Despots and Deities

An analysis of ATUM by the Smashing Pumpkins

Music and God are inseparable. This fact is often forgotten in our modern world, with its worship of secularism and humanism and various other -isms that only serve to distract from the truths they are trying to illuminate. Still, God remains, whether or not he/she/it is acknowledged. And this makes sense. Music is the complete antithesis of reason and rhetoric and all of the other cerebral, ‘intellectual’ pursuits that are so heralded in our current age. Music lives outside of words, outside of logic, outside of time. Play a single note from a song and it is worthless; its power comes from the relationship between the present moment and everything that came before.

So where does music happen? Is it in the instruments, the sound waves, the brain? Is it some strange mixture of all of these things, plus something else we haven’t yet been able to define? We don’t know. Just like we don’t know why music ‘works.’ Why do certain combinations of sounds soothe us, excite us, bring us to tears? Why is the experience different for everybody? A musician is humble. He accepts what he knows, even though he doesn’t know why he knows it. His craft requires an act of faith in something which is entirely beyond comprehension. Is this really so different than the concept of ‘god’ that modern man in his hubris is so frightened of embracing?

In some artists, the channeling of this higher power is a struggle. They fight against it, trying to maintain their sovereignty, their status as the sole mastermind behind the work that they create. Withdrawn into their minds searching for something that exists entirely outside of them, these artists are always plagued by writer’s block and frustration. Their ego simply can’t step aside and make way for the real source of inspiration. You can tell which artists view their work as a spiritual practice. They’re the trailblazers, the creators of new genres. They’re the prolific geniuses who never stagnate, whose work stands the test of time. Maybe faith is an illusion, and the only utility to trusting in God lies in this faith’s ability to calm anxiety and lend artists the confidence to take risks and trust in their abilities. Either way, it works.

This month, The Smashing Pumpkins released the thirty-three song rock opera ATUM. It is Billy Corgan’s most ambitious project yet, and it succeeds. Each song sounds like a symphony—a stunning, extraordinarily detailed blend of guitar and synthesizer and drums. While I won’t pretend that upon first listen an unfamiliar listener would be able to parse together the intricate storyline that Billy has created, the album nonetheless feels like a journey. The three acts feel distinct. Act I evokes images of exploration and discovery. The second is a turning point, and by the third all chips are down and the climax is so pronounced it is almost physical. When it ends, it really feels like something has ended. The album was advertised as the sequel to Billy’s two previous concept albums, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Machina: the Machines of God. This is for good reason. Just like its predecessors, ATUM changes you. These are not just collections of songs; they’re narratives, with a protagonist, a story, and a message. In the case of ATUM, the story is particularly grand, not only dealing with personal themes like the previous albums but tackling the nature of the world in its entirety. Its name is derived from an Egyptian creator deity, a being from whom everything else in the world arose. This is fitting, because ATUM itself seems to be a perfect portrait of this creation.

In many ways, ATUM is a dystopia, and like most dystopias, its purpose seems to be to satirize all of the major problems of its time period. It’s certainly timely—takes place in a future world run by an oppressive government, called the ‘X+I,’ who ensures that everything is surveilled and sanitized and safe, all at the expense of freedom. Dissent is not tolerated in this world, and people whose opinions do not line up with the accepted narrative curated by the X+I are banished off-planet in their own personal spacecraft, where they can live out the remainder of their lives without threatening the existing world order. The story is clearly a nod to what is happening in the world today, with its censorship and ‘cancel culture’ and overemphasis on safety over sovereignty. In his Thirty-Three podcast in which he discussed each individual track on ATUM, Billy identified this as a major choice currently facing humanity: do we want to live in a safe world or a free world? It could be argued that ATUM is his prediction about what will happen once we definitively make our choice. Nevertheless, whether it is conceptualized as a bleak view of the future or an exaggerated view of today, its implications are the same: there is a shift taking place in humanity’s soul. Our priorities have changed, and the societies we create are changing as a result.

ATUM represents this very broad concept (and, in fact, something even broader) but it also represents something deeply personal. As I said before, the album is a sequel to Mellon Collie and Machina. Both of these albums were semi-autobiographical in theme, following a character who is not an exact representation of Billy, but is undoubtedly based on him. In Mellon Collie, his name was ‘Zero.’ Then he became ‘Glass’ in Machina, and now he’s had another transformation, going by the name of ‘Shiny.’ Nevertheless, he is still the same person, which we see when he reverts to his original name in Act III of ATUM after his return to Earth.

