David Bowie and the occult part 2
Phil Scott
than on his lyrics. Still he professed: "I'm Pierrot, I'm Everyman.
What I'm doing is Theatre, and only Theatre ... what you see on stage
isnt' sinister. It's pure clown ... putting over the great sadness of
1976."
Then living in the tax oasis Switzerland, Bowie had reduced the money
consuming stage shows onto pure black and white light and a 1920-look.
His friend, icon of public self-consummation/consumption with razors,
Iggy Pop danced in the background.
Tying in with a new Recording management, both Bowie (now rich but
arty) and Pop temporarily moved over to Berlin, where in a seven room
apartment they drowned their depressions in beer and cocaine and
produced voiceless sound tapestries of electronic styles that would
influence many pop musicians yet to come. Far away from the public,
Bowie started painting, mostly dilettante portraits in the
expressionist 1920-style or the caballistic Tree of Life from which
the ten Sephira emanate. As mentioned before, you find one such occult
painting on the backside of the cover of the EMI CD re-relase of
"Station to Station" (1991).
Bowie recorded "Low", together with Iggy Pop, they 'fabricated' the
album "The Idiot", Bowie became "Heroes" (also the song title in
between inverted commas), Pop ironically caught sight of the "Lust for
Life" but both remained "Passengers", headed by Bowie as "Lodger".
Aimless.
Bowie singing a Christmas duet about the "Peace On Earth" with the
soon to die Bing Crosby in 1976, you couldn't distinguish the almost
identical voices: Bowie now was mainstream.
"Put a Bullet in my Brain"
Meanwhile having consumed somehow all potential musical rivals, his
song-tapestries gained lyrics again.
Lou Reed from the Velvet Underground was brought by Bowie from the US
to the UK and Bowie produced Reed's famous "Transformer" Album in
1972, thus making Reed's success dependant from Bowie's name.
Bowie wrote songs for one of Englands then successful bands, "Mott The
Hoople" in 1972.
Bowie had produced Iggy Pop's most influental album "Raw Power" in
1972.
His name also appeared on albums by Lulu, Mick Ronson, Dana Gillespie,
Steeleye Span, The Beatstalkers, Dib Cochran & The Earwigs, Peter
Noone, Arnold Corns and many more. He also developed a deep
relationship with Mick Jagger. He had recorded or staged with Gene
Vincent, Jeff Beck, Bruce Springsteen, Brian Eno, Rick Wakeman, Cher,
Bing Crosby, Marc Bolan, Marianne Faithfull, John Lennon and sung his
songs in Italian, German and French; obviously an 'Artist'. There was
hardly any better description of a true gnostic than a "Man who Fell
to Earth" (a sci-fi film of 1975, where he starred the main role),
bringing "Sound and Vision" (1977) or alias Ziggy Stardust saving the
world. -- But the loss of creativity was overshadowing.
All his life Bowie admired mostly those cloning him. In 1979, the
universe was crowded with Bowie-clones among them the opera singer
Klaus Nomi [know me]. As a pure gnostic, Bowie consumed Nomi by
performing with him. Both wore stiff plastic Pierrot costumes when
they presented "The Man Who Sold The World" who had "died a long long
time ago".
The first song he ever had written, "I'm tired of my life"" (in circa
1963) was recorded anew in 1980 with a partly altered wording, now
called "It's no game" landmarking "No more free steps to Heaven" and
taking distance to fascism as Bowie had been photographed doing
something like the 'Heil Hitler'greeting in 1976 and had been
overheard muttering "I am the only alternative for Premier in England.
I believe Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader. After all,
Fascism is really nationalism".
It is reported that Bowie had a strong interest in the saga of King
Arthur ("I had this morbid obession with the so-called 'mysticism' of
the Third Reich" in the 1970s). Well, those Knights had been sent out
to seek the Holy Grail. In the magickal and sexmagickal
interpretation, this grail is the vagina containing sperm and vaginal
fluids. Consuming this elixir (the Elixir of Life, as it is called, or
"psychosexual fluids") gives rise to the Homo Superior, the God in
Man, and the Man in God ("the Golden Ones" (Warriors) in "Oh! You
Pretty Things", 1971).
And doesn't Angie Bowie tell us that Bowie called his penis "Sir
Lancelot", an important key figure in the Grail-saga ...?
What were his topics in 1980: "This is the message from the action
man: I never did anything out of the blue ... _I wanna axe to break
the ice_" (Franz Kafka's definition of a book). Bowie presented his
gnosis as the prison celebrated in a Pierrot's costume again: His
reaction to an earlier persona, Major Tom who sang in 1969: "I think
my spaceship knows which way to go" (in "Space Oddity): Bowie's life
as a Show "hung out in heaven's high: hitting an all time low": Gnosis
as a flight and as a result from pains and the demarcation against
philistine values: "my mama said to get things done you better not
mess with Major Tom": His gnosis as engineered uterus exhibited in his
1980 video for "Ashes to Ashes".
