station to station
gabriel swossil
it is often said that the albun station to station and especially the
title song has many kabballistic references reflecting bowies interests
in kaballa at that time. does anybody knows more about this. any
articles or references somewhere in the net?
interesting to see that on the ryko release of station to station there
are tho pictures (one on the back cover, one in the booklet) where you
can see bowie drawing the "kabballistic tree" (sorry i don't know the
right word fr it; i think it is called something like "sephiroth").
also interesting to mention is the typography of the album. the title
and the songs are printed without spaces. (stationtostationdavidbowie)
like in kaballa when you add the numbers representing each letter to get
a number which is said to represent the word.
sorry for my bad english - pretty hard to explain all this in a foreign
language.
any help information very appreciated.
cu all
gabriel
ori...@my-deja.com
You could check out the following article (not great, but interesting):
http://www.cyberlink.ch/~koenig/bowie.htm
x Orissia
In article <1e6se6o.6t7h6qp5ya1cN%swo...@gmx.at>,
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Andrew Stewart
wrote:
>hi folks,
>it is often said that the albun station to station and especially the
>title song has many kabballistic references reflecting bowies interests
>in kaballa at that time. does anybody knows more about this. any
>articles or references somewhere in the net?
Here's an interesting piece on the subject from "Uncut" a while back
covering Bowie's mid 70s period, his dabblings with coke and black
magic, and the others who played an important part in that period.
"WHITE LINES, BLACK MAGIC
David's Dark Doings - And How He Escaped To Tell The Tale
David Bowie's Station To Station and the "Berlin Trilogy". By Ian
MacDonald
"I ran across a monster who was sleeping by a tree. And I looked and
frowned and the monster was me"
(David Bowie, "The Width Of A Circle", 1971)
EMI's latest batch of mid-price Bowie reissues, discs released at full
price in 1990-1, consists of the 1976-8 sequence, Station To Station,
Low, "Heroes", and Stage. It might have been truer to his career to
have made a foursome of Low, "Heroes", Stage and Lodger - the "Berlin
Trilogy" plus their complimentary live album - and to have corralled
Station To Station with his other "American" albums, David Live and
Young Americans. Never mind. As it happens, EMI's decision highlights
a little-understood juncture in Bowie's development: the transition
between the two The Man Who Fell To Earth albums, Station To Station
and Low.
Bowie's modus operandi during the Seventies was transformation, acting
out the suburban dream of escape into glamorous "otherness" - hence
his popularity among a very specific audience segment (and the total
blank he registered with those for whom escape was not an issue). This
method held good until Young Americans, even though that album's
associated transformation - white boy on Soul Train - was less the
usual Brechtian device than an identity-crisis on the part of the
artist (or the Actor, as he then referred to himself). Uprooted from
his native context in the cultural artifice of Europe, isolated in a
largely unironic and cultureless alien land, Bowie was forced back on
himself, a self he didn't much like. Weary of the artistic
transformations which were now getting too close to home, he fended
off self-examination with mental diversion, reading obsessively from a
portable library and deadening his growing sense of emotional
emptiness with cocaine and booze. David Live is, in effect, a
station-stop in this journey on the old Oblivion Express, an evening's
snapshot of Bowie's deepening malaise.
With Station To Station - its title partly suggested by Bowie's 1973-6
touring schedule which, due to his fear of flying, mostly consisted of
travel by train-the Oblivion Express reached another halt. But, this
time, Bowie, rarely one to repeat himself, refused another David Live
stop-over. Instead, he got off the damned train. A sonic "dark night
of the soul", Station to Station is to Bowie what On The Beach is to
Neil Young's album, rooted in the folk-blues tradition of American
"authenticity", remains too musically raw for wide appeal, whereas
Station, if only superficially, is one of Bowie's most glamorous
discs. However, the superficial view of Station to Station doesn't
tell half the inner story of the album, a recherché work which,
despite being recorded at Cherokee Studios in the hyper-American
suburb of Hollywood, is essentially European.
The key to the transition between Station To Station and Low (whose
covers both employ images from Nicolas Roeg's the Man Who Fell To
Earth) is that it does not coincide with Bowie's usual sort of
artistic transformation: the persona swap. Bowie's final mask, the
Thin White Duke, travels no further than Station to Station. There's
no mask, no persona in Low. Just a rather gaunt young man in a
"styleless" dufflecoat, looking sideways to the viewer as if in a
police mugshot.
Some would say that this is merely because Bowie then ceased touring
for a while (appearing live only as Iggy Pop's keyboard player), and
consequently had no need to invent a new stage character. In truth,
Bowie's temporary low profile, coded in the cover of Low itself, was
forced on him at a time when an interlude of retreat for recuperation
and regrouping was the only alternative to a full-scale crack-up
during the recording of Station to Station, a period of which he
claims to recall almost nothing. Mental breakdown still appeared to be
impending in May, 1976 when, returning to Britain from his sojourn in
America, a seemingly stoned Bowie acknowledged the British press corps
at Victoria Station with what most of those present took to be a Nazi
salute.
Britain was then witnessing the electoral rise of the neo-fascist
National Front, and Bowie's proclaimed ambition to be the country's
fascist dictator was naturally, those of us who were fans chose to
read Bowie's stance as ironic. Neither was wholly correct. Like Neil
Young's republicanism, Bowie's brand of fascism, while it embraced
irony, was basically serious; or was taken seriously by a certain
hermetic compartment of his mind, wherein it dwelt. The rest of him -
what passed for the normal lad from Brixton - was deeply uneasy about
it; so uneasy that he included on Station To Station a song open to
God in case the demons evoked elsewhere in the album should get out of
hand.
Bowie's fascination with Nazism was never conventionally political.
Rather, it was one aspect of a personal cosmology traceable in cryptic
songs like "Cygnet Committee" (Space Oddity, 1969), "The Supermen"
(The Man Who Sold The World, 1971), "Big Brother" (Diamond Dogs,
1974), but most explicitly in "Oh! You Pretty Things" and -
particularly - "Quicksand" on Hunky Dory (1972): "I'm closer to the
Golden Dawn/Immersed in Crowley's uniform/Of imager/I'm living in a
silent film/Portraying Himmler's sacred realm/Of dream reality."
