Worldtheories

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'It's no Game' - the song stated there were "No more free steps to Heaven". At this stage Bowie also distanced himself from any taint of fascism - three years before, in 1976 he had been photographed giving something that looked suspiciously like a Nazi salute, 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 had been 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 1970's. "The side of it that fascinated me was the apocryphal tales of the SS coming to England and searching through Glastonbury for the Holy Grail"). Now those Knights had been sent off on a quest for the Holy Grail. In magickal and sex-magical interpretations, this grail is the vagina containing semen 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). Glastonbury had a history of mystical connotations going back ages. Allegedly, Christ was there—or at least the cup from the Last Supper, the Holy Grail containing Christ’s blood. St. Patrick is supposed to be buried in Glastonbury, and King Arthur lived nearby. In the 1950s and 60s, many books dealt with the quest of extratererrestrials or Atlanteans for cosmic power at the site of the ruined Benedictine Abbey, i.e. Glastonbury. In 1971, a serial of Glastonbury festivals began. Of course, Bowie sang there, to thousands: “Where all were minds in uni-thought / Power weird by mystics taught.” ('The Supermen.') Angie Bowie had this to say: “Arthur? He wasn’t fxated on Arthur, he never even mentioned him. Grail? Well, he hung out with Ken Pitt who loved dressing up as a [***]. Maybe he liked the rakish slant of the offcer’s hat or the feel of a lash on the thigh, who knows? I wasn’t there. Before my time. Ken Pitt was interested in [***] dress-up and things occult! There are only twenty or thirty international legends; to what or which was he supposed to attach his new belief system if not Arthur? [It’s] the only distinct legend which features the English doing something apart from running around covered in Wode or empire building.” Me: “Did he believe he could become God with the help of occult practises?” Angie Bowie: “David wants to be a dictator, not God. His fxation is with himself and he strives to ignore his own self-loathing... Due to his interest in Tibetan Buddhism he skirted around the issue of Tibetan black magic, but I never saw any evidence that he performed rituals or was exerting any infuence whatsoever through the practice of any ceremonial religion: Black magic, Tibetan guarding of the unconscious, etc., blah di blah di blah... David called it ‘the dark side of Buddhism.” So what was Bowie most concerned with by 1980? He sang "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 was now presenting his Gnosis as a prison represented by the Pierrot costume. He reacted 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 an escape from, and result of, the pain of being and resisting philistinism. "My mama said to get things done you better not mess with Major Tom." Bowie's Gnosticism manifesting itself as a mechanical womb in his 1980 video for 'Ashes to Ashes'. And this would be the last creative act by Bowie for a decade; after this ultimate act of coitus with himself, Bowie obviously felt in need of a very long cigarette-break. Is there Live on Mars? Vampires of Human Flesh German film maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder had a reputation for vampirising worn-out superstars in his films. Alas, the planned film of Bertolt Brecht's 'Threepenny Opera' with Bowie was still-born; but Bowie (then living in New York) added the 'Alabama Song' (from Brecht's 1928 opera 'The Rise and Fall of the Town Mahagonny') to his live set, and played the title rôle in the BBC's 1981 television production of Brecht's 'Baal' - possibly to rekindle his dying fires "with gasoline"? Brecht's songs, which Bowie sang live during the programme, and which were also released in a studio-recorded version, are among the best interpretations this writer has ever heard; they are perfectly in accord with Bowie's desire to alienate everything (Brecht was the 'inventor' of the literal alienation between the actors and play on the stage, and the audience). Nobody seemed to appreciate the complexity and subtlety of it all. So long as Ziggy Stardust was "making love with his ego", Bowie had the potential to develop his creativity. But his burgeoning wealth, the loss of any true opposition for him to work against in his commercial and social life, as he was now an 'acceptable' performer, and mostly surrounded by lackeys and toadies - all this meant that his consciousness of once having been a 'suffering- individual- splintered- into- countless- pieces' manifestly receded into the background. The suicide machine grew tired, the drug problems became easier to handle, and