This would be the last creative Bowie-act for a decade: after this
ultimate coitus with himself, Bowie obviously needed a very long
cigarette rest.
Vampires of Human Flesh
German film maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder also was known to vampirize
worn out superstars in his films. Alas, the planned project of Bert
Brecht's 'Threepenny Opera' with Bowie was a dead end. Nevertheless,
Bowie (living then in New York) incorporated Brecht's "Alabama Song"
(from Brecht's 1928 opera 'The Rise and Fall of the Town Mahagonny')
in his live set and portrayed Brecht's Baal in a 1981 BBC production
maybe in order to kindle his dying fire "with gasoline"? These
Brecht-songs sung live in the TV production and also published as
studio-versions belong to the best interpretations of Brecht I have
ever heard and are appropriate to Bowie's desire of alienating
everything (Brecht was the 'inventor' of the literal alienation
between the artists and the play on stage and the audience).
Nobody listened to the complexity of it all.
As long as "Ziggy Stardust was making love with his ego", Bowie had
potential to develop his creativity. But the mounting degree of
wealth, the loss of frictional resistance in the business and social
life (now being an 'accepted artist' and surrounded mostly by lackeyes
and toadies), his consciousness of once being a suffering- individual-
splintered- into- countless- pieces, obviously receded into the
background. The suicide machine grew tired, drug problems became
easier to grasp and sex life linear. Now a very rich man, where was
the gnostic thorn between 1983 and 1992? Was it the self parody "Blue
Jean" in 1984? The unbearable easiness of being in the Italian
tearjerker "Volare" (in the film "Absolute Beginners", 1985), in John
Lennon's 'Imagine' (sung live in 1983)?
Again he told the world: now I am the real David Robert Jones - and
produced music which he had done "with love", but later would hate. --
So when Bowie parked a vacancy sign in his front yard during the 80's,
who or what moved in?
Bowie's live performance of 'Time' on the 1987 Glass Spider video
shows that he now used the Tarot Card "The Hanged Man" to identify
himself as the "Redeemed Redeemer", a key figure in occultism which
hints at Baphomet, the central idol of the Knight Templars and the
Ordo Templi Orientis. About whom is Bowie singing: "The sniper in the
brain", who "flexes like a whore" in a Stefan George like park where
lovers quit -- but who were the lovers: Bowie and God?
"Baphomet" also was a magical name of Aleister Crowley who identified
himself with the Antichrist, the Beast 666.
In an email correspondence in December 1999 and January 2000, N Ball
speculated about Bowie having made a contract with an Angel (sort of
Lucifer/Mephistopheles) in the 70's; not Faustian in the medieval
sense, i.e. an overt signing of a document with a devilish figure
behind your shoulder. Mr Ball speculated about the belief that one can
have conversations with an inner voice where such a deal is
consummated. This is what Crowleyites call "Contact and Communication
with the Holy Guardian Angel" [the "Angel" in the "Golden
Years"-song?). Here are his inspiring thoughts about David Bowie in
the 80's (predicting some ideas introduced in this article at a later
moment again).
I'm not alleging that such a pact existed. I don't even know whether
such pacts can be genuinely entered into. Nonetheless it is a
interesting image.
Bowie' self-preservational instinct got the better of him and he
simply flinched from Lucifer's project. For a bright guy like Bowie,
the culmination was hardly a matter for deep rumination: the road was
littered with dead rock gods, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, etc., i.e.
all victims of their Luciferian trajectories. This theory is premised
on the notion that Lucifer wants rock gods to crash and burn, so
confident is he of his own supreme powers of seduction. He will get
your soul AND kill your idol! Cause he's bad and your "always crashing
in the same car." The fastidious, control-freak aspect of Bowie's
personality prevailed upon him to renounce Lucifer's plan. Surely
things could be re-negotiated as with a bad record deal, no? Thinking
fast, Bowie says "Wait, wait, I'm not the Lizard King or the Voodoo
Child, I'm the Man Who Sold the World. And by Hades, I mean to prove
it." Bowie spends the 1984-93 period tinkering in his basement to
little avail. Lucifer gazes on like an impatient investor, his Brixton
project slowly rotting on the vine before his very eyes. The boy
better have something good, he thinks.
Thank God, the mid-nineties arrive. Bowie's mystique, sustained almost
entirely by Lucifer's lavishing of creative riches during the 70s,
sustains him long enough to win the mantle of Rock God Survivor or, as
Peter-R. Koenig suggests, the Redeemed Redeemer. This is the "escapee
from the asylum" designation, ostensibly outside Lucifer's purview, an
"unintended consequence" of the remarkable staying power of those
London Boys who, by all rights should be dead but persist nonetheless
as merely the undead: Bowie, Richards, Jagger, Clapton, Page,
Townshend, Osborne, et al. See them fall over themselves on VH1
retrospectives, condemning drugs and loud parties. To a man, they
confess to past failings and "youthful indiscretions". Bowie pleads
nolo contendere claiming a sort of spiritual "amnesia" during the
coke-infested days of 1975-77. But in truth they are all merely being
lured to a still larger seduction: the multi-billion dollar corporate
industrial complex of the late 90's OR "Lucifer meets the financial
markets." Bowie bonds, a sort of creative mummification, become the
rage. However Satan is bad for business. It scares the adults. Sprint
and Revlon co-opt Her Satanic Majesties Tour. Gee mom, they were all
silly personae anyway. See, it was only me behind the ouija board.
