I'm not some piece of teenage wildlife.

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I wake up bleary-eyed, shielding my eyes against the bright daylight beaming through my bedroom window. It's Saturday, and it feels like one of those special kind of Saturday "mornings" from my high school years. I put mornings in quotations because like just about every teenager, I never actually knew what morning looked like on the weekend; I rolled out of bed anytime between noon and one o'clock, typically.

No idea what's producing this dreamy nostalgic effect this morning, but it's kind of nice. Then l I roll over and grab my phone to check the time. It's 1:16pm. I haven't slept in this late in... well, a long time. Then the iPhone in my hand magically transforms into the receiver of an old school cord telephone, and my bedroom morphs into my old bedroom at my parents' house.

I'm facing myself in the mirror, shocked to see my teenage self standing there, slackjawed with the old phone receiver to my ear. A girlish, high pitched voice suddenly comes wailing out of it.

She: "Shelley! Are you there? Oh my god, did you just drop dead or something?"

Me:  "No, I'm here. Sorry..."

She: "So are you coming tonight or not?"

I have no idea what I'm about to agree to, but I know that voice, so I know the answer.

Me: "Uh-huh, yeah. For sure."

She: "Awesome! Come to my house around 7 and we'll go from there. Byeeeee!"

Click.  I run into the living room and pick up the newspaper sitting on the coffee table. The year is 1992, which would make me 16 years old. But this is no flashback, for I can remember everything that has happened to me since this year of my life. This is my 38-year-old brain inside my 16-year-old body.

Back in my room, I inspect myself in the mirror. I remember this face. It's mine only younger, brighter. Same with the rest of my body. Wow. I remember how gross I thought I was at this age. Can I please, please, please keep this body when this is over and I go back to my real life again? Pretty please with a cherry on top? And these button fly jeans? These were my favourite!

I decide to spend the afternoon holed up in my room, trying on my old clothes, reading letters from boys and secret classroom notes from my best friend Nicki, whose voice squawked from the telephone earlier. I think about what it is I've agreed to this evening. I was never a misbehaving kind of kid, and I never did go to many parties back then. If I am lucky enough to relive a brief moment from my teenage years, shouldn't I do something a little crazy and memorable with it? I start to get excited about the possibilities.

I plan what I'm going to wear: my button flies, of course, my Beatles t-shirt, and my patent black penny loafers. I'll top the look off with one of the many pairs of gigantic novelty earrings in my aresnal... should I wear the big white dangly smiley faces? The purple dangly peace signs? Hmm, no, I'm already wearing a Beatles shirt, that's too much retro. I know, I'll wear the massive dangling yellow skeletons with rhinestone eyes. I love the way the skeleton's limbs jangle around, like they're dancing above my shoulders.

If only I could do something about my bangs. If I'm to keep the illusion that I'm still the same little me, I'll have to tease and spray them up high and hard. Hope I remember how to do this. Now where's my curling iron?

Fast forward to the part where Nicki and I are arriving at the house party. I'm not even sure whose house this is, but it's huge - it must be the biggest house in town. Do we seriously know the person who lives here?

The house is already packed with kids from our school, and many we've never seen before. We weave through the hordes of teenagers through the hallways and try to find our clique. Everyone I squeeze past seems to be looking at me strangely and suddenly I wonder if they can see the real me, if I've morphed back into my 38-year-old self. Catching a glimpse of myself in the reflective surface of a marbled wall, I relax seeing I still look 16. I smile nervously and look away from the peering eyes of boys and girls I've never met. I may look like them, but I'm acutely aware that I'm different. If they knew what I was, they'd abhor me like some kind of monster.

I 've lost Nicki - she's probably found someone she knows from her "other life" as a dancer. I'm not in with that crowd, so I keep searching for my own kind, which happens to be a bizarre yet cohesive mix of hockey players, headbangers, euchre champions, and musical theatre geeks. I like to think I somehow assembled this motley crew myself.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find my people anywhere. Instead, I find myself getting called over to a group of kids who sort of hang out on the fringe of my clique. They're the band kids. Sometimes I think they're spies, infiltrating us for information to take back to the music room, but usually they just seem like sweeter, quieter versions of us, trying to be like us, or part of us. We're okay but they're kind of so-so, if you know what I mean.