Eagerly absorbed from the omnivorous reading with which the
self-taught Bowie, insecure in his intellect, then shored up his
self-esteem, this personal cosmology was rooted in the Gnostic myth of
the Fall, viz: we human beings are born into this world from a higher
dimension ("heaven") which we forget upon entering the sphere of
material existence. Hence, homo sapiens is a half-finished thing
living in a state of waking sleep he calls reality, but which is
actually a kind of delusion. Only those "awake" on the physical plane,
the "enlightened" ones, see reality as it truly is. As such, they are
supermen. Now that "home sapiens have outgrown their use", such mental
supermen are set to inherit the earth.
As a young man, Bowie was impatiently obsessed with the inefficiency
of our unenlightened minds ("We're today's scrambled creatures, looked
in tomorrow's double feature"). As a result, he viewed the majority,
unaware as they were of their plight, with a blend of tolerant irony
and frank contempt ("the mice in their million hordes"). Elaborating
on the Gnostic myth, he cross-bred Nietzsche's Superman - "The
Wild-Eyed Boy From Freecloud" is a sort of pop Zarathustra - with
esoteric motifs in the writing of Madame Blavatsky and the teaching of
the American mystic, Gurdjeff. Both allude extensively to mysterious
"Masters": enlightened super-beings who supposedly guide human affairs
from mountain fastnesses in Tibet and the Hindou Kush ("the men who
protect you and I").
Blavatsky's writing, along with those of Eliphas Levi, gave birth to
the late 19th-century Occult Revival which in Britain produced the
magical society called The Golden Dawn, whence Aleister Crowley
emerged, and which in Germany created the occult basis of Nazism,
epitomised in Himmler's vision of his SS as an Arthurian company of
immortals, incarnated to bring order to the physical plane. Though he
made plenty of pro-Hitler statements around 1975-6, Bowie ultimately
remained sane enough to distinguish the ideal of an order-bringing
élite from the Nazi reality. He was, he would occasionally claim, a
Nietzschean, his "fascism" being conceptually benign (if nonetheless
arrogant). He favoured a New Order not of domination, but of
enlightenment: rule of the "asleep" by the "awake". The main snag was
that he was doing too many drugs. Imbibed along with piles of prime
Colombian, books like Pauwel and Bergier's The Morning Of The
Magicians (1971) and Trevor Ravenscroft's The Spear Of Destiny (1973)
had, by 1975, led Bowie into a remote headspace where even UFO's were
part of the plot.
During the LA sessions for Station To Station, the Fuhrerling (as
Bowie drolly refers to himself in a demo of "Candidate" on the 1990
reissue of Diamond Dogs) was archetypally "torn between the light and
dark". At one point the journalist, Cameron Crowe, found him burning
black tapers in the seeming aftermath of some ritual magic that had
gone wrong. "Been having a little trouble with the neighbours," said
Bowie, evidently not referring to the people in the apartment next
door. Michael Lippman, a friend of Bowie's during this period,
remembers him describing strange nightmares. Lippman gave him a gold
cross.
Bowie later asked him for a mezuzah (a parchment in a glass tube,
inscribed with the divine name Shaddai, which Orthodox Jews keep
nailed to their door to ward off evil).
The title track of the album is packed with occult references and
allusions to the Gnostic myth of the Fall. A mention of White Stains,
Crowley's very obscure first book, shows how deeply Bowie delved into
the golden Dawn background; indeed, the lyric suggests that he also
studied The Tree Of Life by Crowley's pupil, Israel Regardie, a
brilliant treatise on the magical use of the 13th century Jewish
mystical system, Quabala. In Quabalistic language, the Gnostic myth of
the Fall can be expressed as "one magical movement from kether to
malkuth" (Kether being the sphere of the Godhead, or Crown of
Creation, and Malkuth being the sphere of the physical world, aka the
kingdom). These spheres (sephiroth) lie at opposite ends of the glyph
known as the Tree of Life, which Bowie is seen drawing on the back of
EMI's reissue of Station to Station.
Seems he thought of the sephiroth as stations - "standing places", as
in the Stations Of the Cross (which have their own occult
interpretation). Sadly there are 14 Stations Of The Cross but only 10
sephiroth. (The Christian sign of the cross, though does "map" onto
the Tree..)
The song, "Station to Station", also has a Shakespearean resonance.
Prospero the magician (and incognito duke) in Shakespeare's most
mysterious play. the Tempest, surrounds himself with books, among
which is his occult grimoire. At the end of the play, he abjures magic
and "drowns" his book of spells. In "Station To Station", the Thin
White Duke - Bowie as a cocaine-frozen Prospero lost in his (magic)
circle, tall in his room overlooking the ocean (Prospero's Island
"cell" transported to the coast by Los Angeles) - despairingly reviews
his repertoire of illusions. "Such is the stuff from where dreams are
woven," he muses, not quite quoting Prospero ("We are such stuff/As
dreams are made on"). Clearly, illusion is no longer what he wants.
Station to Station - like Plastic Ono Band, like Todd, like On the
Beach - is an exorcism: an exorcism of self, of the mind, of the past.
By 1976, Bowie had nearly had enough of his "magic" - the theatrical
"grand illusion" by which he'd lived since 1972. Thus, he "flashes no
colour" - another magical allusion, this time to the so-called Tattva
symbols which use "flashing" complimentary colours to after
consciousness, ushering the magical aspirant into the Astral Plane of
heightened vision. Decoded: Bowie has travelled the Astral (or
ascended the tree Of Life); now he wants to come down o earth, to
love. (Hence the cover image of the soundproof chamber in The Man Who
fell to Earth.)
One could easily continue for another thousand words in this vein
about "Station To Station". (Let alone the rest of the record. Bowie;
"It's the nearest album to a magical treatise that I've written"). Yet
none of this symbolism would matter if the artist were not in control
of it; and if it didn't crack, via the desperate drunken
grandiloquence of the song's bridge ("Once there were mountains on
mountains"), into the naked-and-wired stamped of its epic, up-tempo
release, driven by that magnificent late Seventies rhythm section of
Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis, and George Murray, and lit by the
elemental fire-scream of Earl Slick's hysterical guitar. Those who
accuse Bowie of lacking feeling should listen closely to this
transition: the quavering, hopeless-to-hopeful vulnerability of the
couplet, "It's not the side effects of the cocaine/I'm thinking that
it must be love." This is a deeply unhappy human being, harried by his
own incandescently gifted mind.