Bowie's abandonment of Lucifer cannot sit well with the Great Pitch
Forked One. I mean, doesn't a Luciferian pact seal your fate forever?
Are you allowed to reap the rewards and then disclaim the pact? One
might "look back in anger" at a deal signed in haste or in a period of
personal distress. But there's no going back. Bowie may have
miscalculated or realized the price of his bargain too late. Lucifer
cannot simply be shed like a stage costume. Let me put it this way: IF
Lucifer exists, he should be VERY pissed with Bowie.
There are other prospects:
Bowie has abandoned nothing. The "regular guy" Bowie of the last 20
years is merely a more cunningly conceived image, designed to beguile
an even broader audience. So pleased was he with Bowie's early
successes, that Lucifer has decided to employ Bowie to resonate across
ever larger segments of society. There's no doubt that Bowie's wealth
and global renown have, inexplicably, grown over the last couple of
decades, despite the atrophying of his creativity. What sustains his
popularity?
Bowie has seduced Lucifer. No longer simply a minion of the devil,
Bowie's persona has been adopted by Lucifer as his own. He is a
permanent preening project, the consummate vehicle, so photogenic, so
empty. Bowie is Lucifer. In the ultimate "selling of the world",
Bowie/Lucifer are demonstrating most audaciously that the world can be
beguiled on image alone. Content and merit be damned. The world is a
whore ["The earth is a bitch ... Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use"
as Bowie sang in "Oh! You Pretty Things" in 1971; and in "Time" in
1973: "His script is you and me, boy / He flexes like a whore"] which
will lift its skirts for nothing at all (The Whore of Babylon).
Lucifer would derive great pleasure from seducing millions on pure
illusion/falseness and then laughing at them eternally for their
stupidity and the ease of their capitulation.
Don't kid yourselves. Bowie, not Al Gore, is the spiritual father of
the Internet. The schizophrenic flitting down numerous threads like
hallways in an asylum, closets full of Yahoo identities and personae,
tenuous, spurious links from one conceptual framework to another.
Bowie's crowning acheivement (or most toxic legacy if you prefer) is
the centrality of the gif/jpg image. In a Bowie cosmology, consistency
breeds only contempt. No address is comprehensive, nothing is sacred
and most can be led anyplace when they have been unmoored from
everything/hitched to nothing. If Lucifer exists, he owes Bowie much
for working diligently to prepare such a fertile environment. It can
only work to Lucifer's advantage. This would be my "Bowie as John the
Baptist" theory, i.e. the Great Preparer, preparing for whom, the
AntiChrist, Satan himself? Others have worked on this Grand Project in
other stations of life and art. Bowie is a very capable lieutenant
within this Project.
Did Bowie fear to drown in the Abyss, escaping only like the Baron von
Münchhausen pulling himself out by the own hair? The Babe of the Abyss
was a new band called "Tin Machine" in 1988 (a sort of re-collection
of Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" of 1975?).
First conceived as a complete difference to whatever he did before,
Bowie soon started to parody Ziggy live with the Tin Machine in 1989.
The gap between past and present became larger, the critics ridiculed
his present incarnation. Again he seeked to pose as an artist, a
generalist, a Renaissance universalist and 'professed' "I don't care
which shadow gets me ... switch the channels, watch the police cars. I
can't reach it anymore" (pronounced "read shit")
Slowly we meet the inner circle of a Weltanschauung that grew in long
summers on the Island Mustique (where Bowie resided since 1975,
alongside with Princess Margaret and Mick Jagger): Art as therapy.
Contrary to being a postmodern Buddhist, he had installed himself a
history of his own (that is, identity) as a collector of antiques.
In 1992 he married Iman Abdulmadjid "sanctified by God" and told the
press: "I'm not a religious person. I'm a spiritual person. God plays
a very important part in my life -- I look to Him a lot and He is the
cornerstone of my existence ... I believe man develops a relationship
with his own God." And lethargically he sang a hectical song about
"Sex and the Church" where he thought that "there is a union / between
the flesh and the spirit / It's sex and the church". His music in 1993
seemed like an apotheotic parody of current modern jazz, the
instruments like a mutilated tapestry, the melodies overhauled by
rhythms and samples, sometimes like a Brian Eno album without Brian
Eno. Obviously, Bowie was "looking for God in exciting new ways".
The 20th Century Boy
Maybe recollecting a cultivated attack of suicide attempt (considering
the pre-Iman time), sipping cocktails served by the world's most
beautiful woman, his wife Iman and ambassador of the UNESCO, in circa
1993 Bowie listened to the actual avantgarde music while painting
masturbating Minotaurs.