It seems that they've adopted the Japanese exchange student, Kiyomi, into their clan. Apparently Aaron spent a year in Japan and he's trying to impress her with his limited knowledge of the language. She goes on a wild Japanese tangent to the awe of everyone present. Because let's face it: Japanese girls are hot and their voices are like delicious ear-candy. If only that drunk guy would stop wailing so offkey to the song that's playing so I can hear her sweet, luscious words.

Suddenly, our school's resident deliquent, Tommy, comes stumbling over. I guess he just got out of juvey. He spills his beer all over Kiyomi, and she berates him with gorgeous, shiny Japanese sounds. She's probably calling him a mother fucker and telling him he can go to hell, but it sounds like unicorns and rainbows. Tommy informs us all that can hook us up with any pill, powder, or herb of our choosing. The so-so kids all turn their noses up at him and move away. 

I think about it for a minute. What's the worst that could happen? I'm a grown-up in disguise. And it's not like I even live permanently in this timeline, this world, this universe that I woke up in this morning. If I get caught or if I have a bad trip, I'll just eventually come to in my normal life anyway, won't I?

I decide that waking up in my 16-year-old body in 1992 is trippy enough, and decline Tommy's offer. Poor Tom. Everyone knows he's a junkie. He'll be 18 soon, and he'll snort, trip, and inhale his way into grown-up prison if he's not careful, and he won't be.

Tom sloshes off, inadvertently dousing various teenaged revelers with waves of golden lager from his enormous glass, which seems to somehow never decrease in volume. I follow in his wake through the trail he has cut through the teenage masses, hoping to find Nicki or someone, anyone from my crew. Instead, I come face-to-face with the child of the parents who own this mansion-turned-playground. He asks me if I'm having a good time at his house. Looking into his eyes I see an ugly teenage millionaire who never wanted for anything in his life, except something to smile about. He says he likes my earrings and asks me if I wanna make out. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I consider it. Oh come on, imagine you've been thrust back into your teenage world. Tell me you wouldn't try to get away with something naughty and a little depraved while you're there?

But I don't do it. I tell him I'm looking for my friend and he's away from me like a bullet from a gun. I move through the crowd into another room, and I see a group of people tucked away in a corner. With them is Sam, a kid from our school who went a little nuts and then went to live in the local mental hospital for a year. It's good to see he's out, but I can tell he's still in a fragile state. He looks like he's about to cry. I always liked Sam. Back when I was really 16, I always felt bad for him, but I was sort of afraid of him, and never knew what to say, so I kept my distance.  Now I know better, and I scurry over to his corner and ask him if he'd like to go outside for some air. He comes with me and tells me about his time in the hospital.

Sam smokes his cigarette and offers me a drag. I'm not a smoker but I take a quick puff. The nicotine gives me a crazy head buzz and I hand him back his cancer stick. I tell him I've had just about enough of the party and I'm ready to go home. Then Sam comes up with this bonkers idea that's just too good to pass up.

He lives next door, he says, and he's got some hockey gear in the garage - wouldn't it be fun to dress up in goalie masks and scare people through the windows? Let me think about that OMG YES LET'S DO THAT. Finally a shenanigan that's up my alley!

Creeping through the shadows from his garage with hockey masks on our faces, we make our way back to the mansion and each find a window looking in on a sea of drunken teenagers. On the count of three, we appear in front of the window and watch with hope for the screaming and freaking out to begin. We are not disappointed. After a quick flash of our masks, we  move briskly to the side of the house. The ripples of our first appearance are already making their way through the house, judging from the commotion. We appear again in another window, but only for a second, and then hide behind the massive hedge. Wailing, flailing teenagers come flying out of the house. Some run crying and screaming home, and others come to the yard to investigate.