In fact, Bowie didn't cast his grimoire into the ocean after station
To Station. He hedged his commercial bets by mixing the album "big",
and made plans to tour it in Europe. He was still half in his
mystic-fascist Thin White Duke persona when he "returned", like some
parallel universe Duke of Windsor, to Britain in May, 1976 (and he
would certainly have been aware that the Nazi salute is identical to
the occult sign of the Zelator grade in the Golden Dawn system). Yet
he went on, soon after this, to move to a roughhouse Turkish suburb of
Berlin, there to kick the white powder, clean up his mind/body, and
start a new career in a new town.
The artistic transformation between Station to Station and Low was an
inner one, not a career move, it happened to Bowie himself, not to
Bowie the Actor. In Berlin, the sons of real SS men sorted his head
out. In Berlin, he saw neo-nazis beat up Turkish immigrants. In
Berlin, low in the aftermath of heavy drugs and Hollywood glamour, he
forced himself to live like an everyday person, buying his own
groceries. The nightmare of the Thin White Duke faded, chased away by
hours of laughter with his new cohort, Eno, the first person Bowie
worked with who could keep up with him. He finished Low (another album
one could write thousands of words about) and mixed it, as he claims
he intended to mix Station To Station, "dry": close, compressed, and
with a gate on the snare so vicious that it became the first
drum-sound people outside the studio-world actually noticed.
What happened to the private cosmology, to the magical Nietzschean?
Bowie has lately conceded "a need to vacillate between atheism or a
kind of gnosticism". On his 1997 tour, he played, of all things
"Quicksand".
Think on, secret thinkers."
(np: Best Of Bowie 74/79)
____________________________
"Where's the morning in my life?
Where's the sense in being right?
Who said 'Time is on my side'?
......
You're the great mistake I never made" - David Bowie (Survive)
To join 1300 fans receiving a free monthly BOWIE newsletter, send a message
to bowie...@hotmail.com with the subject "Subscribe"
For copies of back issues, check out http://www.angelfire.com/al/bowienews/
ori...@my-deja.com
informative.
x Orissia
ori...@my-deja.com
and alt.magick. If you get any decent replies, post them back here!
fr...@cix.compulink.co.uk
Stewart) wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Feb 2000 23:30:47 +0100, swo...@gmx.at (gabriel swossil)
> wrote:
> Here's an interesting piece on the subject from "Uncut" a while back
Thanks for posting this excellent piece. BTW who wrote it?
Tim
gabriel swossil
thanks for the suggestion. i will try this and will post any results to
this group.
cu all
gabriel
gabriel swossil
by Peter-R. Koenig
What is art, what is rock music? It's difficult to describe its codes,
its
gestures, its aestethic and its perception but mainly it can be
experienced only,
and only as an expression of our culture -- being in a movement of
constant
restlessness and mirroring all graspable parts of society. How can the
feverish
emptiness of endlessly repeated ecstasy be transformed into something
that can be
sensed, that is heard and seen and be paid for, as the music is not
qualified
through the consciousness of its creator but through the states of mind
created
by its perceptors? Frank Zappa expressed it in 1974 when Evelyne, a
modified dog,
was questioned about the "conceptual continuity" and thus answered: "The
crux of
the biscuit is the APOSTROPHE" ("Stinkfoot").
What has David Bowie to do with occultism and gnosticism?
Apart from being a sometime brilliant musician and dilettante artist,
Bowie's
religiousness and musical techniques mirror an eloquent fragmentary
projection of
society. Like many European post-romantic novelists and thinkers, e.g.
Hermann
Hesse (the Steppenwolf), Gustav Gründgens (his most famous role:
Mephistopheles
in Goethe's Faust) or Aleister Crowley, the Gesamtkunstwerk, 'David
Bowie' makes
the subject of discussion of the splintered reality coagulated onto
cultural
artifacts which glued together are creating new realities. Similar to
many
occultists, Bowie (born 1947 as David Robert Jones) is seen by some as a
'Renaissance Artist' whose professed 'universality' wants to show the
landmarks
of evolution through collecting puzzle pieces of our society. Fabulous
wealth,
critical acclaim, penetrating intelligence, enduring physical beauty,
ever
greater and more broadly expressed heights of achievement. What next,
godhead?
There is a Faustian/Mephistophelean element here. How else to explain
the
absolute zenith of this man's worldly trajectory? In fact, there are
people who
are convinced his success wouldn't be possible without some kind of
otherworldly
assist.* I do not share this opinion. It is my conviction that Bowie's
work is
generally underestimated and can't be reduced upon single topics alone.
Nevertheless, it can't be ignored that he invented himself also of
puzzle pieces
that build the base of modern occultism. Bowie was summoning up some of
these at
the tender age of 16 already.
What has David Bowie to do with occultism? He gave the answer himself.
In his
1971 song "Quicksand" he sang:
I'm closer to the Golden Dawn Immersed in Crowley's uniform of imagery
In the 1976 song "Station to Station" he mentioned the occult key doors
to other
realities when he travelled
from Kether to Malkuth
and on 25 November, 1995, he finally admitted that in 1976 "My
overriding
interest was in cabbala and Crowleyism. That whole dark and rather
fearsome
never-world of the wrong side of the brain. ... More recently, [1995]
I've been
interested in the Gnostics".
What is Gnosticism and can it be found in Bowie's fragments of reality?
The following definition of Gnosticism shows it as something partly
spiritual,
something partly psychological -- a chronic dislocation or
unsettled-ness with
the world. Some who are happy with and in the world, who benefit from
good
health, and who experience love and satisfaction in their preferred
fields, seem
not to need the universe-healing Gnosticism, which I believe is a
religious tool
to deal with unbearable life. Gnostics live in two worlds at the same
time. They
seek a divine reality, a realm within this world here, which is only a
sort of
shadow world. Gnosticism is a varied set of overlapping religious
traditions that
often contradict each other. Apart from the tradition: every gnostic
constantly
invents his own gnosticism. Living in a world which is subjectively felt
and
experienced as a "rotten place" (a Gnostic term), cries out for
salvation: art,
music, hedonism, creativity, religiousness and a lot of lifestyles
according to
"Optimum through Maximum" or "Optimum through Minimum", hint at a
possible or
potential gnostic background: self-realisation beyond but through this
world; or
with Bowie's lyrics: "For you're dancing where the dogs decay,
defecating
ecstasy" (1974).