He contacted allies from the 70s and developed the concept of a
concept-album again. Allegedly pushed against his will by his manager
he climbed back into the ring in 1995 with a handful of new songs and
presented "1. Outside" of all expectations Jacques Brel's "My Death
Waits There" with a Bing Crosby voice
"My death waits there between your thighs"
[does "death" mean the 11th sephira
"Da'ath"?]
"But what ever lies behind the door
There is nothing much to do
Angel or devil, I don't care
For in front of that door, there is you"
Note to the title "1. Outside". Bowie had the critics believe that he
was inspired by his visit of the patients in the Austrian 'Artist
House' in Gugging near Vienna, where schizophrenic patients became
worldwide famous artists. An exhibition of those painters in New York
in January 1994 used the term "... Outside Art". But fact is: Bowie
and Brian Eno recorded the songs to "1. Outside" already between
January and May 1994 while Bowie, Eno and their friend André Heller
visited the Patient Artists only in September 1994.
The instruments cold and without soul, wearing a black rubber costume
in order to break his image of the Club Mediterrané Entertainer he
uttered "There is no Hell / like an old Hell". He crooned "I hurt
myself today / to see if i still feel / i focus on the pain / the only
thing that's real" and evoked the insect crawling into the vagina. But
the 'spontaneously invented' pseudo-dramatic puzzle pieces like "I hit
the rose" (maybe in order to hint at Lou Reed's "Vicious") and his
screams "this chaos is killing me" sounded too serialised, too loud
and too obvious.
It was the difference between what was happening on stage and the
Icon-Bowie-wildly-available that struck the observer. His ecstasy
smelled pasteurized, squeezing out aesthetic resistance that Bob Dylan
already had expressed: "i accept chaos, i'm not sure whether it
accepts me". Or with Sigmund Freud: There shall be Me where there was
It.
Instead of Dalí's/Buñuel's "Chien Andalou", Bowie hoisted up the words
"Open the Dog" from his 1970 song "All the Madmen" when they took
"some brain away". Both critics and audience hated him deeply because
he refused to interpret his old Hits. They felt boredom when Bowie
sang "the music is outside". They awaited ecstasy but couldn't
understand the complexity of Bowie's pain because Bowie sacrified
articulation and emotion to an art concept where Bowie remained the
Master of Ceremony.
New Musical Express 25 November 1995: the show "involved all these
strange neo-futuristic characters running around El Bowza's head".
Alas, his audience looked for the authenticity of the ecstasy that was
to be expected in Rock and Initiation -- "authenticity" which Bowie
always consciously refused to produce because its production must be
in the perceptor. The 'reality' was placed 'outside' upon the
perceptor, that is the audience. But both, critics and audience,
didn't note that Bowie was parodying again when he sang about the
boring life of Andy Warhol and at the same time dancing like a
marionette under cocaine: Those who move clumsily can not lie and
therefore are creating consciousness.
In Zuerich 1996, Bowie interpreted the song "Andy Warhol" with some
lyrics from his 1983 hit "Let's Dance", ecstatically twitching under a
roof of neon light.
Being in the first row of the audience one still wondered why Bowie
didnt' sweat during his shows. -- Intensity noted through its lack.
Presence through its absence.
"I'm so thankful that we're strangers when we meet"
Wildly he pushed his career as a painter, meanwhile sitting on a bunch
of selfportraits gazing sinisterly à la Anton LaVey (the founder of
the Church of Satan); paintings titled 'Satan', 'Crouch', 'We Saw A
Minotaur', the Tarot cards 'Love', 'Moon', 'Death' and 'Star'... The
Prince's Trust sent out plain white masks to over 1000 public figures
in late 1996. Bowie's design consisted of a simple "666" stencilled on
the forehead, complemented by the handwritten annotation "Your pretty
face is going to hell."
Both, album "1. Outside" and paintings turned out to be artistic flops
as he had predicted "I think I lost my way".
The National Portrait Gallery simply noted: "I suspect nothing very
exciting of David Bowie has ever come our way."
This was the pain that worked with Bowie. A cold-blooded reptile, he
rejected all parts that the audience didn't like (the art-ritual
murder of baby Grace Blue) and performed old hits again. An avalanche
of public relation 'news' hit the press and Bowie rummaged his
vendor's tray of the showbusiness' VIPs (Damien Hirst, David Lynch,
Julian Schnabel, Dennis Hopper, Balthus, and many more). The context
remained gnostic: The march to the stock market, planned long
beforehand, several new acquisitions of real estate and a suddenly
natural looking smile. It was a yogic exercise in Asana for both
himself and his audience. So he was sitting barefoot in a very
demanding Yoga position during his live performance of "The Man Who
Sold The World" in Zurich on 14th February 1996 while styling himself
being frozen into the man who again "died a long long time ago".
The 1970 song, recycled already in 1973 with Lulu and in 1979 with
Klaus Nomi received an oriental arrangement and reminded of Madonna's
live version of "Like A Virgin".
His live shows looked like business transactions between the audience
which received a well-dosed portion of ecstasy and Bowie's going
stock-market with his Ziggy Stardust songs.