What we don't know is that we started a deadly fire. Upon our first appearance at the window, someone freaked out and knocked over a candle, which set the living room carpet aflame, sending kids running and screaming all over the place. Tommy, not the brightest bulb in the pack, poured a 40 of vodka onto the fire to try and put it out and caught fire himself. Now he bursts through the door into the yard, staggering toward Sam and me, howling in pain and fear, leaving a trail of fire everywhere he goes. Still masked, Sam suddenly gets the presence of mind to turn on the garden hose and blasts Tommy with water. I watch in horror as Tommy falls to the ground, charred and smoking.

Through the windows, I can see the orange blaze of the fire crashing the party like the most unwanted guest in history.  I take off my mask and stumble out to the street, calling Nicki's name, but there's no way she'll be able to hear me over the police and ambulance sirens as they come nearer and nearer. I start to cry, my body heaving with grief and responsibility.

*****

I'm back in my living room, present day. It's dark outside and in the room, and I'm the only one here, or the only one awake, it would seem. My heart is burning with sadness and my cheeks are wet from tears. I wonder if what just happened is in any way real, or if it was just some kind of lucid dream. I hope for the latter.

Before shuffling off to bed, I decide to take a quick glance at Facebook. Nicki has posted a memoriam for the 22nd anniversary of the passing of her friend Tom, who died from burns sustained at a house party in 1992...and for her friend Sam, who committed suicide that same night, over the grief of having indirectly caused the fire that killed his friend.

If I've learned anything from this, it's that timeline jumping is no game, and as innocent as I may look, I am a scary monster.

*****

Yeah so this went to a weird place! Don't worry - none of this is based on any kind of true experience, this was just sort of an exercise in letting my brain go free-range and just writing what came out. Listening to Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) the past couple of weeks, I knew immediately that the setting was going to be a teenage house party. I didn't have a specific story in mind though, and I decided to just let this one flow out of my mind as my fingers did the typing. I'm a little surprised that this is where it ended up, to be honest, because this album is a lot of fun to listen to. Even the album's title track resides on the lighter side of scary.

I could psycho-analyze myself through this piece, but I'll refrain from stating the obvious.

I will say that I'm a little bit obsessed with Ashes to Ashes. The nursery rhyme inspired lyrics and melody telling the uber-sad story of junkie Major Tom not being able to "come down" from space is kind of haunting me. My heart aches for him. He's a character in a song. I'm clearly a sucker for suffering of a certain kind. Let's not psycho-analyze that either.

Oh... and I didn't get to keep my 16-year-old body. Bummer.

Time flies when you're having fun... Art Decade: 1969-1979

Okay no more gifs after this, I promise! But this one was just so appropriate to this post.

Well. Here am I, six months and 13 studio albums deep into The Bowie Project, and suddenly I'm feeling a bit like I need to stop and smell the roses. I'm experiencing that mindfucking feeling that time seems to move at two different speeds simultaneously -- the speed of the present moment (will this week ever end?), and the speed of life (holy shit, I'm 38 years old?!). And I'm asking myself how have I gotten to the halfway point of this project already?

To quote Ferris Bueller (and I will, because I was a kid in the 80's), "life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it". Before I dive head first into the 1980's according to David Bowie, I feel that I should recognize some of the many other contributions that he made to the 1970's. I hate to gloss over them, but that is exactly what is about to happen.

Mott the Hoople

What the Whoople? Oh please tell me I'm the first person to come up with that. I'm not even going to google it to see if someone said it before me. I'm claiming it. Anyway, without going into too much history because you have access to Wikipedia too, Mott the Hoople was a British glam rock band from the 70's whom Bowie supported by trying to revive their dying career by writing a song for them to record. In 1972, All the Young Dudes happened, and it was a hit, and now it's like the only thing Mott the Hoople is known for. Hey, dudes! Where are ya?! Heh heh, nice one, Bowie.