the sex-life grew straightforward. Now a very rich man, where was the gnostic thorn in the side that had existed between 1983 and 1992? Had he become a self-parody with the 1984 song 'Blue Jean'? Or was it a case of 'the unbearable lightness of being' in the Italian ballad 'Volare' (which he sang in the film 'Absolute Beginners' in 1985), or John Lennon's 'Imagine' (sung live in 1983)? Once 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 put a 'For Sale' sign at his front gate during the 1980'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 represent himself as the 'Redeemed Redeemer', a key figure in occultism, which hints at Baphomet, the central idol of the Knights Templar and the Ordo Templi Orientis. Bowie was hanging on a rope as he let himself down from the huge Glass Spider that overshadowed the stage, his legs crossed mimicking the pose of the 'Hanged Man' Tarot card - at the same time referring to the Hindu creation-myth of the universe being spewed out of a giant spider's bowels. Who is Bowie singing about here: "The sniper in the brain", who "flexes like a whore" in a Stefan George sort of park where lovers quit - but who were the lovers - Bowie and God? 'Baphomet' was also one of the magical names of Aleister Crowley who identified himself with the Antichrist, the Beast 666, or an erected Penis. In an e-mail correspondence in December 1999 and January 2000, N. Ball speculated about Bowie having made a contract with an Angel (a sort of Lucifer/Mephistopheles figure) in the 1970's - but this was not a Faustian pact in the mediæval sense, signing your soul over in blood on a parchment to a devilish figure hovering at your shoulder. Mr. Ball mentioned the belief that it is possible to have conversations with an inner voice where such a deal is consummated. This is what Crowleyans call "The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" (the 'Angel' in the 'Golden Years' song?). The sephirot/station Tipareth is the seat of the Holy Guardian Angel, the Sun (Son, i.e. Christ) and Osiris, the husband of Isis, the father of Horus and the brother whom Set murdered. Osiris is exemplary of the death-rebirth gods, of which Ziggy Stardust is a postmodern type, characteristic of the old Aeon when humanity’s view of the universe was geocentric rather than heliocentric. Here are Mr. Ball's intriguing thoughts about David Bowie in the 80's (predicting some ideas introduced later in this article): "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 personæ 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 personæ, 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 that he would drown in the Abyss, escaping only like Baron von Münchhausen did, pulling himself up by his own hair? The 'Babe of the Abyss' was a new band called 'Tin Machine' in 1988 (was it a sort of rejigged version of Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music' of 1975?). Tin Machine was initially conceived as a complete departure from anything he'd done before, but Bowie soon started doing parodic versions of Ziggy at the band's live gigs in 1989. The gap between past and present yawned wider still, while the critics mocked his latest incarnation. Once more he seemed to be posing 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 but surely, the inner core of a Weltanschauung is revealed: Art as Therapy. It had grown up during the long summer holidays Bowie had spent on the island of Mustique, where he had been spending his vacations since 1975 - Mustique was a highly exclusive millionaire's playground - Bowie would have rubbed shoulders with Mick Jagger and Princess Margaret. As opposed to being a 'post-modern Buddhist', he had set himself up as the historian of his own identities, an antique-collector specialising in cast-off personæ: "I've always found that I collect. I'm a collector, and I've always just seemed to collect personalities and ideas" [1973]. In 1992 he married Iman Muhammid Abdulmadjid, duly "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." ... "Religion is for people who believe in hell; spirituality is for people who've been there." He did a lethargic recording of a hectical song about 'Sex and the Church' where he considered that "there is a union / between the flesh and the spirit / It's sex and the church". In 1993, his music had come to seem like the ultimate parody of modern jazz - the instruments like a torn sound-fabric, the tunes overwhelmed by electronic rhythms and samples - it all seemed rather like a Brian Eno album without Eno. Obviously, Bowie was "looking for God in exciting new ways". The 20th Century Boy Possibly remeniscing about life before Iman, and mulling over an old staged suicide attempt, sipping cocktails served by the world's most beautiful woman, (his wife was also an ambassador for UNESCO), some time in 