Bowie created a world beyond his earthly (meanwhile wealthy) existence:
in the
manifestation of constant emanations of differing stage personae who
sometimes
blended in with his 'real' personality but most often had been used by
him to
disguise his alienation from himself, from society and its mechanisms.
Most
prominent in his personal history is the fact that when he was a child
one
relative (from the maternal side of his family) after another required
psychiatric treatment, sometimes due to religious hallucinations. This
sort of
'pain' is traceable in much of his lyrics and caused him to strip
"myself down"
and replace the empty spots "with a completely new personality. When I
heard
someone say something intelligent, I used it later as if it were my own.
... It's
just like a car, replacing parts." In 1972 he felt that his "brain hurt
like a
warehouse / it had no room to spare".
His creation of multiple personalities also mirrors the pop culture (as
he is one
of the most innovative singer of pop and rock'n'roll) and the
paranoid-para-religious discourse of Starmen visiting the earth,
becoming either
Messiah or living as Lodgers or Passengers among the Earthlings.
Famous keywords
Bowie's keywords Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn show us where to
dig more
intensely in order to understand his symbolism.
The Golden Dawn was a magical secret society at the turn of the century
which
taught a unique blend of Jewish mysticism (called Cabbala, something
that can be
found in Bowie's symbolism), astral travel, Magic, Yoga (also practised
by Bowie)
and communication with angels and demons. In order to communicate one
had to
empty one's mind. This made place for the Unknown. Isn't this similar to
Bowie's
cut up method? "I've always felt like a vehicle for something else but
then I've
never really sorted out what that was" (1973). "There's a feeling that
we are
here for another purpose." Eventually he described his working method:
"You nick
a touch of this, you nick a touch of that. Then you do it better simply
by using
Scotch tape, sawdust and a little imagination." Similarly he invented
his own
biography by glueing together found situations (in books, newspaper
articles
about himself, interview questions, TV programs) and often cleverly
calculated
inventions of stage personalities.
The Englishman Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) expanded the limits of the
Golden
Dawn when he advocated assumption of God forms, union with Gods (angels
and
demons) during orgasm and/or consumption of the conjoined male and
female sexual
fluids. One of Crowley's mottoes was "Do what Thou Wilt" (as can be
found on
Bowie's "After All", 1970), which (among many other interpretations) is
equated
with the Greek word "Thelema" which stands for "Will". In Crowley's
world,
'Thelema' is a reference to sexmagick: to reach illumination while
having sexual
intercourse through techniques focussing the sexual energies upon a
wish, a sort
of an inner photography which represents the desire to be fulfilled. We
will
expand this later below.
The Cut Up method: "Inspirations have I none"
Take a text, cut it apart, put it together haphazardly and create
something new.
Since Bowie used the cut up technique to 'write' his lyrics there is not
much
sense in analysing them as a whole: We focus on the the always
re-appearing codes
in his complete work "David Bowie" which connote his kind of gnosticism.
Bowie
defined his use of the cut up method as his way to discover his own past
and
future. He became a cut up himself too for those who closely followed
him
throughout the years when they faced (and still face) themselves in the
splintered facettes of his often odd sounding lyrics, ever changing
styles of
fashion and keywords of books he constantly dropped (and drops) when a
micro or a
pencil of a journalist was and is near. He became a gnostic who brought
gnosis. A
topic which he constantly manifests in stage shows, lyrics and music,
e.g. in the
role of the messianic alien "Ziggy Stardust" (1971-1973) or as the
"Hanged Man"
(1987) from the Tarot Cards in stage shows or on photographs where he
posed with
stigmata and a gloreole (1998). Due to his cut up method of putting
together his
lyrics I consider it completely irrelevant where, when and whether Bowie
is a
self-conscious Gnostic, that is whether he is conscious of his gnostic
expression
or whether he is hiding it ("in an all time low").
The Cabbala combines several aspects: the analytical and linguistic ones
which
certainly have attracted the cultivated Bowie, and the means of
meditatively
immersing oneself into the divine qualities of words and numbers in
order to rise
spiritually. There is a rather sensual way of cabbalistic working: the
'ecstatic
cabbala' which connotes breathing exercises, moving exercises and
singing. In the
1990's, cabbala has become "the new religion of Hollywood" as popstars
like
Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall and Roseanne Barr
have
committed themselves to cabbala. As Bowie describes himself to be a
postmodern
Buddhist, also his working technique seems to be postmodern: the
associative
handicraft as contradiction to the concrete. Well known materials
(fragments of
music and texts) are taken, arranged and re-arranged. He looks at the
result and
tries something else: a navigation through corrections and working
materials.
This explains his seemingly inconsequent changing of styles of music and
his own
reflexion of his work: something he declares his masterpiece today
becomes the
wrong way tomorrow.
One word about the sources
Since the regular (i.e. commercial) recordings of Bowie's records mainly
mirror
the marketing strategies of his producers and studio bosses, I based
this article
mostly on bootleg recordings of his live concerts or studio recordings
which
never saw the regular market. I feel that an artist articulates him- and
herself
more freely on stage (although this most often is the main income for
many) than
under supervision of a producer eying the purses of the consumer.
Therefore for
legal reasons, I cannot give exact sources of most of the used material
herein.
My advice: buy as many Bowie records as possible.
"The Laughing Gnome"
Without his all consuming depression ("hitting an all time low") the
personae
Bowie would be harder to grasp and finally: remain without interest for
the
researcher. He is more a gnostic than an artist, to his chagrin
obviously (as he
wants to be known as an artist). In circa 1963, already at the age of
16, he
wrote the lyrics to his song "I'm tired of my life" when he drafted the
concept
of his future career: "I'm trying to decide which game is best for me,
which can
I bear ... You don't perceive so I'm leading you away". The pattern was
the idea
of changing identity or thinking up your own identity. And so: the topic
of
'finding himself' showed up in the stage fragments of such personae like
the Mod
and the Bob Dylan phase (1964-1968), Major Tom (1969-1970), Ziggy
Stardust
(1971-72), Aladdin Sane (72-73), Halloween Jack (Diamond Dog) (1974),
The Man Who
Fell To Earth (1975), The Thin White Duke (1976), The Svelte Lounge
Lizard
(1978), Ashes To Ashes (1980), The Elephant Man (1980-81), Serious
Moonlight
(1983 when he once again claimed to be the real David Robert Jones),
Screaming
Lord Byron (Tonight, 1984), Tin Machine (1989), Nathan Adler (1995),
Earthling
(1997), on the Internet alias Mr Plod (1997) and as Boz in the PC-game
Omikron in
1999. All these personae were re-creations of the Pierrot, a parody of
Gnosis.