Iggy Pop

I'm not gonna lie, Iggy Pop kind of frightens me. Until now, the only Iggy Pop song I thought I was familiar with was Lust for Life - probably because it had a resurgence in 1996 when it was featured in the film Trainspotting. Sigh, I know... lame, right? And I got into Queen as a result of Wayne's World, I admit it. But is that so wrong? I'm pretty sure hipsters as we know them today were birthed by Bohemian Rhapsody's presence in that film... "I liked that song before it was in Wayne's World" and all of that. But at least I'm not a hipster! Anyway I digress. It turns out I had no idea that not only do I know some of Iggy Pop's other songs, but David Bowie actually worked with him on a couple of albums in 1977: The Idiot, and oh would you look at that, Lust for Life.

(Well this is familiar! Sister Midnight is Red Money from Lodger's fraternal twin!)

(Aha! We haven't gotten to the 80's just yet, but we know another version this song.)

Lou Reed

Andy Warhol, who was a recurring character in Bowie's life, managed a band in the 60's and early 70's called the Velvet Underground, of which Lou Reed was a member. Bowie apparently got into the Warholian scene and met Lou Reed during that time. When Reed went solo, Bowie produced his 1972 album Transformer, which spawned the hit Walk on the Wild Side, which of course I already knew when Marky Mark sampled it for his own take on that song. So there.

Cracked Actor

Shot in 1974 and aired on BBC television 1975, Bowie was the subject of Alan Yentob's documentary Cracked Actor. The film depicts him during an extremely hectic time - during the American Diamond Dogs concert tour and in the midst of writing and recording the album Young Americans, right before he was about to begin filming The Man Who Fell To Earth.

Cracked Actor is uncomfortable to watch... at least for me, it was. Immediately you get this horrid, sinking feeling when you see that Bowie was clearly 100% NOT OKAY during that time, and you kind of want to hug him, except you'd be worried about breaking him. While I suppose watching the doc in '75 might have caused one to feel rather alarmed at the state of him, at least today we have the relief of knowing that Bowie emerges from that period much healthier, with new passion and creativity, and goes on to make some of most amazing music and eventually marry a supermodel. Being armed with that knowledge definitely helps to get through the more sad and wince-inducing moments of the film.

Live Albums: David Live and Stage

Lodger is Bowie's 13th studio album, but in the 70's he also released a couple of live albums. Admittedly, I've skipped listening to these for the time being, though I do intend to go back to them. David Live was recorded during the American Diamond Dogs tour (see Cracked Actor, above). It spawned the single Knock on Wood, a cover of the Eddie Floyd hit from 1966.

 Stage was recorded in 1978 during the Isolar II tour, featuring performances of songs from Station to Station, Low, and "Heroes".  The live version of Breaking Glass from Low was released as a single.

Just a Gigolo

1976 marked Bowie's first feature film role, Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell To Earth. He took to the silver screen again in 1978 with Just a Gigolo, a film about a Prussian soldier who returns to Berlin after World War I but can't find work, so he goes to work in a brothel. Yeah. Reviews of the film are horrible and I've decided to skip it, probably forever. My curiosity is outweighed by my desire to not see a shitty film starring someone I admire.

(I chose this clip at random and watched a little over the first half of it, until the part where he drops the giant beer bottle costume down the stairs. I don't know what happens after that, and I'm fine with that, lol.)

So shall we call it a decade, then? I'm sure I've missed some of Bowie's other contributions to the 70's, and I've enjoyed every single everloving moment of this journey over the past six months, but I'm starting to get a bit antsy to get out of the 70's and get the 80's and the second half of this project underway. So without further adieu, I shall take a page from the book of Bowie and give the 70's a stiff middle finger and look back no longer. Onward to 1980!

UPDATE: I watched Just a Gigolo *hangs head in shame*. I wrote about it here. You'll need to scroll down after The Man Who Fell to Earth (or read that one, too) to find it.

Life is a pop of the cherry.

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It's a typical weekday morning and I'm riding the bus to work like I normally do. Every morning, I see many of the same people. There's the construction worker lady who dines on a champion's breakfast of potato chips while reading romance novels. Sometimes she is so engrossed in her book and chips that she misses her stop. If I'm sitting near her, I'll give her a tap on the shoulder. She bolts off the bus without so much as a word.

