*****
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.
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