You Rebel Rebel
When a Mythos has died, the need for compensation grows into the
infinite.
And so it happened. Bowie became the first human who sold his persona
to the stock market. One month after his 50th birthday, in February
1997, Bowie issued bonds upon himself and expected royalties. Included
were 25 earlier records published prior to 1993. Because Bowie had
kept control and the rights over his work since 1975 (that is, the
master tapes, despite disastrous contracts binding him until 1982; a
fact which was responsable for his constant change of music styles),
in one second 55 million Dollars slurped onto his bank account. The
Bowie bond has a repayment period of 10 years and bears interest of
7,9%. This is remarkably higher than any US-government bond to date.
Although other artists sell more CDs, the product "David Bowie" is
considered to flow back one of the strongest commissions in the
History of Popmusic. Money is created especially through circa 250
songs which can be played now in lifts, TV ads (e.g. Microsoft) or
telefone answering machines.
On December 28, 1999, Bowie's "Rubber Band" from 1966 was used as
background for a German TV documentary about flatulence ...
The fragmentation, the virtualisation and the mechanisation of Society
have found their restless soundtrack.
This constant money flow makes the Bowie bond so strong that it
received the AAA-rate from the Rating Agency Moody's considering Bowie
ranking 16th amongst the top-earning entertainers in 1997. The average
consumer stays outside gazing in wonder (some in dismay), and even
hardcore fans are left out: the complete stock of bonds vanished in
the treasure vaults of a British insurance company.
Bowie moved to Ireland, as there since 1969 official artists don't
have to pay taxes.
Meanwhile, also Bowie's playing with The Mask has become mainstream
and the pose of many other music artists: Madonna, Kurt Cobaine of
Nirvana, had been inspired more by Bowie's gnosis than by his hairdos
(unlike a lot of others).
Thus having become enthusiastic he went on mammoth tours through
Europe: Bowie in a new Pierrot costume and the red hairdo of 1972.
Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" was staged in slow motion as if the
extraterrestrial lodger Ziggy finally had arrived Earth: as
"Earthling" (title of his new album). Never he had a better performing
band, never was his mood better but never was his concept more clever,
arty and implausible. From this gap between cold business and gnosis,
phoenix like music ascended, which had been lacking in all his earlier
tours up to now.
Anybody home?
Similar to the apocalyptic stage show "Diamond Dogs" of the summer
1974 (an approach to George Orwell's '1984') which had inspired the
depressed mood of the Winter 1995 Outside Tour, the death-wish-thing
turned into dance music (after the depressed 1974 tour followed
Bowie's Philly Dog tour that peaked in his Disco album "Young
Americans" in 1975). In Spring 1997, Bowie created a
Drum'n'Bass-Dancefloor tapestry of sound and shocked again critics and
audience although he met their desperate desire for dancing. Should he
wonder when at the same time they became aware of his bedroom tapestry
that he had designed for Laura-Ashley?
Both dance tours (1974 and 1997) survive on bootleg records only (two
legal exceptions of 1997 prove Bowie's unsteadiness when he published
two live Drum'n'Bass tracks alias "Tao Jones Index" on vinyl). These
records with their endless and monotonous tracks witness Bowie's sense
of a new era about to dawn but the simultaneous defeat through
repetition.
Nevertheless, Bowie's stage personae became more virile and cheeky. He
openly flashed his vampire teeth to the audience and asked it to focus
upon him and only him. TV-talkmasters and members of the band remained
languishing staffage, as ever, and re-actors for his keywords, his
bizarre bonmots which he spread with flashy charm before them like
pearls before the swine. Bowie does not exist: only the fragments of
conversations he syphoned off, the keywords, the fragments of reality
which he sucked of some moments ago, some books ago. Pieces of past,
myth, guitar noise and the books he is just reading; apocalyptic
platitudes. The wildest events in his life became golf parties with
Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper or skiing in St. Moritz and Gstaad,
transvestite parties with Mick Jagger or foto sessions with England's
anti-drug politician Tony Blair (where Bowie wore the huge letters
"SEX" as earplug).
"What a fantastic death abyss"
In the 1997 TV talkshows, in carefully torn apart Pierrot dresses he
sung again about the "Scary Monster and Super Creep". Upon his right
hand a huge rat paw: His own pied piper. Guitars were screaming, and
the band "running scared" and breathlessly behind the master. And the
day after, he quietly performed the same song again in a Jonny Cash
style, leisurely jingling his guitar "she opened strange doors that we
never close again."
"Doors" an expression coming from Aleister Crowley's friend Aldous
Huxley, which hinted to the entrance to other realities opened through
consumation of drugs, already in 1930.
And in order to finally lose some drops of sweat, in the hot summer of
1997 he pulled on a red polo-neck and opened his shows most of the
times "immersed in Crowley's uniform" with the 1971-song about the
Golden Dawn, while the thrilled audience joyfully joined in in his
words: "Don't believe in yourself / Don't deceive with belief /
Knowledge comes with death's release." Never was the 11th Sephira
Da'ath celebrated by so many people simultaneously.