Then there's the elderly gentleman who tries to hustle, cane and all, but his hobbling, worn out body won't let him. The bus driver always waits for him. Sometimes the old man sits next to me and tries to talk to me, but I usually have my earphones in, rocking out in my head, so I just smile and focus on my tunes.

A few times a week there is this empty-eyed lady who thinks the bus belongs to her. She likes to take up multiple seats for all her bags that she always has with her. Let me be clear that this isn't a homeless lady - her fussy outfits and pursed lips give away her sense of entitlement. When you ask her to move her shit, she stares straight ahead and pretends she didn't hear you. Pregnant ladies and old people must stand, so that she and her bags can all have a seat to themselves. Bitch.

There's the really obese woman who has practically sat on me on a couple of occasions; the hip-hop emcee wannabe who raps ineptly near the back of the bus; the twin teenaged-boys with giant afros and even bigger duffel bags; and a man I silently refer to as Indian Alan Alda (because he's Indian and he looks like Alan Alda, duh). He continually switches seats on the bus as people get off until he finally gets one of the single seats where you don't have to sit next to anyone. I like to guess how many times he'll move before I reach my stop.

I assume these passengers recognize me, too. I'm the short girl with new hair colours every few weeks and who mouths the lyrics and taps her feet to music they can't hear.

Looking around at my fellow passengers, I see that like any weekday morning, many of them are doing stuff on their smartphones, while others read the metro paper. All of a sudden, a chorus of text tones and ringtones erupts - I can hear the strange symphony even with the music blasting into my ears. Then I feel my own phone vibrate and check the message.

It's from my mother. Apparently there is breaking news: the man in charge of not pressing the button that will end the world is refusing to leave the control room. His wife says he stopped taking his prozac. He's locked himself up inside with the button, and has emailed a note about his intentions - not a suicide note, per se, since he evidently plans to take the rest of us with him.

That's a fairly alarming piece of news. I mean, most of the news that happens on a daily basis is alarming, but not like this. I feel a lump in my throat and I think about how to respond to my mother.

I look around and see that the other passengers are calling and texting loved ones. Some are crying. The end is imminent... or is it?

Suddenly, the driver loses control of the bus and we skid across the road. The bus flips over and continues its slide toward the bridge up ahead, the sound of metal scraping on pavement and the sounds of people screaming and tumbling inside creating a horrific cacophony.

At times like this is usually when one's life "flashes before one's eyes". I'm getting flashes alright, but these are flashes of lives that are unfamiliar to me. Somehow, I've tapped into the "life flashes" of the other passengers on the bus - the flashes belonging to the afro twins, Indian Alan Alda, and spaced out construction lady.

The flashes are completely random, and I can't always tell who they're coming from.  Sometimes the memories are so out of context that I can't make heads or tails of them.

But sometimes it's very clear who is generating the memory flash. And I suddenly get a glimpse into Madame Entitled-to-Three-Seats' life.

It's kind of hard to hate her now. She's been through enough with Johnny. Maybe she can't stand up to him, and the only way she can get her anger out is to take something a little extra every day for herself. What previously seemed selfish and greedy now seems like she's sort of earned it.

A new flash appears in my brain, and it clearly belongs to the hip-hop emcee. Looks like I was wrong... he's not an emcee after all.

Dude kind of thinks of himself as an artist in his "field", it would seem. I suppose there is a loose kind of art to playing other people's music in order to incite a response from your believers... or maybe dude takes himself a bit too seriously?

Flash! Oh, this is fun. No seriously, I can't tell who this is coming from, but the one who lived the moments I'm seeing lived what looks to me like an enjoyable life of world travel. Judging from the flashes, he went to some pretty exotic locales. I'm a bit jealous.

Suddenly it occurs to me that I might actually be stealing these people's memories. If I'm seeing their flashes, does that mean they're not? Are they seeing mine instead? That's a disturbing thought. Then another one comes on.

My guess is that these memory flashes belong to the young man with the rainblow flag sewn on his backpack. Wait...no... is that... Indian Alan Alda I see dancing joyfully with a crowd of his companions in a gay bar? I thought I had you pegged, Indian Alan Alda! How wrong I was.

