This could be the biggest sky

(How do I write this without any working jargon? No "aligns" or "frameworks" or "meet?")

In the absence of feelings about the time this song emerged, or about its content (this is SUCH A WORK EMAIL RIGHT NOW), I am going to pull myself out of dutiful, scheduled, timebound thinking by wondering about the genesis of it.

Here it is, a snapshot about him, and his reminder to me that you can be both deliberate and spontaneous in your creating.  

That structure will set you free. 

That I admire the freedom of improvising, and understand viscerally how that freedom happens because improvising, though improvising, still has a...framework. 

Maybe that's why you're around.

Spring's arriving, emerging from Bowie-mersion, and finding I'm sort of becoming addicted to Tusk.



It needs to be mobile--on the iPod.

It's happening today.

Not what you think it's about.

And nothing has changed/Everything has changed

"Sunday?"

Because it's a prayer. Hear the key change at 2:19. "As on wings." Straight-up, old-school church hymn.

I'll call it a chant for peace in the middle of uncertainty.

If anything, he has captured the anxiety of entering the 21st century, before we separated from each other and became cynical.

I can see where I am goin’.

I didn't cry again all week until I watched this. Unexpected.



And this--conceived, created, costumed, not a rote revival, not a wink-and-give-'em-the-hits. A creation for this moment. Theatre. Life.

TRANSMISSION

December 15, 1979.

I have listened to this song at least 35 times this week alone.

And last December, only "The Man Who Sold the World" performance was screened within David Bowie Is at the MCA Now, straight from the poodle's mouth:

Sail over heartaches.

Because this is when I really, really liked him, but he was not vital. And because I can't even touch Ziggy Stardust or Heroes yet...

Seemed like pop fluff at the time, but it resonated with me more a little less than 30 years later on Saturday (January 9, 2016) as I listened to my handmade Bowie playlist whilst cleaning the bathtub. And it apparently was a very thoughtfully-crafted song, too, not a trifle churned out to add to a film soundtrack aimed at getting 80s summer airplay, and one that marked a turning of a corner for Bowie's craft.



If our love song
Could fly over mountains
Could laugh at the ocean
Just like the films
There's no reason
To feel all the hard times
To lay down the hard lines
It's absolutely true

Just like that bluebird.

This changes everything.

These words mean nothing, but: move. brave. death. art. death. create.



"Just go with me"

"Just turn on with me/And you're not alone"

Happy Birthday: It's about to be writ again

Today's Shuffle: What is really what

A brief one, a head-clearing walk around the block (twice) to take in bare trees and holiday lights.

Yim Yames, All Things Must Pass Tribute To
Cocteau Twins, A Kissed Out Red Floatboat Blue Bell Knoll
David Bowie, Queen Bitch Hunky Dory
Digable Planets, Examination of What Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space)

 

Just for one day

I remember.



I think. Actually, I remember all of this:



It's funny, though. That means almost nothing to me now.

And Bowie is...everything. Sharp, on target, on message, unifying, electrifying. And I didn't realize that until I saw it (again?) within the mesmerizing final room of the MCA show.

Also of note within these two: the Union of the Huge High-Low Backup Singer Shirts.

But this... sheer raise-funds, festival-busting perfection. Set the standard, really. And prepped me for dorm-room poster-level worship just a few years later, shifting from multiple, be-makeuped mullets to just...one love.



Still, Bowie wins. I mean:

Happy birthday: Breathe through the years

This song hits me every time I hear it. 

The artist questions, and answers it. When it's time to leave, does he want to remember the 70s--his 70s? Do any of us--our 70s? We can have 70s that aren't in that decade, the "killing time" years. I had a few; they were probably in the mid-oughts.

We can let them go; they don't matter any more aside from what they might've forged or made fall away.

Breathe through the years.

And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves

Happy Birthday: Fill your heart

It was "square" of him to do it, but Bowie fancied and fashioned this song. 



Here, have three hours-plus of the lad to fill your heart.

We kissed as though nothing could fall

I swear Shuffle shuffled up this--this, my most beloved song* by this man on my mind today (and a lot of days)--for me tonight while I was walking beneath the engorged stars and across from my night-gilded city and beside the lake that gradated from alien green by the shore to ink way out there.

It was so god damn beautiful.



*I realize that, because I first truly engaged with this song when it played over the credits of the end of the CBS Sports broadcast of the 1998 Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan, my love of it probably is and should be suspect. But, hell, I don't know, I'd heard it before, and I'm sure very recently before that on WKLH, but I remember this moment because it stopped me across the room, my bedroom in the apartment on Bartlett. It was around the time I was starting to think about moving to Chicago, yes, and while that doesn't have anything to do with why CBS Sports was playing it as it scrolled all the names of the technicians and camera people and coffee people and translators and ski wranglers and what-have-you who'd worked long hours for weeks in a foreign country (which itself is not a an achievement that necessarily deserves an accolade such as "hero"), I find it wonderful and strange that I think back to that moment that this song first (or finally) wove a spell over me at the very moment that I'm gaping at the skyline of the place that was merely a flicker of a possibility in the back of my mind while I was busy being spellbound by Bowie in the front. Or, rather, struck still by the decision of a Bowie-loving television network producer.

I've loved this song since 1998.

On Repeat: Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know

Timely, this.

Walk out of her heart, walk out of her mind

My stomach feels small.

Lay the real thing on me

I had no idea that there was a not-Ziggy before there was a Ziggy, The Arnold Corns. I'm only fifteen minutes into the BBC 4 Story of Ziggy Stardust and I'm already in a wiki snit fit, all indignant that I didn't know this.



I need to find a reputable Bowie biography to read. And then read Angie's book after so I can tell what's dirt and what's mud.

I'm glad this never went anywhere so that the song could really grow up.

On Repeat: Pack a Pack Horse and Rest Up Here

God, that twin bass/guitar riff that opens and anchors this song just--well, it got me through last week. And last week was long. Long and heavy as these buzzy riffs. But these riffs are happy, too. So there's that, too. Lore (Wikipedia) has it that B. didn't have lyrics ready when it came time to record this for The Man Who Sold the World. That might explain the awkward first line or the overall brevity of the words.



I don't care. This enables me to skitter coolly down the street every day lately.

Must Play Loud: Gee my life's a funny thing, am I still too young?