1993 Bowie actually spent some time listening to some avant-garde music - while painting masturbating Minotaurs. Bowie was not the first one to produce such beasts. A painting by Alastair Campbell appeared on page 40 of 'Starfire' Vol I, No.1, published April 1986 -- 'Starfire' is the magazine of the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis. It accompanies a poem entitled 'The Minotaur' by his partner, Ann Campbell. Bowie re-established contacts with old associates from the 1970's, and started working out ideas for a concept-album once again. He entered the fray again in 1995 with a handful of new songs and presented '1. Outside' of all expectations Jacques Brel's 'My Death Waits There' in his 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" As to the title '1. Outside', Bowie had the media believe that he had been inspired by his visit to see the patients at the Artist's House at Gugging in Austria, where schizophrenic patients practice art as therapy - some have become famous worldwide - an exhibition of these painters in New York during January 1994 had the title '...Outside Art'. But in fact Bowie and Brian Eno recorded the songs for '1. Outside' between January and May 1994, while Bowie, Eno and their friend André Heller only visited Gugging in September of that year. The instrumentation is cold and soulless; Bowie appeared to perform it in a black rubber costume, trying to break away from his image as a sort of Club Mediteranée tourist entertainer, and sang "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 Nine Inch Nail's picture of an insect crawling into a vagina. But the "spontaneously invented" pseudo-dramatic enigmas like "I hit the rose" (possibly a reference to Lou Reed's 'Vicious'), and his screams of "this chaos is killing me" sounded too serialized, loud, and contrived. There was a huge contrast between what was happening on stage and the widely-avalable Bowie-as-Icon; this was what struck the observer. His emotions came across as synthetic and pasteurized, as he squeezed out gobbets of æsthetic resistance of the kind that Bob Dylan had already voiced decades before: "i accept chaos, i'm not sure whether it accepts me". Or how about some warmed-over Freud: 'There shall be Me/Ego where there was It'? Instead of 'Un Chien Andalou', Bowie raised a banner on stage with the words "Open the Dog" on it, from his 1970 song 'All the Madmen' - where they took "some brain away". Both reviewers and audience were deeply displeased with Bowie for refusing to reprise any of his old hits; they only felt boredom when he sang "the music is outside"; they were waiting for some ecstasy, but couldn't understand the complexity of Bowie's pain, because Bowie sacrified articulation and emotion to an artistic concept where he remained the Master of Ceremonies. New Musical Express 25 November 1995: the show "involved all these strange neo-futuristic characters running around El Bowza's head". Alas, his audience was expecting the authentic ecstasy that was to be expected in Rock and Initiation -- "authenticity" which Bowie always consciously refused to induce because its production must be in the perceptor, in those perceiving the performance - the audience. The 'reality' was placed 'outside' upon the perceptor, that is the audience. But neither audience nor reviewers noticed that Bowie was indulging in parody again when he sang about Andy Warhol's yawn-inducing life, while prancing about like a puppet on cocaine: But those who move clumsily can not lie, and are therefore 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 never broke into sweat while performing: 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' (originally produced as Christmas presents for his friends in 1975) ... 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." In April 1995 he hired a gallery and hang his own work in it. Critics called it a "vanity exhibition". It was precisely the pain caused by such rejection that spurred Bowie into renewed action. With the cold-blooded efficiency of a chamæleon changing colour, he removed all the parts of his act that met no favour with audiences - such as the 'art-ritual murder' of baby Grace Blue - and started performing his back-catalogue of hits again. A deluge of PR 'news releases' hit the media, and Bowie rummaged through his bran-tub of showbiz VIPs (Damien Hirst, David Lynch, Julian Schnabel, Dennis Hopper, Balthus, and many more) to raise his profile. But the context was still Gnostic: the long-planned involvement with the stock-market, the purchase of several more pieces of property - and a suddenly natural-looking smile. This was a kind of yogic exercise in Asana (or posture) as he adjusted his position, for both himself and his audience. Perhaps this was why he sat shoeless in a difficult yoga posture at the Zurich