This Easter Eve, consider your adoption (with a little help from dc Talk)
And then dance like it’s 1995.
One of the best things about being a parent is watching your kids dance to the music of your youth.
Like “Galapagos” by the Smashing Pumpkins.
Our family was talking about Galapagos turtles at lunch one Saturday. It was very educational. The kids were very interested in Galapagos turtles. And I, being the Dad that I am, thought, “You know what would make this conversation even more interesting? This, beautiful, tender, deep-cut from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the Smashing Pumpkins’s gloriously bloated double-album from 1995.”
It had been years since I listened to this song. I still remembered most of the lyrics and did my best Billy Corgan impersonation, which, um, is something. There’s lots of talk about leaving and falling from grace here, but I didn’t know until literally two minutes ago that this song is about the crumbling of Corgan’s marriage to his longtime girlfriend, Chris Fabian.
In the liner notes to the 2012 reissue of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Corgan wrote, “Idealizing a failed romance can only get you so far, and once engaged I found that somewhere between my idealism and natural compassion for an identified other there lived a truth I was not yet willing to swallow about myself.”
He also notes that the song “stands up over time as a remnant of grace that I lost as I wrote it.” Which is really quite a thought, if you think about it. And not just because it comes from Corgan, who is a notoriously difficult and narcissistic figure in the annals of tortured guitar gods. Hearing him talk about grace, hearing him sing about the falling away from grace, about leaving, about finding himself orphaned from love is itself a small bit of common grace.
There’s another song our family has sung and danced to that’s also about leaving. About falling from grace. About finding oneself an orphan.
Previous notes
In case you missed the last couple posts, here ya go. Consider it an early gift from the Easter bunny.
As always, thanks for reading.