Bowie constantly staged and still stages as the "Pierrot in Turquoise",
a sort of
a Threepenny Pierrot (the colour turquoise connoting "the British symbol
of
everlastingness" as one of his early teachers recollected) already in
1967 in the
pantomime group of Lindsey Kemp where everything was tragic, dramatic
and
theatrical, that is just an extension of his own life. At the same time
(circa
1968) he performed the pantomime play "The Mask" with the story of a
young man
who had lethally identified himself with his painful mask, a role which
Bowie
later would play as "Ziggy Stardust" strangled by the Mask while "making
love
with his ego" on stage (reminding of Oscar Wilde's 'Picture of Dorian
Gray' later
portrayed in Bowie's video "Look Back In Anger"). The track "Look Back
In Anger"
of 1979 was to be the opener for many stage shows between 1983 and 1997.
The Mask was a topic that Bob Dylan had played with in 1964 when
appearing on
stage with the words: "I got my Bob Dylan mask on", and in 1966 he
uttered: "I'm
glad I'm not me". This was openly dividing the search for identity from
its
production. The hint to the Mask connoted the knowledge about the
artificiality
of its myth and its satiric excess.
Also, early in 1967 David Bowie had already outlined his projected
career as "The
Laughing Gnome", when he sang about his and Mick Jagger's future
personae:
'I'm a laughing Gnome and you can't catch me' 'Haven't you got an 'ome
to go to?'
(No, we're gnomads) ... And we're living on caviar and honey (hooray!)
Cause
they're earning me lots of money
Also in the German versions of his 1967 songs the schedule was fixed:
e.g. "Mit
mir in Deinen Traum" (a bit contrary to the English "When I Live My
Dream")
extolled the dreamland where a "you" is going to meet Bowie in the
"you's" dream.
"He glides above the realms"
Feeling "that the human complex is such an inadequate form of existence"
he
experienced "an incredible loneliness". Bowie always styled himself as a
being
dwelling in the "human zoo", tattooed with the Tarot cards (like Ray
Bradbury's
"Illustrated Man" from 1951): a "Karma-Man" (1967, on the live set list
until
1970, talking about Zen-Buddhism while he joined the Tibet Society in
1967)
sitting "on my karma, dame meditation" ("Little Wonder", 1997) and being
a "Silly
Boy Blue" (1967) who never leaves his body now and so "got to wait to
die". 'Dame
meditation' most probably refers to the Kundalini, the yogic fire snake
that
resides in the genital region, waiting to rise to the yogi's head in
order to
enable illumination symbolised by a lotus flower. Buddhism is a tool to
combine
diet, drugs (that is their absence as stimulants/drugs etc are not
considered to
be appropriate indulgences), yoga and sexual techniques. The Buddha's
main
objection to alcohol and indeed to all recreational drugs was that it
befuddles
consciousness thus making mental development difficult. He also often
warned
against alcohol's negative social effects. Consequently abstaining from
all
recreational drugs including alcohol is one of the precepts that all
Buddhists
are expected to practice. Are psychedelics useful in the practice of
Buddhism?
Yoga is one of the preliminary conditions to master the body before
using it as a
temple. By westerners, Yoga is mistakenly thought to be a system of
physical
exercises to keep the body supple and the mind calm. But the meaning of
the word
yoga is union and the system was developed by eastern adepts to assist
them to
attain union with the source of all being. Regarding Yoga: I watched
Bowie
sitting barefoot in a very demanding Yoga position during his live
performance of
"The Man Who Sold The World" (1970) in Zurich on 14th February 1996.
Between 1967
and 1969 Bowie was reported to sleep upright in a traditional wooden
box, eating
only two modest meals a day and going through periods of intense
silence. But Zen
and Mahayana Buddhism weren't his sole tool to expand consciousness and
perception. The Hippie era which he already had parodied on his album
"Space
Oddity" was definitely over. In 1970 he started to smile "sadly for a
love I
could not obey" for he was not to become one of those Stars with a
worldly
message and who give their lifes "to save a slogan". At a time where he
suffered
from 11 flop singles, 2 flop albums and stalked through seven Record
Firms (in
1969, his father who was intensely involved in his son's career, had
died), he
was looking for a "new love" and "new words". In his song "The Cygnet
Commitee"
again Ziggy Stardust was predicted: "I gave Them life / I gave Them all
... / I
opened doors that would have blocked Their way." Impotence in the face
of reality
gave birth to omnipotence fantasies.
"The flaming Dove"
As he already described himself in 1969 ironically as "the Cream / Of
the Great
Utopia Dream" and as "a phallus in pigtails", in 1971 Bowie expressed
that "I
want to be a Superman", more precisely in his song "Quicksand": "I'm
closer to
the Golden Dawn / immersed in Crowley's uniform ... / I'm not a prophet
or a
stone age man / Just a mortal with potential of a superman." In the live
versions
of 1973 the keywords "Golden Dawn" and "Crowley" were left out. Only in
1997,
when Bowie (in the course of his going stock market) started to 'use'
fragments
of his worn-out personae again, he 'celebrated' Crowley's uniform as the
opener
of the summer stage shows.
Sexmagick was hinted at in "Holy Holy", 1970:
Listen Lady, let me lie low, lie low with you To be
lie-high-high-high-high-high,
my! Oh my! Slowly, we get too good and too holy Helping one another,
just a
righteous brother [a term used in masonry and also in the Golden Dawn]
At the same time, he blessed gays with lyrics like "He swallowed his
pride and
puckered his lips / And showed me the leather belt round his hips ... /
The snake
and I, a venom high". ('The Width of a Circle', 1970). Homosexuality
would be
hinted at also in songs like "Lady Stardust" (= Marc Bolan in 1970),
"Queen
Bitch" (= Lou Reed in 1971), "Scream like a Baby" (1979, where 'Sam' was
like a
gun), "Hallo Spaceboy" (in 1995 the name of a SM club in Amsterdam) and
many
others.