show on February 14th 1996 as he sang 'The Man Who Sold The World', while styling himself as re-frozen into the man who yet again "died a long long time ago". This song dated from 1970, and had already received two new interpretations in recordings made with Lulu, in 1973, and in 1979 with Klaus Nomi; here it got an 'Oriental' arrangement remeniscent of Madonna's live version of 'Like A Virgin'. His live performances 'looked the business' again - they were now commercial transactions between him and the audience - who got a precisely-measured dosage of ecstasy, and a share in Bowie's evolving stock-market activities, 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, the finance boutique Fahnenstock & Co, issued Bowie bonds on expected royalties (via a firm that transfers future income into a new society: in other words, Bowie is not going public himself, which would have meant to reveil his financial situation). 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 sloshed into his bank account. Because only the second firm/society (contrary to the first) is rated, it receives better conditions than the first. So, the Bowie bond has a repayment period of 10 years and yeald a net interest of 7,9%. This is remarkably higher than any US-government bond issue 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. Income is generated especially through licensing the use of a catalogue of some 250 (330?) songs which can be played now in lifts, TV ads (e.g. Microsoft) or telefone answering machines. 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 ordinary consumer is left outside this charmed circle gazing in wonder (some in dismay), and even hardcore fans are left out: the whole stock of bonds vanished in the treasure vaults of the large British insurance conglomerate Prudential. On December 28, 1999, Bowie's 'Rubber Band' from 1966 was used as background for a German TV documentary about flatulence ... Oddity 2002 or Proto-Heathen: The music department started to shed its stable of unproductive cash-cows in 2001. Rod Stewart, David Bowie, Sinead O'Connor and Anita Baker became victims of this new policy; in 2002, Mariah Carey and Mick Jagger were added to the list. EMI refused to option Bowie's future songs - and as he has to repay his advances until 2007, he's forced to earn enough money for this with a new contract. Initially he announced he would be doing this on his own recording label, but in the spring of 2002 he signed up with Phillips. It is likely that Bowie's new songs will sound much more like his old catalogue - which sells well - rather than his post-1983 releases. Record companies have minimum orders... and since the last album there have been a lot of changes in their distribution methods and minimum orders have increased substantially. The minimum order from Sony, who are the distributor, is UK £2500... which equates to 250 albums or 800+ singles per annum: small dealers are being increasingly driven out of the market. The best place to buy them is probably 'CD NOW'... or Amazon. CD NOW is selling 'Heathen' for UK £8.99 inclusive of shipping. And in the UK, retailers like 'Music Zone' and 'Woolworths' have new titles for £9.99. He did buy a sixty-four acre plot of land, including Tonche Mountain, near Woodstock, upstate New York, for $1.16 million in July 2003. The fragmentation, the virtualisation and the mechanisation of Society have found their restless soundtrack. In March 2004 the Bowie bonds were downgraded from A3 by Moody's to Baa3 — just one notch above junk, after a lengthy review process. His heart problems of June 2004 forced him to draw back from the stage. How will this infect his creativity? Is he a clone of commercialism, a postmodern Golem? Back to 1997. With a renewed access of enthusiasm, Bowie did mammoth tours through Europe, appearing in a new Pierrot suit, and the red hairstyle from 1972. He performed Iggy Pop's 'Lust for Life' in a slow-motion staging, as if the extraterrestrial refugee Ziggy had finally fallen to earth, as in 'Earthling', the title of his new album. Never before did Bowie have a better backing band; never before was his mood better - but neither had his ideas seemed more clever-clever, arty, and implausible. Yet from the gaping chasm that stretched between the hard-headed commercialism and Gnosticism, there now rose phoenix-like music - something lacking in all his previous tours. Meanwhile, Bowie's involvement with masks has become mainstream and been adopted as a pose by many other musical artists, Madonna and Curt Cobain were rare in being inspired more by Bowie's Gnosis than by his hairstyles. Anybody home? Like the apocalyptic 'Diamond Dogs' tour of summer 1974 (which was based on Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'), which had in turn inspired the bleak tone of the 'Outside' tour