I can't help thinking about me.

Yes, I'm back again already. Normally I wouldn't do two posts so close together, but this has been simmering on the back burner for several weeks. 

source

I've had quite a bit of time with I Dig Everything: The 1966 Pye Singles, as I've been listening to it concurrently with the other albums since Christmas. So I thought that it was high time I wrote about it before I catch up with Ziggy in America in a couple weeks' time. Before I get into it, let me just say that it's quite hard to believe this is the same person who would eventually give us.. well... just about everything he did after this. Prepare yourself for David Bowie: The Teenage Mod.

*****

These songs take me back to a time and place I've been before, in a place called Sudbury, Ontario, from 1994-1999. But not because I was listening to them then... because I was living them. I left home twice. The first time, I left to go to university. I was 18. When that was finished I went home, only to leave again, this time for real and pretty much for good. I was 23. It was quite a trip. I was lovelorn, hopeful, and penniless. It was terrifying, yet exciting. 

Listening to these songs, I'm struck by the vulnerability expressed therein, the self-doubt of youth combined with a buoyant optimism for what's to come. And yet, there's a maturity about them that I sure as hell didn't possess at the age of 19.

Initially, this collection of songs made me want to write a letter to 19-year-old David Bowie -- a letter from the future, telling him that it's going to be alright. He'll make it on his own. Those he is leaving back home in the never-neverland will eat their words.

Then I realized that 19-year-old David Bowie doesn't need a letter from some Johnny-come-lately fan nearly half a century in the future. Because despite his fleeting insecurity and wonderment with the world around him, he knows. He knows it's going to be alright, that he's going to succeed.

There is something in his voice that defies the words he's singing. This coming of age story, while genuine in some respects, almost seems obligatory, as if to say, "Yes... I'm broke, struggling and living in the bad part of town. I have a long, long way to go, but I can see the future, so say what you want. You'll see."

Even though we've all lived it -- everyone of us who left home and went off to chase our dreams and make a life for ourselves -- no one can tell this story the way he can. So I'll let him tell it himself. All I've done is arrange the order of the songs here so that they follow more of a narrative.

Now I leave them all in the never-neverland

The station seems so cold, the ticket's in my hand

My girl calls my name... "Hi, Dave"

Drop in, see you around, come back, if you're this way again

Got a backstreet room in the bad part of town and I dig everything
I'd see people in the street below, who don't know where they're going
They don't dig anything
Everything's fine and I dig everything

I would walk with you
Talk with you, drink with you
If you drop that halo that you're wearing on the ground
Too bad, I'm not losing sleep

Hey, hey, good morning girl, but I can't pass the time of day

So go tell the man that collects the dues
That you saw a guy without any shoes
Who would do the job if he was built that way

Two by two, they go walking by
Hand in hand, they watch me cry

Lonely nights, I dream you're there
Morning sun and you're gone

[And I say to myself] I can't get what I want
[And I say to myself] And it makes me sad
[And I say to myself] I can't get what I want
[And I say to myself] And it makes me mad
And I say to myself that she shouldn't love anybody else in the world but me

The story is all too familiar, and crazy nostalgic. It feels just like yesterday that I myself left home, thrilled with the feeling of independence, so excited and optimistic about the future whilst being broke and looking for work, continuing to struggle while friends and colleagues succeeded, not giving up, listening to my intuition and rejecting opportunities that would lead me astray, feeling the crushing loneliness after leaving behind someone I loved, and then getting friendzoned by a new love I wanted. 

If only I knew what David Bowie seems to have known back then, that it would all work out somehow. Maybe not the way I expected, with some unfortunate mistakes and regrets, but with good things ahead. Of course, there are things I'd change if I could. If I could send a letter to my 19-year-old self, I know what I'd say: don't be careless with other people's hearts, don't spend all your cash, and don't wait until 2013 to start listening to David Bowie.

Here I stand, foot in hand, talking to my wall.

Myself in The Now, here. Blogging this may be a terrible idea, at the moment. You see, I've had a lot of scotch this evening. But I've had two weeks with The Man Who Sold The World, and since that is the allotted amount of time I've been giving myself with each album, I scheduled tonight for blogging about it. I do have an outline that I drafted earlier this week. Alright, let's do this.

*****

source

Crazy isn't always crazy. I'm pretty sure all sane people, or at least people who would call themselves sane, have experienced moments where they have in fact genuinely wondered if they're crazy. It's happened to me. No need to get into it, now. But chances are it's happened to you, too. And of course, we also wonder via the age-old question "do crazy people know they're crazy?" and my answer to that is "sometimes". Now where was I going with this? Oh, right.