The Shiny that we meet in ATUM is an artist at the end of his career. He has been ostracized for going against the mainstream, and banished by the X+I. However, he has the rare opportunity to have his voice heard again. He’s an aging rock star—in his seventies with a somewhat younger appearance, returning to a world that is no longer familiar to him. Sure, Shiny’s not an exact replica of Billy—Shiny is older, for example, and Billy is not at the end of his career, but in one of its peaks (perhaps suggesting that ATUM is a view of the future in more ways than one). But the two artists share certain parallels. Both have been slandered and ignored for not conforming to the popular narrative. And interestingly, just like Shiny, right now Billy is having a bit of a comeback. In ATUM, Shiny is given the opportunity to expose some corruption he knows about, but he chooses to be quiet, saving himself instead. Is there some importance to this? Is Billy holding back on us?

We don’t know, of course, which speaks to another theme touched on in the story: the relationship between musician and listener, or, for that matter, the relationship between any artist and the fans who enjoy their work. Billy portrays it as a strange, hollow relationship—at once intimate and empty. In ATUM, there are two characters who represent this type of connection: Osirah and June.

First let’s address Osirah, a young dissatisfied revolutionary who uses Shiny’s music for her own purposes but does not really understand it. She dismisses the last song that Shiny ever wrote, completely missing the layers of meaning that the artist had packed into it. She molds Shiny’s music to her own purposes, and then turns on him when she realizes that the real artist is nothing like the image of him she has constructed in her head. This is a bleak depiction, hardly a ‘relationship’ at all.

And then we have June—a character whose admiration for Shiny seems pure. She loves him. She followed him into space having never met him in real life, just because she wanted to be as close to him as she could. She sings to him every morning, she ends her own life when she realizes that he has ended his. Shiny is isolated, completely cut off from human affection. And yet, unbeknownst to him, he is admired by June. She seems to be the only person who really understands him. It’s an uncomfortable thought. He is known, by somebody, but he can never enjoy it. By contrast, June, who can at least enjoy the comfort she has found in Shiny’s music, will never be understood by Shiny the way he is understood by her. She will always be alone, to admire from afar.

It’s tragic. And yet humans have been seeking out this type of connection forever—making art and consuming it, baring their souls in a piece of work even though they’ll never know the impact that it will have, connecting a piece of artwork even though they will never see any material payoff for this connection. It’s a strange, abstract, and uniquely human means of communication, and it poses questions. Who knows a person better: someone who has met them in real life, or a person who has seen/heard/read everything they’ve created? Is it possible to really ‘know’ someone at all?

ATUM was a return to form for Billy. Not only was it a return to concept albums—a type of project that he hasn’t attempted in a long time—but it was also the first release in a long time to contain a less polished, freer side of him. I’m talking about Zodeon at Crystal Hall—a collection of singles on 7” vinyl records. It was what John rightfully called “Billy at his best”—plain acoustic rock music straight from the soul. It’s crazy how effortless the songs seemed (in the best possible way, of course). Putting them on feels comfortable, like coming home. Part of this might be my own preference (one of my first thoughts when listening to the album was that, while ATUM was a collection of excellent music, Zodeon was a collection of the type of music that I love). I think it’s more than this, though. There was something special about Zodeon, something that surpassed even ATUM. ATUM was an expression of Billy’s mind and soul, a marriage of the spiritual source with which all music is created and the ingenuity of man. Zodeon, on the other hand, is the type of music that is written when the mind is quiet.

Zodeon at Crystal Hall is truly Billy at his best. It is not really a cohesive album by Billy’s standards, but if it was released as one, it would be ranked near the top of The Smashing Pumpkins’ discography. Every moment of it accomplishes that magical thing that makes me think that music is the greatest art form. Each song granted me a different realization about life and about myself. “Magdalena” reminded me of everything, everyone, that I had to be grateful for in my life. “Saffron” taught me that I often take things for granted—that right now I have essentially everything that I’ve ever wanted, and that I still find reasons to be unhappy. “Zope” taught me that the problem is that I don’t know how to focus, that I succumb to this type of self-indulgence because it’s an easy way out of doing the work that would give me the happiness that I seek. ‘Huzzah!” told me something deep and ugly—that I have a tendency to write things off, to abandon them instead of fixing them. It upset me, and I spent the greater part of “Automaton” thinking about this. “MaryQ” posed the question of whether anyone can really change, whether these type of realizations about yourself are useful at all, or whether they just make you sad. Does knowing about your destructive habits help you change them, or are you just destined to repeat the process over and over again? The remaining songs on the album, “Burr,” “Excelsior,” and “Necromance,” accompanied the answer I came up with—which is, of course, that it is a little bit of both. You’ll always be you, I decided, including the bad parts of you. But you still have a choice. You can choose what you do, what you focus on. You can choose happiness—the ‘secret’ to this is simply letting go. None of this was explicit in the music, of course. I did not hear the lyrics of any of the songs, and I’m sure that if I did they would have nothing to do with the realizations that I gained from them. This whole experience came just from the sounds, and my relationship to them. The album left me contented, mindful.