in the winter of 1995, the business of dealing with a death-wish was resolved for Bowie in dance-music; after the depressing summer 1974 tour, there was the 'Philly Dog' tour in autumn 74, that culminated in Bowie's disco album 'Young Americans' in 1975. In the spring of 1997, Bowie created a mélange of drum'n'bass and dancefloor sounds, which yet again took critics and audiences by surprise - even though he was meeting their urgent demands for something they could dance to. He shouldn't have been surprised himself at the bemused reaction when it was revealed to the world that he'd been doing fabric designs for Laura Ashley's latest bedroom collection. Both of Bowie's dance tours (in 1974 and 1997) are only preserved in the form of bootleg recordings; the two exceptions are tracks he issued in 1997, but these pieces only go to prove Bowie's inconsistancy (they were issued under the alias 'Tao Jones Index'). This dance music's interminably monotonous quality bears witness to Bowie's sense of a new creative phase about to start - but simultaneously betrays defeat in its sheer repetitiveness. Still, Bowie's stage personæ became less androgynous, and more humorous; he bared a set of vampire fangs at his audiences, and told them to focus on him, and only him. TV interviewers and the members of his band had to play second fiddle (as always) they were a chorus present merely to react to his key-words and bizarre bon-mots, which he scattered before them with lackadaisical charm, like pearls before swine. Bowie qua Bowie no longer exists, except in the scraps of conversation he has syphoned off for re-use, or in the key-words and shards of reality he has preserved for posterity some moments ago, some books ago. He only seems interested in bits of the past, myths, guitar-noises, and the books he happens to be reading at the moment - apocalyptic platitudes. The most outlandish thing he does these days is accompanying Mick Jagger to drag-balls; for the rest he fills his days by playing golf with Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper, going skiing at St. Moritz or Gstaad, and appearing at a photo-call with Tony Blair for an anti-drugs campaign (though Bowie did wear a huge pair of earplugs inscribed with the word "SEX" to this event). "What a fantastic death abyss" Appearing on TV talk-shows in 1997, Bowie wore carefully 'distressed' torn Pierrot costumes, and sang once more of the 'Scary Monster and Super Creep'. On his right hand he wore a giant false rat's paw - was he being his own pied piper? The guitars screamed, and his backing band were "running scared" (and breathlessly) behind the master. On the next show he would do the same song again, but this time in a much more subdued Johnny Cash manner, strumming his guitar in a leisurely fashion and singing "she opened strange doors that we never close again." The 'Doors of Perception' is a phrase deriving from Aleister Crowley's friend Aldous Huxley as far back as 1930, and refers to an entrance to other realities opened through taking drugs. The "doors of perception" were first spoken of by William Blake. At the climax of orgasm, these doors are blasted wide and pure apprehension of reality can be attained. Finally deciding to work up a sweat in the hot summer of 1997, Bowie donned a red polo-neck sweater, and opened most of his gigs "immersed in Crowley's uniform" with the 1971 song about the Golden Dawn, as his thrilled audiences joined in joyfully to his words: "Don't believe in yourself / Don't deceive with belief / Knowledge comes with death's release." Never, one suspects, was the eleventh Sefira Da'ath celebrated by so many people simultaneously. The superb live show cybercast on the Internet on October 1st 1997 was opened by Bowie with the words "I tried to sneak on but..." immediately followed by "I'm closer to the Golden Dawn..." - was this an explanation of his enduring absence of creativity? Other shows started with the 'Supermen' from 1970 filling the Earth before recorded history began, with "Nightmare dreams no mortal mind could hold", to a riff supplied by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page - the world's most enthusiastic private collector of Crowleyana, who contributed in 1965 to Bowie's song 'I pity the Fool'. Sometimes he asked his audience to dance, no doubt 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." Plato related that a wise old man said to him, "Now we are dead and in a kind of prison," matter: the gnostic prison. -- Between songs Bowie spoke about Jean-Paul Sartre, and also about Heinrich Harrer (author of 'Seven Years In Tibet') because "this is the book part of the show." The ballad honouring Jean Genet/Julien Green of 1972 vintage was revived as a blues number, though it still reminded us to "keep all your dead hair for making up