going to Joe’s house. He was a bit of a steamroller- whatever he wanted was law.

He was the kid who would have you over and insist on playing a fighting game you’d never played so he could wipe the floor with you until you quit.

So one day, I decided to stay the night, and, fearing another embarrassing hallucination, I insisted on going to bed at a semi-reasonable hour.

Joe obliged and pulled the bare minimum sleeping accommodation into his room in the form of a couch cushion on the floor.

“I sleep with music on, okay?”

“Sure,” I said, assuming he meant…. sleep music.

Suddenly the orchestral opening of Tonight, Tonight came BOOMING through his 90’s speaker system.

Lights out.

I had a sudden overwhelming realization that this was going to happen all night.

Then he started singing.

If you’ve never listened to The Smashing Pumpkins, Bill Corgan, the lead singer, has quite a unique voice. Like it or not, it is absolutely not what you would typically want to sleep to.

I sat awake and listened to the entire album, hopeful that I would be able to sleep when it was over.

Suddenly the orchestral opening of Tonight, Tonight came BOOMING through his 90’s speaker system.

He had it on repeat.

Once again, I didn’t sleep a wink at Joe’s house.

A funny thing happened that night. The first listen through Mellon Collie, it was an okay album. It was fresh, interesting, and something new, even though I wasn’t in the right mind to enjoy it.

The second listen through, it was pretty good.

The third, fourth and fifth listen through it was the worst thing I had ever heard.

By morning it was officially one of my favorite albums of all time.

There are two things I learned that night:

1. Your opinion changes. On everything. Always. Without exception.
   
   For even the most set-in-stone feelings, they will change. If you love something, you may grow to hate it. Or love it even more. Worse, as with so many past girlfriends and boyfriends, you may fall indifferent. If you hate something, you may grow to love it, as I did. You may grow to loathe it on a level you could never fathom.
   
   Most people make decisions every single day on the assumption that they will feel the same way tomorrow that they do today. Almost by definition, they won't.
   
   So the next time you get hot-headed about something, take a second to remember that your point of view is like a photograph. A fair representation of this moment in time but a poor representation of how that subject has changed - and will continue to change - over time.
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2. Ugly isn’t bad.
   
   Bill Corgan’s voice is a bit nasally. A bit grating. I’m not sure his vocal cords share any DNA with Frank Sinatra, Adele, or Beyonce.
   
   But they don’t need to. He made that album anyway, and with nearly 1 billion collective listens on its tracks, it appears the world is glad he did.
   
   Imagine if instead, he got up that morning in 1995 and said, “My voice sucks. I shouldn’t be singing. People don’t want to hear this.” and didn’t create what he was destined to. Would the world be a better place? Would he be more secure or proud of his career? Of course not.
   
   So the next time you find yourself waiting until it is perfect, or beautiful, or exactly right to share your work with the world, I hope you stop and think of me, lying on my friend’s basement floor, falling in love with an ugly voice because he dared to sing anyway. Share your imperfect work with pride.

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