The Smashing Pumpkins - The Same Old Rain (Notes de Billy)

Lettres de Billy envoyées sur le Message Board du Site Officiel (en cours de traduction)
21/11/2000 - mystery of machina / the final round
hello and welcome to the final round of the mystery of machina contest, a contest that has sparked much debate amongst fans and enemies alike and managed to yield an inordinate amount of writing…how much you say? well if you figure that there were over 1,000 entries it works out to about 2,500 pages of theories, blinding rhetoric, blithe poetry, and of course the ever genius response of “the mystery is there is no mystery”…that answer is dead wrong, because there has been a plot and a mystery all along…on the very first day that the 4 original smashing pumpkins sat down in a room for the first time in almost 3 years (way back in october of 1998) we discussed the ideas that I had surrounding a final album by the band that was to be approached like a play…everyone agreed to the theories in principal, if not ultimately following thru with 40+% of the things that would have made the story come even more alive for the band and the participants in the ruse, you the fans of this tortured monolith…that being said it has been a great experience for me in a living, breathing art sort of way and a natural extension of the bands playing on stage and making it up as we went along…some have suggested that it is hard to figure out the story because there is no ending, per se…that is not true and misses the point entirely…there is a plot to this story, and it follows tried and true folkloric structure to make it’s main points come across…but as in the blues or jazz traditions, or oral folklore, the story can breathe and be alive and stick to the plot all at the same time…on a more personal note let me say thank you to all the participants who have made this an amazing journey…little did I know when I dreamed this up that it would become so alive, and it would give this final work, MACHINA, so much resonance…reading thru all the essays has been tough, because I wanted to give each the attention that they deserved…some may note in reading the semi-finalists and runners-ups works that there are contradictions and theories that are off base…well that is because the essays are presented as is (with an occasional editorial comment or two) and leave it up to the final participants to discern what it is about these particular writings that caught my eye and ear…therein lies the final jungle that are brilliant ones must hack thru…also, some people mentioned in their submissions that it was hard to get inside my mind, and they felt that there interpretations were valid, if not more valid than mine because MACHINA is such an interactive and participatory experience…well, that is true, but it is my contest and seeing as I wrote the story I must own the fact that my deeper meanings have more to do with the ultimate messages contained within….ironically, the grandest message of all was not concluded in any of the entries…to those who feel that they wrote or added more than some of the entries here, I apologize, for there were many grand entries that spoke to the shell of machina, but missed the sweet core of the fruit that is so essential to getting it right…no one ever said life was fair, and believe me, in this kingdom it never has been…a few additional thoughts to our semi-finalists…take all that you have here to attempt to create a more unified vision, don’t neglect machina II as it is critical to a full understanding, don’t be afraid to reach out to your friends to give you perspective on something you may have missed…and carefully re-examine the 7’s, seven albums and seven chapters of the machina story…so we have come to the beginning of the end, I hope it has been as rewarding for you as it has been for me, I can’t thank you enough…