underwear" - even though this came across as more of a parody of occultism by 1997. Near the end of this live set there was a drum'n'bass rescension of Laurie Anderson's decidedly individual conception of 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, Bowie has been discovered giving benefit concerts for children's charities, staging 'unplugged' versions of his greatest hits at schools, eventually consenting to participate in the 1997 'Children in Need' charity record of Lou Reed's 1972 song 'What a Perfect Day'; Bowie contributed his own dia-Gnosis with "What a Perfect Day / You made me forget myself." At this time he gave a sort of Dadaist interview about smoking cigarettes, from which unpromising topic he even managed to squeeze out a few Gnostic insights: "All life's pleasures leave you unsatisfied because you try to reach that high every time." Being a smoker 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 photographic portraits emerged showing Bowie with a halo and bleeding stigmatas (e.g. on the cover of the 1998 bootleg "Jungle Fever"). In the autumn of 1997 he forbade his audience from dancing while doing a now jazzy version of Brel's "My Death Waits There". Despite constant 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). Bowie's constantly reiterated expressions of ecstasy in live performances for years on end, raises obvious questions about how genuine this ecstasy really is. Repeatedly simulating this ecstasy (having sung 'White Light White Heat' for the thousandth time) nurtures a suspicion that Bowie's sort of ecstasy is merely a component of his disciplined and choreographed Pierrot, expressing a depressing intensity. Bowie's Gnosis remained in the new arrangements as part of Bowie's progression, but ceased to be an isolated fragment of his identity. It always was, and still is, the persona that is called 'David Bowie' that continues to attract the attention of the world: never mind the quality, feel the myth; that's what sells. But not everyone buys this; the well-known Viennese remixers Kruder & Dorfmeister refused to remix one of Bowie's songs in 1998, considering it to be a "waste of time". "What's Really Happening?" At the age of 50, David Bowie changed his views about the cut-up method of creating the lyrics of his songs. Previously he'd considered this method to be a tool for determining both past and future: now he senses no past or future either for the individual or Society at large. Everything was going too fast for him, leaving no time to grasp things properly and analyse the past, let alone talk about projects for the future. All that matters is the present. Remember how the days used to last so much longer when you were five than they do when you're fifty? Now it's not a question of going through a series of personæ or identities, but a matter of experiencing their completely post-modern simultaneity: a sort of "TV karma", as he called it. By the end of 1997 Bowie expressed a desire to retire from the business, stop smoking and have another child. Of course, he retained much of his old hyperactivity, coating some cars with mirrors as a publicity stunt, constantly recording new songs, and adding his strength (not always very tastefully) to sundry projects, like Stanislaw Lem's idea of reviewing non-existant books. Post-modernism has no aims, no original thought, no authenticity, and ultimately no authority. An eternal contiguity ties everything in with art, artistic objects, and semiotics. Everything is connected somehow with everything else: a TV series, a piece of art, a clapped-out superstar, a successful star, a line, its mirror-image, its compression. But there again, what would pop and rock be without these identifications and correspondances? What is reality without its simulation? "Seven Ways To Die" Bowie always expressed interest in electronic dreams. As early as 1983, the 'Serious Moonlight' tour was organised via e-mail. In September 1998 he created 'BowieNet' on the internet: an internet service provider (ISP) for web accounts, with news, a (planned) sports news service, stock market news, a 'BowieBank', e-mail facilities and a supermarket where those interested may purchase his paintings and other memorabilia. Rarely has the music business been epitomised better than in this advertising slogan: "Buy David Bowie online, you rebel rebel". The circle had closed, for the internet is of course a form of virtual reality - a Gnostic world beyond this world below. This is Gnosis through Bowie as the reedemer, who brings complete and constant availability of the Bowie icon. Marketing itself becomes a myth. "Live 'til your rebirth and do what you will" In those varieties of occultism that derive from Hinduism, fragmentation is a major theme - just as it is in the internet, and the definition of identity in