Billy Corgan wrote this song as a description of his teenage years in the suburbia that surrounds Chicago. It is my considerate opinion that if you grew up in the Midwest you identify with this music video more than any other that has ever been made.
But that is not why it is on the list. It isn't Corgan's bald melon in the backseat. It isn't the cute blonde girl wearing what looks like a kilt. It isn't the cute blonde girl swimming around in a pool owned by some unknown neighbor of the house party where you are drinking warm beer from a plastic cup. It isn't even peeing and finding two people making out in the bathtub. I've seen one of those things, and it sure as hell didn't involve a cute blonde anywhere near a pool.
This song is a perfect comment on teenagerdom, beginning with the first word of the song: "Shakedown". A shakedown can be blackmail, a search of a person or a test of performance. For all of us, years spent as a teenager are a shakedown in every sense of the word.
When I heard this song the first time, I was 23 years old and on the verge of dropping out of the University of Iowa, two classes short of a BA. What BA you ask? A double major in History and Anthropology, with a minor in Religion thrown in for good measure. Why drop out? I no longer belonged there.
That we don't even care
As restless as we are
We feel the pull
In the Land of a Thousand Guilts
I wanted something more. I felt guilt, to be sure. It is my constant companion. The operative word is restless. Teenagers are restless, knowing that time is moving but they seem to be staying constant. This is a lie, obviously, but one you cannot see from the inside. It is what makes teenagers so interesting to teach and interact with. As an adult, you are infuriated by many of their actions but know what awaits them. As you try to share this knowledge, you get even more angry that they do not want it.
No apologies ever need be made
Being a teenager is a test of performance. High school does not determine ones life (far from it) but it helps determine your make up. Do you quit? Focus on one thing above all others? Move from friend to friend? Abandon those who no longer can help you move up the social ladder? Remain loyal to those who aren't cool? Strive to be something you are not? Listen more than you speak? Show contempt or empathy in the course of everyday drama? Within these questions lie the real person we are to become, and one or two people get to know that real person. If we are lucky, we remain in contact with them for the rest of our lives.
I know you, better than you fake it
We change constantly as people, but we are never so naked emotionally as when we are 14 or 15. In the most challenging times in our lives we go back to patterns established earlier. In 1996 I knew my time at the UI was exhausted. I dropped it and went on. I would never go back and change this, even though it delayed my "professional life" by several years. I would not change high school one bit either. Not because I was happy (for 90% of it I most certainly was not) or successful (I was pretty good) or was lucky enough to have a shared locker next to a beautiful girl (who is a beautiful woman now and also my wife) but because those four years allow us to search within and without ourselves for what is important. Not friends in the mean sense, or party, but a sense of community and belonging, no matter what group we find ourselves in.
Justine never knew the rules
Hung down with the freaks and ghouls
When I was 15 or 16 I realized that when I was comfortable with the people around me, that was where I should be. This is as close to a universal truth as is possible. The friends we have in high school stay with us, specters in the guise of the new demanding comparison to those we meet. As we form ourselves we determine what qualities of people are important. We shakedown others as we take ourselves out for the shakedown cruise of dances, kisses, sex, booze....a carnival of experience that serves as a bar of comparison for the rest of our lives. The first we always remember despite our best attempts to forget. Not because it is the best but because it is the introduction to emotion, power and life.
And we don't know
Just where our bones will rest
To dust
I guess
Forgotten and absorbed
To the earth below
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