Who knew dying could be so fun? Maybe this is how it really happens. Maybe you don't actually see your own life flash before your eyes... instead you get flashes of the collective memories of everyone who is dying at the same moment as you.

But the flashes seem to be slowing down now, and it makes me wonder if I'm moving farther away from the realm of the living, or if the dying people in my vicinity have all completed their journeys into the everafter.

I spoke to soon. The flashes begin again, and I assume these belong to the suited, brief-case carrying gentleman who offered me his seat. Of all the memories this man could summon, willfully or not, before he dies, it's about his job. Ugh.

After all of the interesting memory flashes I've experienced, I sincerely hope that the Businessman's despair at his project going pear-shaped is not the last thing I see before I die. 

Thankfully, it's not... but just like dreams, you don't get to decide what happens. This flash makes absolutely no sense to me. Either this person thinks he's some kind of pirate or my brain is shutting down, and I'm losing the capacity to interpret the memories. The hinterland? It's far far far far far far far far away? It's fa fa fa fa fa fa fa ya ya da da da da? Are these the memories of someone who is mentally challenged? Or is this just me getting brain damage?

I fear that my time on this earth is about to end, so I decide to leave my body and take one last look around to assess what's happened before I accept my fate and make my way to the everafter.

From what I can tell, the bus has crashed through the bridge's guardrail and is teetering over the edge. To prevent the bus from falling, the uninjured and those who are still mobile have moved to the back of the bus, forming a human anchor, allowing the bus to balance perilously on the edge of the bridge, but not fall right over.

Obviously, I'm not among the uninjured. I gaze somewhat blankly at my own body laying on what has become the floor - a cracked window.  There are others around me who are in the same predicament - unconscious, broken, bleeding. I shouldn't have come out for a look - now I'm afraid of dying. Fearing that if I stay out of my body for too long I may never return to it, I slip back in and try to move, but to no avail. I'm breathing, but my body doesn't work. Everything starts to go white...

CLEAR!

A surge of electricity shoots through me and I feel an intense pressure in my chest. AGH! There it is again. And I'm back. I open my eyes and see that I'm no longer lying lifeless on a cracked window inside the bus; I'm on a stretcher outside, next to other people on stretchers, amid a crowd of survivors, emergency personnel, and onlookers. I look to my left and see Indian Alan Alda lying on a stretcher next to me. I don't think he made it. And on the stretcher to my right, I see a bearded man who looks like a backpacker - I recognize him from his memory flashes of travels in Africa.

I'm alive. I made it. No death for me today! In the midst of the chaos I suddenly remember the text conversation with my mother. I search my bag for my phone and open it up to the conversation. 

I dial my grandmother's phone number and wait for her to pick up. Ring. Ring. Ring. Then I hear something else... what's that whistling sound coming from the sky?

*****

I took a cue from the Lodger album cover for this story, obviously. 

But I have a feeling that even if the cover had been different, that I would have still gone the "accident" route.

When I started The Bowie Project, I knew there was going to be a lot of weird, wonderful, exciting, fun moments that would make me go like this:

But I also knew that there was always going to be a time when I would be going like this:

That time has arrived -- Lodger has delivered these moments.

Not all of Bowie's albums have been love at first listen. Some have, but in many cases, it has taken 2-3 days of listens before it clicks and the love begins. Lodger took much longer. And a rollercoaster of a time it has been. The first couple of listens gave me the acceptable reaction of "ok... just give it some time". But days 3-5 actually started to fill me with despair... and anger, I have to admit. I was kind of ready to give up on it. 

And then it happened - it clicked. Sort of. To be honest, I don't know if I'll ever really "get" Lodger. The songs seem pretty random and at this point in time it continues to baffle me as a whole. That doesn't mean that I don't like it. Learning to love Lodger may have been a bit like a 12-step process (most notably, the phases of denial, bargaining, and acceptance)  but now that it's in my life, I wouldn't give it back.