I forgive you, Billy Corgan. You didn't know I was mad. I'm sure you didn't care, but I'm back to playing your records again, and I'm glad.
Here's how it all went down:
In 1994, I went to Lollapalooza in Charles Town, West Virginia. I drove down with my then-boyfriend in his parent's station wagon, and after traversing the traffic on the small town roads, each more foreign to this city girl than the last, we each dropped two hits of Felix the Cat blotter and sallied forth into the unknown.
The Beastie Boys were headlining, but I went for the Smashing Pumpkins and because we'd heard Courtney Love made a surprise appearance at the Philly show and we'd hoped for another one. I peaked during Beasties and when I came down from crowd surfing, I realized three things:
I lost my wallet, I lost my boyfriend, and I had no idea where the car was. My wallet had nothing but my non-driver's ID and a necklace made of little pebbles and wire my friend Rachel made me. My boyfriend was as far away as two songs surfing on hundreds of people can get you. And I vaguely remembered we parked under a street light.
Then the Pumpkins started. Billy Corgan grabbed the mic, he looked out at all us messed up kids, and he said "we're generation nothing."
"We're generation nothing."
I looked around, I looked out at all of us, all us kids dancing in the dirt, barely talking to each other, socially awkward, confused. I was 19, I had a head full of acid, a heart full of unidentified yearning and wish, a desperate need to create.
"We're generation nothing." I had no wallet. I had no boyfriend. I had no way home. I wanted so much for us. I didn't want us to be nothing. I knew what we'd all come through, the broken homes, the fear, the chin-out defiant independence. I knew how much love we had.
I knew how much we had to give. And from that moment on, I hated Billy Corgan. I hated that message. I never listened to his records after that. I missed Mellon Collie, even though my little brother later loved it. I shut my ears.
I kept thinking about it all this time, "generation nothing," wondering if we are that, or if we were called that, or why or what.
It was how we were perceived then, it is how we are perceived now. As we dig into midlife, we Gen Xers, as we raise our kids, go about our jobs, wonder if we'll get to retirement, and if we do, how the hell we'll manage to pay for it. We are now as we were then: generation nothing.
There aren't that many of us, turns out. A confluence of three big factors: abortion, effective contraception, and the Vietnam War prevented many of us from ever existing at all. Those of us that were born, mostly to baby boomers too interested in extending their "me time" to actually parent, grew up largely on our own. On weekends, we were pushed out the door in the morning and told not to come back until the street lamps turned on. We were loaded up with household chores, and if we didn't complete them we were sent to bed without dinner.
We were bullied and no one cared, it was just part of being a kid. We walked ourselves home from the bus stop and tucked our own selves in at night. We developed a chip on our collective shoulder for having to be entirely resilient, entirely independent, and to do it all while feeling everything–every beautiful thing, every painful thing, everything in between— acutely.
That chip was still on my shoulder when I went to see the Pumpkins in Charles Town, West Virginia. On the way, driving down from Philly, we saw farmland and small houses out in the middle of fields. They had big wrap-around porches and columns. They were small but also grand, individual, a little house of one's own to call home.
I waited until the band finished playing, then I went off to look for the car. I remembered it was parked under a street light and eventually found it. I climbed on the hood of the car and laid there, looking up. The prehistoric insects of West Virginia swirled in the light and I couldn't see past the glare to the stars.
I thought I knew what I wanted then, and maybe I did. I didn't want to be nothing. I wanted to be bigger, I wanted to be brighter. But everything always looks different than you remember it. And now I see it's true that being nothing, edges melting into air, body a part of sound, consciousness combined, with only a wish and a hope for a guide, is also everything.
We slept in the car somewhere out there along the road. Woke to birds and rooster sounds. Got home okay, eventually. About a week later, my wallet even showed up in the mail. The necklace my friend Rachel made me was still in the zippered pocket, my ID was in there too. No return address. Thank you, kind stranger.
Now I'm in my own little house. I actually live in West Virginia after some 20 years in New York City.
The bigness and brightness is not what I seek. A street light casts its glow on my porch. Bugs and birds. And nothing has a far greater allure than all the somethings people seek.
It was a suggestion on Instagram from a follower that said I should give the Pumpkins another chance. I picked up right where I left off. Thanks.
