I had a crush on one of my best friends when I was a teenager. She never found out, I never told her. I remember the day I started liking her as “more than a friend.” We were both Smashing Pumpkins fans, as most teens in the nineties were, and she was with me when I bought Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. We went back to her house and played it. The first CD, Dawn to Dusk, was perfectly serviceable Smashing Pumpkins fare; the usual feel of, “This is not their last album,” that usually comes along with the first-time listening of a new album from a band you idolize. Siamese Dream was, “not like Gish,” for example, but then Siamese Dream became Siamese Dream after listening to it several times and everything was right with the world again. Although it was getting late we switched to the second CD, Twilight to Starlight, and started to listen.
“Thirty-Three” came on and…maybe it was because we were tired or the house was quiet or maybe it was simply the music but there was something about the line, “And you, can make it last, forever you…” just hit me and I thought, “Geez…I think I really like this girl.”
The feeling subsided over time, because she was a friend and that was very important to me. Even as a teenager, I understood that most of our relationships would never last forever.
I’m thirty-three now. Billy Corgan released Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness when he was 29. He claims to have written “Thirty-Three” towards the end of the Siamese Dream tour, which would mean he was probably around 27 when he wrote it. He was younger than I am now, and staring down thirty-three the way I did when I was in my late twenties. I’m only thirty-three for another month, and thirty-four is that age where I can no longer pretend that I’m not middle-aged anymore. Revisiting that song now, as an adult, it takes on a completely different meaning for me.
Speak to me in a language I can hear,
Humor me before I have to go,
Deep in thought I forgive everyone,
As the cluttered streets greet me once again.
Thirty-four is the beginning of the middle, for sure. You start to feel a bit wiser, you’ve seen several cycles of the same things. You lost a lot of friends, made a lot of new ones. You stop caring so much about what people think and realize that, in the time you have left, you need to forgive past grievances and drop the whole concept of regret.
I know I can’t be late,
Supper’s waiting on the table,
Tomorrow’s just an excuse away,
So I pull my collar up and face the cold, on my own.
Self-sufficiency becomes this weird badge of honor. The ability to shoulder burdens as they come, suffer perceived injustices and put them into the Grand Picture of all Injustices.
The earth laughs beneath my heavy feet,
At the blasphemy in my old jangly walk,
Steeple guide me to my heart and home,
The sun is out and up and down again.
You take comfort in the known and in the insignificance of every step against an earth that’s been here much longer than you and that will continue to exist well after you move on, juxtaposed against the significance of every sunrise on a personal level. You surround yourself with the people you want with you for the long-term, and start to dismiss short-term acquaintances.
I know I’ll make it,
Love can last forever,
Graceful swans of never topple to the earth,
And you, can make it last, forever, you
Can make it last, forever you
This is where we come to my wife, of course, my center of gravity, the woman who makes me feel young. Forever is relative to my own existence. And despite the end of forever, which begins to become a reality that can no longer be ignored, there is someone that can make the significance of sunrises last until that time comes.
And for a moment I lose myself,
Wrapped up in the pleasures of the world.
I’ve journeyed here and there and back again,
But in the same old haunts I still find my friends.
Mysteries not ready to reveal,
Sympathies I’m ready to return.
I’ll make the effort,
Love can last forever,
Graceful swans of never,
Topple to the earth,
Tomorrow’s just an excuse,
Tomorrow’s just an excuse,
And you, can make it last, forever you
Can make it last, forever you…
Forever you…
It’s worth going on, despite knowing what you know and going through what you’ve gone through. There are still mysteries and new discoveries and nothing ever really ends. Love can last forever.
I’ve been listening to this song a lot lately, and really resonating with it for the first time.
As an interesting side note, the song that follows “Thirty-Three” on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is “In the Arms of Sleep.” I used to sing this song to my wife (girlfriend at the time) when we were in our early twenties. That song was much more fitting to our situation back then than “Thirty-Three” was to a teenager. It’s about giving yourself completely to a person, accepting the commitment. “There are some things I’ll live without, but I want you to know, that I need you right now.”
The next song is “1979,” a song of youthful rebellion and hope and promise.
Played in order, they allow one to appreciate their comfort while looking back on commitment while looking back on rebellion.
The perfect trilogy of songs for a man about to enter his 34th year.