The superb live show cybercast on the Internet, 1st October 1997 was
opened by Bowie with the words "I tried to sneak on but ..."
immediately followed by "I'm closer to the Golden Dawn ..." -- maybe
in order to explain his enduring absence of creativity?
Other shows started with the 1970 "Supermen" crowding Earth before our
time: "Nightmare dreams no mortal mind could hold". The guitar riff
coming from Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, the world's most intense
private collector of Crowleyana, who contributed in 1965 to Bowie's
song "I pity the Fool".
Sometimes he asked the audience to dance, certainly having his 1974
lyrics in mind: "For you're dancing where the dogs decay, defecating
ecstasy / Because of all we've seen, because of all we've said / We
are the dead." Between the tracks he spoke about Jean-Paul Sartre,
about Heinrich Harrer (7 Years in Tibet), because "this is the book
part of the show". The ballad honouring Jean Genet/Julien Green of
1972, now as a blues, still reminded to "keep all your dead hair for
making up [witchy, 1983] underwear", although in 1997 this seemed to
be merely a parody of occultism.
Towards the end of the 1997 live set followed a Drum'n'Bass-version of
Laurie Anderson's conceived decision about communication "O Superman":
"Well, you don't know me, but I know you. And I've got a message to
give to you ... when love is gone, there's always justice".
And in the name of Justice, we find Bowie in child benefit concerts
stageing unplugged versions of his greatest hits at childrens' schools
and finally on the 1997-"Children in Need"-record of Lou Reed's 1972
song "What a Perfect Day", where Bowie contributed his dia-gnostic
base: "What a Perfect Day / You made me forget myself." At the same
time he gave a sort of a Dada interview about cigarette smoking: a
topic from which he squeezed out gnostic insights: "All life's
pleasures leave you unsatisfied because you try to reach that high
every time." Smoking among non-smokers makes him feel "like the lowest
of the low".
"I love death, the more of it the better. I think it's a good thing,
heh heh heh!"
Around this time photographs emerged showing Bowie with a gloreole and
bleeding stigmatas (e.g. on the cover of the 1998 bootleg "Jungle
Fever"). In fall 1997 he prevented his audience from dancing while
doing a now jazzy version of Brel's "My Death Waits There". Despite
endless touring and being on stage since 1987 (the Glass Spider tour
was followed by the several Tin Machine tours, the Sound and Vision
Tour, the Outside Tour, the Open Air Festivals) there were no signs of
wear: the sound of the band was full and satisfying, the songs'
arrangements became increasingly subtle, his voice stronger, his mood
more entertaining. His "Always Crashing in the Same Car" (now in an
unplugged version) of 1977 turned "Crowley's uniform of imagery" into
"Crowley's uniform of symmetry" (October 97, live on the Internet).
The constant repetition of expressing ecstasy and being an artist on
stage throughout many years obviously raises questions as to the
authenticity of the ecstasy. The repeated simulation of the ecstasy
(after having sung "White Light White Heat" for the 1000th time)
nourishes the suspicion that Bowie's ecstasy is part of his tamed and
choreographed Pierrot expressing depressing intensity. His gnosis
remained in the new arrangement, the progression, and ceased to be the
isolated fragmented piece of identity. It was and is the persona
'David Bowie' that continued to attract the attention of the world:
Not the quality but the myth is what sells. But not everyone is buying
it; the famous Vienna re-mixers Kruder & Dorfmeister refused the
re-mixing of one of Bowie's songs considering it as a 'waste of time',
in 1998.
"What's Really Happening?"
At the age of 50, David Bowie changed his opinion about the always
used cut up method of creating the lyrics of his songs. Earlier he
considered this method as a tool of determining past and future: now
he senses no past and no future either for the individual or Society
anymore: everything is too speedy in his perception, leaving no time
to grasp things and analyse the past, let alone to speak about
projecting a future. What matters is the presence only. It's no longer
a question of altering personae or identities one after the other, but
an experience of their absolutely postmodern simultaneity: a sort of
TV Karma he called it.
At the end of 1997 he uttered his wish to retire from the business,
stop smoking and have another child. Of course, he remained
hyperactive, sticking cars with mirrors for public relation reasons,
constantly recording new songs and not always tastefully contributing
his might to diverse projects (e.g. ruminanting Stanislaw Lem's idea
of reviewing non existant books).
Postmodernism has no aim, no original thought, no genuineness and
finally no authority. An eternal apropos ties in all objects with art,
art objects and sources of meanings. Everything is connected, a TV
serial, an art object, a worn out superstar, a famous star, a line,
its mirror, its compression. But, what would Pop/Rock be without
identification? What is reality without its simulation?
"Seven Ways To Die"
Bowie always expressed interest in the electronic dreams. Already in
1983 the Serious Moonlight tour was organised via email.