post-modernism. The equality or unity between the individual and their rôle has to be dissolved; multiple or decentralised personality is the measure of post-modern knowledge. There is a form of reasoning in the association between fragments (or the fragmented perception), but there is no ultimate truth behind it. This creates room for a new myth: fictional being becomes an integral part of being real. To be one simulation among other simulations. One result of this was Bowie's being made into the hero in a computer game called 'Omikron, the Nomad Soul'. Andy Warhol once predicted "Nobody really knows you". You can be anything, even the website that you visit on the internet - eclectic creations that are tied together by the star's image and elements from other kinds of multimedia. These products are supposed to enhance the intimacy of the relationship between star and fan - though they still keep you well aware of the superhuman range of Bowie's interests - as well as another closed circle he foresaw in 1971 in 'Moonage Daydream', where he sang of electronic 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 are extant early versions of this song with slightly different lyrics, recorded by Bowie and his costume designer Freddi Burretti (aka Alfred Corns) who designed all Ziggy Stardust's and Halloween Jack's costumes until 1974. This song reappeared on the live set list in 1996-97. Electric dreams were also mentioned in the 1971 song 'Hang Onto Yourself' (closely based on the Velvet Underground, even down to the lyrics of earlier versions referring to Lou Reed's song-book) where a quintessentially Gnostic phrase is "The bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar". There is a 1971 recording of 'Hang Onto Yourself' with Gene Vincent, one of the original leather-jacketed exponents of rock'n'roll; his voice lends a juicy quality to the lyrics. Both 'Moonage Daydream' and 'Hang Onto Yourself' were central songs in the Ziggy Stardust live shows. Since 1997 David Bowie has never tired of professing to be the happiest person on the face of the earth, as he will soon finally become the real "David Robert Jones". But can we really believe these words, and the automatic smile of this laughing gnostic? His little witticisms are the sort peculiar to people accustomed to having their jokes laughed at. Though it's highly unlikely that Bowie will ever regain the god-like prominence of his prime, his influence persists. He is currently resuscitating the Ziggy persona for a film to be made by himself - probably for sound commercial reasons as he released some BBC live recordings of the Ziggy era in 2000 - but there is always a waywardness in the man. Perhaps Ziggy Mk. 2 means something else again, and is a sign that Bowie plans to jettison the hard-won 'mainstream' acceptance that he's achieved over the last couple of decades. Is he getting bored again? "Their tragic endless lives could heave nor sigh / in solemn perverse serenity, wondrous beings chained to life" as he sang in the 1970 'Superman' song. Even collecting awards must get terribly monotonous 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). Revealing that he had "problems" with Jesus Christ he also admitted that "The gods forgot that they made me / so I forget them too." When I asked Angie Bowie whether her ex ever said that he believed in magic, she answered: “No! Just when he was trying to scare or impress people. He said that to me once: Oh come on, I’ll show you how to astral travel... yeah, right! I saw some weird shit, but that comes from fxation and visualization, not because there was any magic involved.” Me: “Do you have reason to think that he ever got rid of occultism/said practices?” Angie Bowie: “I don’t think he was ever involved; he’s too egotistical to put his fate in the hands of someone else.” (E.g. supernatural forces.) "Just watch me!" "Music Now!" in December 1969: "Do you like seeing pictures of yourself?" Bowie: "Yes, because it means I am being seen." Andy Warhol: "I'd prefer to remain a mystery; I never like to give my background and, anyway I make it all different all the time I'm asked. It's not just that it's part of my image not to tell everything, its just that I forget what I said the day before and I have to make it all up over again. I don't think I have an image, anyway, favourable or unfavourable." [on the cover of the rare _double-album version of "Andy Warhol's Velvet Underground featuring Nico", 1969] 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 born out of his sense of the appreciation for him? A chameleon changes his colours when excited: Bowie changes himself to get excited. But if this were a world without cameras, what would Bowie do? Would he be inclined to do half of what he does today if there was nobody watching? Does a falling Mask make a sound in a deserted forest?