John remarked that if a collection like Zodeon gets criticized, we will not see anything like it again for years. That’s because sharing something like this is like baring an open wound. There are no shields or guards in place to protect your pride. The music is just you, and if someone doesn’t like it, it hurts. Perhaps this is why it was hidden away on five 45s in an expensive box set—if you want to listen to this music, you have to work for it. It’s probably better this way. This is the kind of art that allows humans to truly communicate with one another—not only intellectually, but as spiritual beings. It reminds us who/what we really are, which makes sense, because it is, in fact, a piece of that divine source. It is a meeting of souls.

ATUM, though, is a peak of human ingenuity. The project is ambitious. It expresses outwardly everything that music like Zodeon implies. With this album, Billy captures not only the melancholy of the artist-fan relationship, or the horror of a totalitarian government, or the loneliness of individualism in a conformist world. He paints a picture of life itself. The universe, in all of its multiplicity. Ugliness and beauty come together. The storyline itself contains some of the worst of humanity: oppression, betrayal, death. But it also contains hope and bravery and love. Plus, there’s this metaphysical layer to all of it that lives in the background of the story. God, or Elohim, or the connectedness of the universe or whatever you want to call this elusive higher power, is ever-present in ATUM, as real of a force as Shiny or the X+I.

This is unsurprising. Billy is certainly no stranger to mythological symbolism. He’s been making Bible references since at least the days of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and his two solo albums are rife with references to myths of all kinds. His Pillbox movie (set to the music of his Ogilala album) was a compelling examination of life after death, set to a backdrop of Egyptian mythology. The title ATUM, of course, references an Egyptian creator god, and the name Osirah is probably based off of Osiris, the Egyptian god of both fertility and death. The hacker group of which Osirah belongs to is called “Hopus Dei,” pronounced in the audio story like “Opus Dei,” which happens to be an organization within the Catholic Church whose name translates from Latin to “Work of God.” In the final song “Of Wings,” Billy chants the lyric “Agnus Dei,” meaning “Lamb of God,” a name given in the Bible from John the Baptist to Jesus. It is often said in Catholic services that the Lamb of God “takes away the sins of the world,” and there is clearly some messianic imagery reflected in the story of ATUM.

The song “Space Age,” which details Shiny’s descent towards the sun after he elects to end his own life, is sung by “seraphim”—angels. These celestial beings have real power; they intercept Shiny’s ship and alter its course, leading him back towards Earth. It’s as though they have a divine plan for Shiny, like he is supposed to fulfill some kind of purpose which he still hasn’t realized. He goes back down to Earth, makes an appearance, is rejected, and then disappears—this time forever—with the seraphim singing in the background once again.

The story has all of the intrigue of a myth, which makes the reader wonder: what is next? Why was Shiny ‘chosen’? Was he meant to save the world? It’s unlikely. As long as the mortal realm exists, it will be populated by both good and evil. If ‘save’ is taken to mean ‘rid the world of evil,’ this will definitely not happen. But some eras are better than others, and nothing stays the same forever. It is possible that by getting peoples’ attention and making them think about what might be wrong with the world around them, Shiny did some damage to the X+I, and may have even changed a few lives. Perhaps he touched enough people to have been the catalyst ushering in a new era, one of enlightenment instead of ignorance.

He wouldn’t know it if he did. Neither would any of the characters in the story (except perhaps the seraphim). Osirah and the surviving members of Hopus Dei would go on thinking that Shiny was a traitor to a cause that he never supported. The X+I would go on desperately clinging to power, and the masses would go on living whatever lives they live in their bleak future world. The mental shift Shiny caused would be subtle, and it wouldn’t occur in everyone. Perhaps it wouldn’t happen at all—this was left up to our interpretation, after all.

The story ends with Shiny following June into the sun, ostensibly to try to save her. What will happen to Shiny? Will he succeed, or is he pursuing sudden destruction? And what about June? Billy mentioned in his podcast that we ‘hadn’t seen the last of her.’ Will she be back in another album? Who is she, anyway? We’ve seen her before—as early as Gish. Is she his muse, a character that has followed him through the eras of Zero and Glass and finally Shiny? Is there any significance to the fact that Shiny only met her face-to-face after all of his music was already made, and he was ready for them to die together?

It’s up to the listener to decide, which is, of course, a fancier way of saying that I don’t know. But ATUM is certainly a story that makes you think—about the motion of the universe, the cycle of life as it exists on Earth. The duality of life is referenced all over the place—good, evil, despair and hope all coexist beneath a chorus of angels who seem indifferent yet exercise their will in subtle unseen ways. It’s a vivid portrait of life, told via the type of messianic hero that pops up time and time again in our myths. It seems right that it’s told through music, a medium which conjures the unexplainable, and lives as close to the spiritual realm as human beings can wander. The album is a triumph—a worthy tribute to its namesake.

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