In September 1998 he created BowieNet on the Internet: an Internet
Service Provider, that is a web account, with news, (planned) sports
news, stock market news, a BowieBank, email accounts and a supermarket
to buy his paintings plus other Bowie memorabilia. Never has the music
business better been circumscribed as in this advertisement: "Buy
David Bowie online, you rebel rebel".
The circle got closed as the Internet can be considered as the virtual
reality, the gnostic realm beyond this world here. -- Gnosis through
Bowie as the reedemer who brings complete and constant availability of
the Icon Bowie. Marketing itself becomes a Myth.
"Live 'til your rebirth and do what you will"
Fragmentation is the major theme of occultism (in the sense of
hinduistic variety) and of the Internet and the definition of identity
in Postmodernism. The equality/unity between the person and his role
is to be broken up: multipled or de-centralised selves are the
landmarks of knowledge. The association of the fragments (or the
fragmented perception) has a reason: but there is no ultimate truth
behind it. This makes way for a new Myth: Being fiction gets to be
seen as an integral part of being real. To be one simulation among
other simulations. Consequently, Bowie was made the Hero of a computer
game: Omikron, the Nomad Soul.
Something that Andy Warhol predicted: Nobody really knows you. You can
be anything and you are the website that you are visiting: Eclectic
creations that are tied together by the star's image and elements from
other genres of multimedia. These products purport to enhance the
intimacy of the star-fan relationship while keeping one aware of the
superhuman range of Bowie's interests and another closed circle as
predicted in 1971 in the song "Moonage Daydream" where he sang about
the electric dreams: "Don't fake it baby, lay the real thing on me /
The Church of man, love, is such a holy place to be"
There exist early versions of "Moonage Daydream" with slightly altered
lyrics, recorded by Bowie and his dress designer Freddi Buretti (alias
Arnold Corns, who did all the Ziggy clothes until 1973). The song
appeared again on the live set list in 1996-97.
"Electric dreams" also had been mentioned in the 1971 song "Hang Onto
Yourself" (based on the Velvet Underground sound, even the lyrics of
earlier versions refer to Lou Reed's songbook) where the quintessence
of gnosticism was expressed in the unique line "The bitter comes out
better on a stolen guitar".
There is one recorded 1971 version of "Hang Onto Yourself" with Gene
Vincent, one of the Rock leather boys of that era, which gives the
lyrics a juicy taste.
Both, "Moonage Daydream" and "Hang Onto Yourself" would be the lead
tracks of the Ziggy Stardust live shows.
Since 1997 David Bowie has never gotten tired of professing to be the
most happy individual on the planet and soon to be finally the real
"David Robert Jones". Can we believe the words and the artificial
smile of this laughing gnostic? His jokettes are the kind peculiar to
people accustomed to having their jokes laughed at.
Though it's highly unlikely that Bowie will ever regain the godlike
prominence of his prime, his influence persists. He currently is
resuscitating the Ziggy persona for a film made by himself: probably
for business reasons, but there is always a veering within the man.
Perhaps Ziggy II means something else, a signal that Bowie plans to
jettison the hard-won "mainstream" acceptance that he achieved over
the last couple of decades. Is he bored, again? "Their tragic endless
lives could heave nor sigh / in solemn perverse serenity, wondrous
beings chained to life." as he sung in the 1970 "Superman" song.
Collecting awards must get boring after a while.*
"They say he has two gods"
As Bowie wondered "Can I change the channel on my TV without using the
clicker?" in 1976 (entertaining anecdote between two tracks, live late
1999): Does David Bowie believe in magick, does he think that it has
any ability to affect the physical world?: "No, I think all those
things merely become symbolic crutches for the negative. ... I can't
become comfortable with any organised religion and I've sort of
touched on all of them. I'm not looking for a faith, I dont' want to
believe anything. I'm looking for knowledge" [NME 25 November 1995].
Of course, he sang on "Law (Earthlings on Fire)": "I don't want
knowledge / I want certainty." (1997).
Professing to have "problems" with Jesus Christ he also admitted that
"The gods forgot that they made me / so I forget them too."
"Just watch me!"
"Music Now!" in December 1969: "Do you like seeing pictures of
yourself?" Bowie: "Yes, because it means I am being seen."
There is an overall marvel at David Bowie's stamina. But does he do
this so that his audience marvels, is that the point? Does he derive
self-satisfaction from all this movement? Or is his self-satisfaction
borne from his sense of the appreciation for him? A chameleon changes
his colours when excited: Bowie changes himself to get excited. But in
a world without cameras, what would Bowie do? Would he be inclined to
do half of what he does today if nobody wasn't watching? Does a
falling Mask make a sound in an empty forest?*
Why Bowie is better than God
taken from mookid loves Bowie: why Bowie is better than God: a fan
site
We know for certain that David exists.
David has cooler clothes; God's billowing robes are just so passe.
David is less prone to smiting sinners (a definite plus).
If you hear God's voice in your head, you're probably crazy.
If you hear Bowie's voice in your head, you may be crazy, but at least
you have something to sing along to.