"Boys Keep Swinging"
In 1971, Bowie wanted music to be "tarted up, made into a prostitute, a
parody of
itself. ... It should be the clown, the Pierrot medium" and so he
started
swinging between the genders as his lovers Romy Haag, Amanda Lear and
his wife
Angie Bowie closely observed and the audience admired. While gazing into
crystal
balls and communicating with the other world using a ouija board, he
developed
the androgynous messiah who would blueprint the music scene of the 1970s
and who
would call into question perceived notions of truth and authenticity,
especially
in the area of sexuality and pop/rock music running counter to
everything deemed
'natural'. This definitely met Bowie's desire for grandeur in all
follies and
energy in all excess, for the re-creation of the self as a manufactured
object
means the replacement of God as the creator. What about the occult world
view
where sex is seen more as something that is neither male nor female but
a state
of mind? And eventually, for the audience 'Bowie' became like LSD in the
water
supply.
Ziggy Stardust
What is it?: In Bowie's vision civilization would collapse and the
'Infinites'
arrive. Ziggy Stardust is advised to announce the coming of these
starmen
bringing hope. Ziggy is their prophet, the messiah who takes himself to
incredible spiritual heights and is kept alive by his disciples. When
the Starmen
finally arrive they take parts and pieces of Ziggy in order to become
real/physical. Eventually they tear him into pieces on stage during the
song
"Rock'n'Roll Suicide". As soon as Ziggy is dying the Starmen take his
elements
and become visible.
This is gnosticism at its purest. In Manicheism, every man and woman
once were
STARS, that is divine. Through a Philip K. Dick-like "crack in the sky",
the
divine quality went back to heaven leaving only some tiny little spots
of the
divine light in man staying on the material level. These sparkling
leftovers of
the Divine (when the so-called Logos spermatikos left man), imprisoned
in matter,
have to be concentrated upon building up a brilliant "Body of Light"
fitted for
return to the "Blessed Realm" in heaven. The whole body of man was
considered
divine (the Temple of the Holy Ghost) and the sexual organs were meant
to fulfill
a peculiar function: the re-creation of the universe. In Manicheism
matter is
"evil", a place of decay and although many manicheist papers speak of
the ascetic
aspect (no meat, no coitus, no marriage) there are more controversial
reports as
well. However, it is a core belief of Manicheism that "angels" copulate
with
"archonts" in order to free the "evil bonds". Archonts are the guardians
of the
universe and are often viewed as maleficient forces. One of the archonts
is the
demiurge or the creator of the world. The recurring image of archonts is
that of
jailers imprisoning the divine spark in human souls held captive in
material
creation. -- Through the unification of the Good with the Bad the souls
are
washed and what is left over can be 'given to all the species of the
Earth'.
There are also strong shamanic elements here. The ripping apart of the
body is
common in shamanic initiation. Mircea Eliade: "Shamanism: Archaic
Techniques of
Ecstacy" (c) 1964 Bollingen Foundation, published by Princeton
University Press,
reported that for example, a Yakut shaman states that as a rule the
future shaman
"dies" and lies in the yurt for three days without eating or drinking.
Formerly
the candidate went through the ceremony three times, during which he was
cut to
pieces. The candidate's limbs are removed and disjointed with an iron
hook; the
bones are cleaned, the flesh scraped, the body fluids thrown away, and
the eyes
torn from their sockets. After this operation, all the bones are
gathered up and
fastened together with iron. It is also believed that the limbs are
distributed
among the evil spirits of disease and death. Each spirit devours the
part of the
body that is his share; this gives the future shaman the power to cure
the
corresponding diseases. After devouring the whole body the evil spirits
depart.
The myth of renewal by fire, cooking or dismemberment has continued to
haunt men
even outside the spiritual horizon of shamanism. Posing together with
Damien
Hirst, in 1994 and 1995 Bowie was going to play with the idea of torn
apart
bodies as Art.
Manicheism was part in Aleister Crowley's world. Did his motto "Every
Man and
Woman is a Star" turn into Bowie's Starman, Ziggy Stardust, the Rock'n
Roll Star
of the 1971-73 Ziggy-Incarnation? "I was very aware of the idea of
androgyny or
an unknown gender being attached to most priesthoods in the East...
Those
original shamans have mutated into the entertainer ... that's where I
was at in
the early '70s," Bowie recalled in 'Interview' September 1995.
"I've had my share so I'll help you with the pain"
While Bowie had sexual intercourse with his alter ego Ziggy Stardust,
his closest
friend Marc Bolan (originally one of Ziggy's role-models for the "Lady
Stardust"
in 1970 when Bowie sang "songs of darkness and dismay") celebrated
libertine
Gnose: "I got a Rolls-Royce 'cause it's good for my voice". Obviously
Bowie and
his allies neglected the ascetic aspect of Manicheism (who avoided
activities
tending to disperse the Light) and searched salvation/health via Optimum
through
Maximum. Or as he would sing in Bert Brecht's Baal in 1981: "He will
have his sky
down there below"
When the stage shows in 1972 and 1973 opened with Beethoven's "Freude
Schöner
Götterfunken" the musicians of his band, The Spiders from Mars, too, had
found
'God', that is Scientology [Beethoven also was used in 1990 as the
opener].
Eventually, Ziggy definitely had to die. And the persona David Bowie was
now
searching for the mainstream audience and going straight while at the
same time
the individual Bowie met cocaine. Scientology and Crowleyism have
something in
common as readers of Michael Staley's article The Babalon Working can
learn.
Bowie always was described as being hyperactive with a very low
concentration
level. Maybe Gnosticism finds a physical parallel in brains
under-stimulated by a
lack of dopamin, a situation which limits the control functions of the
brain area
behind the forehead. People suffering from such lapses in perceptions
compensate
the missing inner stimuli with apparently aimless activities while
remaining
hyperactive, restless and scatty. Similarly, cocaine addicts suffering
from a
hyperkinetic disorder need the drug in order to compensate their
'emptiness'.
Drugs as well as music are servants of the creation and the production.