* And what kind of forest is this? Sean Mayes about 1978: "When David sat down later, he tucked one leg up under him and I noticed that the sole of his shoe was as clean as the day he'd bought it. OK, maybe the shoes were new, but it struck me that he hardly evers sets foot in the street. It's all hotels, limousines, sterilised airports." ... as the last few corpses ...: Tarot card Album 0 THE FOOL ------------ David Bowie (67) ...and/or the unreleased "Toy" 1 THE MAGICIAN -------- Space Oddity (69) 2 THE HIGH PRIESTESS -- The Man who sold the World (70) 3 THE EMPERATRICE ----- Hunky Dory (71) 4 THE EMPEROR --------- Ziggy Stardust (72) 5 THE HYEROPHANT ------ Aladdin Sane (73) 6 THE LOVERS ---------- Pinups (73) 7 THE CHARIOT --------- Diamond Dogs (74) 8 JUSTICE ------------- Young Americans (75) 9 THE HERMIT ---------- Station to Station (76) 10 FORTUNE ------------- Low (77) 11 STRENGTH ------------ Heroes (77) 12 THE HANGED MAN ------ Lodger (79) 13 DEATH --------------- Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (80) 14 TEMPERANCE ---------- Let´s Dance (83) 15 THE DEVIL ----------- Tonight (84) 16 THE TOWER ----------- Never let me down (87) 17 THE STAR ------------ Black Tie White Noise (93) 18 THE MOON ------------ Buddha of Suburbia (93) 19 THE SUN ------------- 1.Outside (95) 20 THE JUDGEMENT ------- Earthling (97) 21 THE WORLD ----------- Hours (99) Heathen (02): Tarot Card contribution according to Aleister Crowley who altered the traditional numbering starting with the card 0. Thus, the phrase on the track "Sunday" (on 'Heathen'): "for in truth, it's the beginning of an end... and nothing has changed, everything has changed". Why Bowie is better than God taken from www.white-man-killer.com/bowie/bowievgod.html [defunct]: a fan site 1. We know for certain that David exists. 2. David has cooler clothes; God's billowing robes are just so passe. 3. David is less prone to smiting sinners (a definite plus). 4. If you hear God's voice in your head, you're probably crazy. 5. If you hear Bowie's voice in your head, you may be crazy, but at least you have something to sing along to. 6. David looks better naked than God does. (Conclusion based on appearances in "The Man Who Fell To Earth" and the uncensored "China Girl" video) 7. God couldn't tease his hair that high, even during the 80's. 8. God can't play the guitar. 9. David has better shoes. 10. David is richer. 11. David is still attractive. 12. God probably looks like Mick Jagger or Keith Richards by now. 13. Going to a Bowie concert is a lot more fun than church. 14. God doesn't paint his toenails. 15. God's too uptight. 16. People don't corner you at malls to tell you that "Bowie loves you." 17. David looks better in a dress. Resumé of Bowie's spiritual and religious symbolism in his lyrics Listen to Bowie on June 15, 2002 [real audio format] * "Tired of my Life", 1963 (version 1970) * "Did You Ever Have a Dream" ("it's a very special knowledge that you got", "astral flights"), 1966 * "Threepenny Pierrot", 1967 (the forthcoming threepenny gnostic) * "The Laughing Gnome", 1967 (the pierrot personæ "David Bowie" and "Mick Jagger" who will "earning" them "lots of money") * "The Mask", a pantomime of ca. 1968 * "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"). There is a reference to Edward Bulwer-Lytton's occult novel "The Coming Race" of 1871 * "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, again on the live set list of summer 2000 * "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): * "Loving the Alien", 1985, a diatribe against organized religion - the video shows Bowie walking on water, finding blood in a font and burning as a Templar * "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: Silly Boy Blue, 1966, Lieb mich bis Dienstag, 1967 / Love you till Tuesday Mit mir in Deinem Traum, 1967 / When I live my dream Karma Man, 1967 In 1970, Bowie was reading Nietzsche and many references can be found in the albums "The Man Who Sold The World" and "Hunky Dory" 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: 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) was also a source of inspiration, as was the email discussion with *N Ball. This internet essay has been used by David Buckley for his revised and updated "strange fascination - David Bowie: the definitive story", London 2000 English adapted by Mark Parry-Maddocks . A very early draft had been corrected by Richard Metzger, editor of DisInformation The first online publication of this article was in 1996. Recent update: September 2002. David Bowie und Okkultismus, short German update with outlines of an interview with Angie Bowie. First published in DU, November 2003 Memories of a Childhood [with tongue in cheek?]: David Bowie 1957

Source:

http://user.cyberlink.ch/~koenig/bowie.htm