Posted on

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness Turns 20

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

It might seem strange for a jewelry designer to be inspired by music. It’s not so much the music as it is the ambition and meaning behind the music that is what I find so interesting about it. Reading this really cool retrospective of the album inspired me to write this blog post.

This album came out I was in college. I was already addicted to the Smashing Pumpkins’ previous album, Siamese Dream. I bought Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness the very first day it came out, and I still have it. I remember not liking it the first few times I listened to it. It was quite a departure from Siamese Dream. It took a few listens before some of the songs started to draw me in. There were other songs that literally took dozens of listens before I really started to like them. Over the years, my favorite song on the album has changed several times. Today, it is “By Starlight”. At one time or another, it was “1979” or “Thirty Three” or “Thru The Eyes of Ruby”. This is also the mark of a great album. I take something different from it today than I did at a younger age.

Back when this first came out I didn’t understand my own tastes very well yet. I knew what I liked, but I didn’t really understand why. It took me years to really understand why I liked certain things so much, such as this album, or a book or movie like Cloud Atlas, or intricate Celtic symbols.

You Can Get “Lost Inside” Of It

M83 Hurry Up We're Dreaming
M83 Hurry Up We’re Dreaming

I read an article about M83, talking about their album “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming” (which is also one of my favorite albums). M83 songwriter Anthony Gonzalez said when they were making it, they wanted to make something big and ambitious, and cited Mellon Collie as an example of the kind of album they were aiming for. It’s funny because the two albums are so starkly different musically, but yet do have a lot of things in common artistically. He said of Mellon Collie that he “got lost inside of it every time”.

This idea of getting “lost inside” something was the best description I’ve heard yet for why I like albums and art like this. What does it mean to be able to get “lost inside” art? To me it means that when you focus on it, you forget where you are for a bit. It temporarily takes you to another place. While you are there, there are a number of different ideas to explore. Also, if you listen to it more than once, you might get a different meaning out of it the next time, or notice something you overlooked, or see something in a different light. So while on the surface you are experiencing it by hearing the music or reading the words, there is plenty going on that you might be trying to figure out consciously or subconsciously.

Mellon Collie does this in a number of ways. There is the artwork. You could write a long article just about the album art (and someone has). Most young people like me from suburbia had never seen anything like the artwork before. The artwork also tells you that the music is detailed and there is a lot going on with it. It’s asking you to look for details in the music just like a complicated collage is asking you to look at details.

Another thing you can get “lost inside” is the lyrics. This was the first album that the Smashing Pumpkins included lyrics with it. The book with the lyrics also had art on it as well. Since there were so many songs, you could spend some time trying to glean meaning or making connections between songs.

Finally, there was the music itself. The first song is piano only. The last song ends with the same single piano, but the melody has changed slightly. What to make of this? Then there is a a daytime/nightime theme going on. The first disk is called “Dawn to Dusk” and the second one is called “Twilight to Starlight”. The songs kind of fit under these two broad ideas. It’s another hint at a bigger picture that this album somehow fits into, but what is it? How you get lost is in trying to figure all of these things out.

How Does Art Do Pull Someone “Inside”?

So above I mentioned several reasons as to why I believe this album draws people in to where they can get lost inside of it. I’ve had this same feeling about a number of other things, whether it be an album, a book, or a movie. In general, all of these things that I love have a few things in common:

Cloud Atlas
Cloud Atlas

They are all very complex. I already mentioned the things I think make Mellon Collie so complex. Another thing that kind of helps is the overall length. They have to be large in scale, whatever they are. My favorite book and movie is Cloud Atlas for both. The book is 509 pages and the story structure is incredibly complicated. It makes you think. The movie is possibly even more complicated, the way it switches from one story to another, and there is meaning behind why they jump when they do. The book does less jumping around.

They give you a number of different ideas to explore. Mellon Collie has several big, overarching themes it could be about. Is it about one of them or all of them? One of them is definitely youth and growing up. Another is life and death. Another is simple and pure nostalgia. Another is lamenting growing up. You get the idea. These are all big, big ideas, and the album could be about one of them or all of them. Cloud Atlas is similar in this respect. Is it book about materialism (all the stories are materially connected even though they happen decades or centuries apart). Is it about reincarnation? Is it about spiritualism? Is it about good and evil? Heaven and Hell? I wrote about that possibility in this blog post.

They leave certain things to your imagination. All of these leave tantalizing clues that certain things are interconnected or related, but none of them don’t ever come out and say it. That would kill it. All the different possible meanings I list out in the paragraph above were actually all invented by me. There are clues within these things that led me to these ideas, but I had to connect some dots to come up with them.

What Does This Have To Do With Celtic Symbols?

I wrote this blog post to kind of show where my inspiration comes from, and what I aim for with some of my designs. I basically design symbols. I have a long page where I try to explain the meaning of different Celtic symbols. Even there though, I am just explaining the meaning that others have assigned to these symbols over time. The original Celtic knot symbols that I designed myself do have their own meanings to me but I try not to explain them too much. Ultimately, the question is: what do they mean to you?

In any case, if you look at some of these Celtic symbols, you can appreciate them on a basic level. You may just find the shape attractive. However, there is more going on, like in the art I talk about above. The basic shape is one thing. The shape could be made up of multiple loops that are interwoven. The number and shape of the individual loops can also mean something. How they are woven together also can mean something. I’d also encourage you to look at the negative space in some of these symbols (the area between the lines). In some of them, that has meaning. I can also give another clue to the meaning in how I present the piece in pictures on my site.