They
create a state of changed constants of conception and behaviour. And
this leads
to a changed expression of creativity.
"And in the death ..."
In the biggest stage show ever mounted in rock history, in 1974, Bowie
presented
himself as 'Halloween Jack' with his own face as a Japanese Kabuki-Mask
upon
which another persona was painted: Aladdin Sane (A Lad Insane). An
unpublished
track from this time is called "A Lad In Vain". Everything became a
mirror. In
1993, he started to spray Aladdin Sane's red-blue zig-zag blitz directly
on his
face for the cover of lifestyle magazines, e.g. for "Q". In the early
1974 live
shows he played the role of the Cracked Actor, portraying a Hollywood
Pierrot
Hamlet telling a skull that "you sold me illusions for a sack full of
cheques /
you've made a bad connection 'cause I just want your sex.". Reported to
be
heavily addicted to cocaine near the end of 1974, he had his band
introduce him
with a 1969 song's lyrics: "The Sun machine is coming down" and
underlaying now
tunes like "Who Can I be Now" ("can I be real?") and "It's Gonna Be Me"
("be holy
again") with dancemusic ("For you're dancing where the dogs decay,
defecating
ecstasy") in the most surging 'party/disco' style -- which worked,
contrary to
Bowie's attempts at dancing, which were stiff and jerky. Lester
Bangs/Greil
Marcus considered this to be a "parody of a parody". In 1975, he most
certainly
addressed himself while duetting with the sex icone Cher "Can you hear
me?" In
February of that year Bowie insisted that "that Hitler was a terrible
military
strategist but his overall objective was very good." Obviously, he lived
in other
realms. In May 1993 he professed in "Q": "I honestly have no idea what I
thought
between 1975 and 1977."
Angie Bowie described much occult activity during the subsequent LA
period in
1975-76. Clearly Bowie was vulnerable to these sycophantic influences
during his
heavy cocaine period. Allegedly at this time, he scribbled cabbalistic
speculations in his personal mail, collected his urine in the fridge and
was
eager not to let slip out either hair or nails (as Marianne Faithfull
observed).
This sort of voodoo behaviour can be found in Crowley's 'secret
teachings'.
There's another anecdote about Bowie's fear of other people magickally
using
things he touched.
In 1983 and 1984, the late Derek Jarman wanted to do a film called
"Neutron".
Things looked really good financially as he had lined up an impressive
cast and
none other than Bowie wanted to play the lead. The two had a meeting in
Derek's
apartment and everything seemed hunky dory. But then Bowie suddenly
started
chain-smoking and Jarman noticed that his guest was getting more and
more nervous
and was shooting furtive glances at one of his bookshelves plus some
drawings on
the wall. Then suddenly in the middle of a conversation Bowie stood up,
made a
lame excuse and left. Twenty minutes later Bowie's driver and bodyguard
came back
to the flat and said that the master had forgotten something and then
proceeded
to remove the cigarette-stubs from the trash... Needless to say Bowie
backed out
of the project which then collapsed. Jarman never did have the time to
explain
that his John Dee books and the Enochian squares on the wall were
remainders from
the time when he made "Jubilee", a film where Dee was one of the main
characters.
John Dee and his Enochian squares are main topics of the Golden Dawn.
There is a
postscript to this story. The producer of 'Twin Peaks' for sentimental
reasons
bought the rights to "Neutron". The project was revived last year. And
guess who
wants to play the lead?
Here is one of Aleister Crowley's 'secret teachings': "All bodily
excrements,
such as cut nails, and hair, should be burnt; spittle should be
destroyed or
exposed to the Sun; the urine and faeces should be so disposed of that
it is
unlikely that any other person should obtain possession of them." But
still in
March 1987 Bowie professed: "I never was in the occult". But all the
time, he
sang about the "Jean Genie" who "keeps all your dead hair for making up
[witchy]
underwear".
"I'll be your king volcano right for you again and again"
The 1976 track "Station to Station" is a beautiful example of Bowie's
dealing
with occult symbols. Not only does he refer to Aleister Crowley's book
of porn
poems "making sure White Stains", these "stations" refer to Jewish
cabbala and
magick, where the unmanifested God pours itself into 10
manifestations/"stations"
(called "Sephirot"): the highest is called "Kether" and the lowest
"Malkuth". [If
you do have the CD version of "Station to Station" you will find Bowie's
photo on
the backside where he's sitting on the floor and drawing this so-called
Tree of
Life with the 10 Sephirots.] The reality of the occultist becomes
cabbalistically
transcendent by means of the euphoric image in the circumstances, and
with the
assistance, of sex. To travel in "one magical movement" from "Kether to
Malkuth"
"lost in my [magical?] circle" (as Bowie sings) equals the descending
of/from God
to the physical level which makes Man one with the Divine. Vice versa
"from
Malkuth to Kether" would mean to have sex and during orgasm to rise up
and become
God. But which God was Bowie approaching? "Does my prayer fit in with
your scheme
of things?" he asked 'God' in his 'Word on a Wing' on the same album, in
1976.
Again on the live set list in 1999.
Another possibly mere amusing "insight": There are songs involving a
dialogue
with/between Bowie and an Angel (maybe a sort of Mephistopheles?), with
the
strong implication of some Faustian alliance, although it may not strike
one as
such immediately.* "Golden Years" 1976: "I'll stick with you baby for a
thousand
years, nothin's gonna touch you in these golden years," sings Bowie to
an "Angel"
[Interpretation: the Angel and Bowie assuring one another of their
thousand year
agreement ... although Angie Bowie recollects that this song was written
for her
in order to save their dying relationship]. "Cat People" 1981: "See
these eyes so
green, I can stare for a thousand years; these tears can never dry.
Judgement
made can never bend." [Interpretation: the Angel and Bowie describing to
one
another their thousand year contract as discussed in the Bible, and the
hurtful
burden of God's condemnation]. Bowie posed as 'Mephistopheles' in 1999.
You might find also this association interesting. From "Let's Dance"
(1983):
"Under the moonlight / the serious moonlight" to lines from Crowley's
"Lyric of
Love to Leah" (from his 1923 diary), such as: "Come, my darling, let us
dance /
To the moon that beckons us / Come, my love, let us dance / To the moon
&
Sirius!" A product of cut-up? A deliberate play on words? There are also
semantic
associations between the two lyrics - as in "If you should fall into my
arms / If
you say hide we'll hide ..." and Crowley's "To dissolve our soul in
trance /
Heedless of the hideous / Heat & hate of Sirius."