Mental insanity is a matter of degree, and of opinion. As I listened to The Man Who Sold The World, I realized there is really only one way to tell this story, the stories of a group of people  (or is it one person, with multiple personalities?) who live within the confines of this album. 

Hearing the voices presented herein is like wandering through the halls of an asylum for the mentally insane. You pass one room, and hear the manic wailing of a man who has killed too many (against his will?) in the throes of war. You walk past another and hear the threats of a man who claims he will harm himself if you try to release him back into the world.

The voices are all so different, and yet there is something that binds them together. You could be in an asylum, hearing the stories of different people... or you could be in the mind of one, hearing the very same. Some of them know each other... most of them don't.

Walking down the neural hallway, I first hear the story of a man who seems to have some inclination that something is not quite right, but no formal acknowledgement of this. He sees himself as a monster sleeping by a tree and has a brief conversation with himself before finding himself "getting it on" with... God? The Devil? Kind of hard to say. God (He's a young man, too) and the Devil may in fact be the same being, as described in The Width of a Circle.

It's difficult to know if the man in that room is scarred by the experience. His cries of do it again, do it again, coupled with the warnings of turn around, go back! make it impossible to discern the nature of the encounter.

Continuing down the corridor, the self-harmer yells out from his cell, I can fly, I will scream, I will break my arm, I will do me harm! It's obvious that this poor schizophrenic soul has an awareness of his condition that seems to have made him acutely aware of what is happening, and terrified of what will happen to him if he's allowed to live among the free men. He accepts his condition, and his medication, even embraces it. 

Crazy isn't always sad, or angry, or even obvious. Crazy is sometimes a bit happy. When I arrive at the door of this next cell, I'm relieved for a bit of a break from the ominous. This man's a bit bipolar, and a bit OCD, with his repetition of the same phrases over and over, but he cheers me up some... until his medication starts to wear off near the end of our encounter. Happy bonkers David Bowie is happy. And Bonkers. Pack your pack horse up and rest up here, on Black Country Rock.

As the nurses run in to the cell to administer a dose of lithium to our giddy friend, I move along down the hall. Here I listen to the ramblings of a man who is deeply, majorly depressed. I can barely hear the almost audible sighs that emit from his whispering throat. I've borrowed your time and I'm sorry I called, but the thought just occurred that we're nobody's children at all, after all. Sad David Bowie is sad.

Before I'm even past the room, I begin to hear the manic screeches of a man traumatized by the war in Vietnam. In all honesty, this poor soul is what happens when you take someone with an already fragile mind and you give him a gun and tell him someone befitting a certain description is the enemy. Here he is in a small grey room, and he's convinced he's still got his gun, and he barely sleeps, for he spends his nights chasing "the enemy", slicing them 'til they're running red. I'm sad for him, but also glad he's living within these walls.

I'm a little antsy to get away from this shrill-voiced maniac. I make my way down the corridor and find myself engrossed in the ramblings of a man who describes a world where people have put a saviour machine in control of our collective destiny. What's particularly intriguing about this man is the way he switches between personalities from minute to minute. The deep wailing, mourning voice of the saviour machine himself sends chills down my spine, and there is even a moment where I'm convinced it's real... HE's real, and he's about to unleash some terrible plague or war upon us for his own amusement.

As I near the end of the asylum hall, I come face to face with the man himself, The Man Who Sold The World. This man is quite aware of the multiple personalities that exist within the walls of his cranium, but sadly, he's not sure who is living and who may have died, a long long time ago. Also sadly, he seems to be the most sane of the men here, someone who doesn't really belong here, but has given up the fight.

(And because I feel the need to address this, apparently there are still people who don't know that Bowie's was the original version of The Man Who Sold The World. The above happened in 1970; the good but rather superficial - stripped down, if you're a Nirvana fan -  Nirvana cover happened in 1993. You do the math. Yes, I'm Bowie-snobbing, deal with it.)

There are other men, other personalities, on this album who scare me and I'm not willing to go there, not even in my uninhibited scotch-drunk state. I can hear them throwing themselves against their cell doors and rattling the bars on their windows, trying to get at me. It's strange how a place filled with paranoid beings can fill you up with your own particular brand of paranoia.

*****

Myself in the Now, back again. I need to tell you that this album, as much as I enjoy it, has actually cast a whole new perspective onto my previous listening of Hunky Dory. What then seemed like floating through a disjointed dream that came from someone else's mind now seems like an amusement park, filled with unexpected and joyful rides, experiences and characters. Another symptom of my listening to the albums out of order. But I'm now putting it all into perspective, and to make this easier for you, dear reader, I have created a "Chronological Journey" tab, so that you might choose to listen to the albums, and Bowie's musical development, in the way in which it occurred, if you should so choose.

And now, that patch of floor looks really comfortable. Fond adieu... until next time.