David looks better naked than God does. (Conclusion based on
appearances in "the man who fell to earth" and the uncensored "china
girl" video)
God couldn't tease his hair that high, even during the 80's.
God can't play the guitar.
David has better shoes.
David is richer.
David is still attractive.
God probably looks like Mick Jagger or Keith Richards by now.
Going to a Bowie concert is a lot more fun than church.
God doesn't paint his toenails.
God's too uptight.
People don't corner you at malls to tell you that "Bowie loves you."
David looks better in a dress.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Re-collection of Bowie's spiritual and religious symbolism in his
lyrics
"Tired of my Life", 1963 (version 1970)
"Threepenny Pierrot", 1967 (the forthcoming threepenny gnostic)
"The Mask", a pantomime of ca. 1968
"The Laughing Gnome", 1967 (the pierrot personae "David Bowie" and
"Mick Jagger" who will "earning" them "lots of money")
"Did You Ever Have a Dream" ("it's a very special knowledge that you
got", "astral flights"), 1967
"Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed", 1969 ("I'm a phallus...")
"Holy Holy", recorded 1970 (sexmagick: ("Slowly, we get too good and
too holy / Helping one another, just a righteous brother")
"The Supermen", 1970
"After All" ("Do what you wilt"), 1970
"The Man who sold the World", 1970
"Quicksand" ("I'm closer to the Golden Dawn immersed in Crowley's
uniform", "Knowledge comes with death's release") [1971, again on
Bowie's set list in 1997 as the opener, sometimes after the
drum'n'bass part, with one slightly changed lyric line regarding
Aleister Crowley's earlier "uniform of imagery" which now turned into
a "uniform of symmetry"]
"Oh, You Pretty Things!", 1971 ("You gotta make way for the homo
superior")
"We are the Dead", 1974 ( "For you're dancing where the dogs decay,
defecating ecstasy / Because of all we've seen, because of all we've
said / We are the dead.")
"Who can I be now?", 1974
"It's gonna be me", 1974 ("be holy again")
"Station to Station" ("from Kether to Malkuth"), 1976.
"Ashes to Ashes", 1980 ("hung out in heaven's high: hitting an all
time low")
"Baal's Hymn", recorded 1981, released 1982 [lyrics by the 18 years
old Bertolt Brecht]
"Sex and the Church", 1993
"My Death waits there", 1972 (lyrics by Jacques Prévert and sung by
Jacques Brel; again on the live set list in 1995 and in 1997, then
introduced with "No dancing!") This song contains the unique lines:
"My death waits there between your thighs" and "Angel or devil, I
don't care" (on the live set already in 1970-73):
"Hurt", 1995 (lyrics by Trent Reznor; "i hurt myself today to see if i
still feel, i focus on the pain, the only thing that's real")
"Lust for Life", 1976 (slow version 1996)
"I can't read", 1989 (depressive version 1997) ("I don't care which
shadow gets me")
"O Superman", 1982 (lyrics by Laurie Anderson; on the live set list
1997) ("Well, you don't know me, but I know you. And I've got a
message to give to you ... when love is gone, there's always justice")
"Perfect Day", 1972 (lyrics by Lou Reed; version 1997: "What a perfect
day, you made me forget myself")
Other lyrics/songs of relevance:
Lieb mich bis Dienstag, 1967 / Love you till Tuesday
Mit mir in Deinem Traum, 1967 / When I live my dream
Karma Man, 1967
Silly Boy Blue, 1967,
Ziggy Stardust 1971
Moonage Daydream, 1971
Hang Onto Yourself, 1971
Time, 1973
Can you hear me?, 1975
Word on a Wing, 1976
Cat People (OST, 1982)
Volare, 1986
Glass Spider, 1987
Under the God, 1989
Heaven's in Here, 1989
Reptile, 1995
The Hearts Filthy Lesson, 1995
Scary Monsters 1979, 1997
Little Wonder, 1997
Other references: the biographies of Angie Bowie, Marianne Faithfull,
Amanda Lear, Romy Haag; George Tremlett: David Bowie (London 1997),
and many many newspaper clips and Interviews that I collected since
1972. Jean-Martin Büttner's "Sänger, Songs und triebhafte Rede" (Basel
1997) also was a source of inspiration, as was the email discussion
with *N Ball.
An example of a David Bowie Internet presence is BASSMANSBOWIEPAGE
where you find the lyrics of Bowie.
To Buy Rare Bowie Records contact Marshall Jarman
Phenomenon content + entrance What's New ? Introduction The
early years of the O.T.O. Carl Kellner Memphis Misraim O.T.O.
Rituals Fraternitas Saturni Typhonian O.T.O. Ecclesia Gnostica
Catholica The "Caliphate" Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua David
Bowie Charles Manson Pictures + Documents RealAudio and MP3
Books on O.T.O.
Search the O.T.O. Phenomenon site
Javascripted Navigation
This David Bowie Web Ring site is owned by Peter-R. Koenig
Want to join the David Bowie Web-Ring?
[Skip Prev] [Prev] [Next] [Skip Next] [Random] [Next 5] [List Sites]