In the song, "Station to Station", Bowie was "throwing darts in lovers'
eyes". In
Crowley's system, the dart or arrow is a symbol of direction, and shows
the
dynamic of True Will - which is not being but going, not individual but
universal. The arrow pierces all points simultaneously in a perpetual
orgasm; it
is tipped with poison, an all-penetrent toxin capable of dissolving the
illusion
of separateness. The complement of Crowley's Tarot card "The Lovers", is
the card
"Art", which depicts the flight of the arrow beyond its disintegrative
stage. The
Two are now resolved into their synthesis, which is Perfection. The
arrow is
soaring Beyond, piercing the rainbow. There is no goal, only the dynamic
of the
flight. The flight is towards Perfection. The House of God is smitten by
the
Lightning Flash of Illumination, the impact of the Holy Guardian Angel
and the
Flaming Sword of the Energy that proceeds from Kether to Malkuth. Thence
are cast
forth two figures representing by their attitude the Hebrew letter Ayin:
these
are the twins (Horus and Harpocrates) born at the breaking open of the
Womb of
the Mother (the second aspect of the House of God (or Tarot card
"Tower":
symbolic of the ego in its phallic aspect) as "a spring shut up, a
fountain
sealed"). And that's why the Glass Spider sings in 1987 about Bowie's
empty river
of the universal consciousness "Gone, gone, the water's all gone, Mummy
come back
'cause the water's all gone,". "Mummy" is Ishtar, Aphrodite, Miriam,
Arianrod,
Venus ...: Iman.
In 1976, the "Thin White Duke" alias Bowie opened his stage shows again
with a
Mask before the face. After showing Salvador Dalí's/Luis Buñuel's film
"Un Chien
Andalou" he stepped onto the stage as self-styled "Frank Sinatra of the
Nightmares" "throwing Darts in Lover's eyes", tearing the Golden Mask
away from
his face when singing the unveiling lines from his song about the
Sephira "From
Kether to Malkuth".
The Cut Up method and the Occultist's State of Trance
The achievement of 'visibility' that is rich in detail of the
trance-image is
experimental; possibilities of observation run together, jumping from
here to
there, combining fragments. The occultist and the cut up text do not
appear to
provide a well supported or unsplintered identity.
The indefinable moment of the 'visions' soon determines a new function
of the eye
and ear: "Sound and Vision" that extend to all that is known, until the
perception becomes more complex. A lack of definition of relevant
experiences in
exactitude (eg, the lack of an emphasis on a bearer of a symbol), which
enables
new comparisons to be made between signs and symbols; and maybe new
codes and
rethoric as a goal of new structures. Sounds and Visions become
extensions of man
into a state of gnose. Through the interpretation, an increase of
reflection
arises and becomes a metaphor for the continuity of the strategies of
illumination.
Techniques like these have become popular through Aleister Crowley who
once was
member of the Golden Dawn and later of the Ordo Templi Orientis which
was (and
still is) deeply involved with sexmagick. To the public, both the Golden
Dawn and
the Ordo Templi Orientis are pseudo-freemasonic organisations where the
seeker
(the member) goes through ceremonial initiation degrees wearing Egyptian
costumes
like the one that Bowie wore for a photo session in 1969 by Brain Ward
(eg "David
Bowie Black Book" by Miles, London 1980, 40: here he shows the occult
sign of "as
above so below" or the icon of Baphomet: the old Knight Templar's idol;
or, on
the photo of the inner sleeve of the CD version of "Space Oddity", where
he
portrays the Sphinx, an important occult symbol; also on the cover of
the bootleg
CD "The Shadow Man"). Let's look at the line "one magical movement" in
'Station
to Station'. To travel from 'Kether to Malkuth' in 'one magical
movement' means
leaving out three stations that lie between Kether (The Crown) and
Malkuth (The
Kingdom): Tipharet connoting 'love' and 'Beauty', Yesod meaning 'base
through
union' or 'Foundation' and a hidden one: Da'ath which means 'words
through the
throat' or 'Knowledge', a tunnel to the backside of the Tree of Life,
reigned by
demons. We will not argue about the skipping of 'Love' and 'Based Union'
(his
relationship with Angie Bowie was nearing its end); but leaving out
'Words
through the throat' would definitely show up in the next few years of
Bowie's
life when he recorded several albums containing tracks without lyrics.
Without losing one drop of sweat
Bowie was spreading occult keywords without possible fear of being
publicly
denounced. "That whole dark and rather fearsome never-world of the wrong
side of
the brain" as he later called Aleister Crowley's playfield was and is
expressed
in a rather complicated wording as we have seen in the above analysis of
the
lyrics in "Station to Station". He was denying his occult interests
until the
biographies of Angie Bowie, Marianne Faithfull and Amanda Lear proved
the
contrary. But in the 1970s, the public didn't take notice of it although
his
friends Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull both had been involved in the
famous
underground film projects of Kenneth Anger, member of the Ordo Templi
Orientis.
... a fact that can be easily proven, as Anger signs his letters with
the
abbreviation "O.T.O." and is known to be a friend of the chief of a
newer version
of an American O.T.O., called 'Caliphate'. One member of Charles
Manson's
'Family', Robert Beausoleil lived together with Anger. Before he
participated in
murdering celebrities of Hollywood, Beausoleil was acting as the Lucifer
in
Anger's movie 'Lucifer Rising'. While imprisoned, he composed the music
for the
same movie. Kenneth Anger also was instrumental in founding Anton
LaVey's Church
of Satan -- LaVey playing the role of the Satan in Roman Polanski's
movie
"Rosemary's Baby". The murdered Sharon Tate was Polanski's wife. -- In
1993,
Bowie admitted that it was the atmosphere of the Manson murders that had
condensed his interest in what he called 'Black Magick'.
People much rather focussed their interest on Bowie's new hair style
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.
Andrew Stewart
>> Here's an interesting piece on the subject from "Uncut" a while back
>
>Thanks for posting this excellent piece. BTW who wrote it?
Ian McDonald.
(np: David Bowie - Station To Station)