I’ve not been writing much during the last four months – the urge has dimished, I’ve been seeping in to studying Shantideva’s Bodhisattvacharyavatara, I am going through yet another spreadthin depression [which I’m not all that sure ever really goes away and I’m quite seriously considering is a screaming clue to me from the universe of how to get out, if only I would listen]; and then David Bowie released Blackstar; and then David Bowie died. Now I don’t know where we are (probably sic).
Then I received ‘Rebel Rebel’ through the post (and if you haven’t encountered ‘Pushing Ahead of the Dame‘ on good ole WordPress yet you are missing some real good writing here) and re-listened to ‘Blackstar’ again and again … I think it’s all coming back.
I’ve been writing ‘poeviews‘ of pieces of music and painting and comics which tweak my keening for quite some while now. Bowie was one of those muse (again, definitely this time, sic). My muses has been deserting me recently, now one of it has died in order to show me that muse never die, that depression is not overcome but to become en-light-ened.
I have a new project: I will challenge myself to write a poeview of each of Bowie’s pieces of music (I’m not sure, 400-600, I don’t care, I might write more than one for some), both the liked and the discomfortabled, both the ‘got’ and the ‘puzzlers’, both the 50+ years and the 80s; and Tin Machine. Even at his crappest it was still David Bowie being, there was still some gleam and sparkle in there somewhere. And I will do it chronologically following Chris O’Leary’s book and blog and I will publish them as they settle (which might not happen so chronologically).
Let’s see what happens: David Bowie 1947-2016.
mlewisredford 
The tides change whether or not you make a raft for yourself. I find that reassuring.
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yep, there’s no control … it’s all deranged
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Good luck with this endeavor. I cannot get the lyrics from Black Star out of my head. Disturbing and fascinating. Haunting. All those adjectives to describe the uncanny.
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First let me say that I am sorry about your too thin depression … I don’t know your inspiration for the “too thin”, but I think of mine that way – drawing from the line Tolkien’s “Fellowship”: ‘I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.’ I feel like that most days. For some people, it comes and goes, for others it goes away, but for some of us it never leaves.
Some days I wish the depression would go away and never come back. Other days I think that maybe I’m ok with it being here because it makes me appreciate the happier moments more, makes me notice the beauty around me more – I think I notice beauty others don’t always see – like all my autumn leaf photos; people enjoy the leaves on the trees, but once they fall, how many people give them more than a passing thought … a nuisance that need to be swept and raked away. Maybe it’s the dark of the depression that makes us look around to try and find something … anything … bright.
I am sorry that it’s wrapped around you, though I am happy to hear that the spark of inspiration has begun to push its way through the depression.
I’m looking forward to reading your pieces on Bowie’s music. I was saying to someone else (on another blog I follow), that my first inspiration from Bowie wasn’t his music, but his persona. Growing up during the 1970s, I was rather young to really appreciate his music – I certainly didn’t understand much of it (and, as you say, there are still some that I don’t grasp at all). The music appreciation came later, when I was older, had more life experience that helped me understand what he was trying to say with his lyrics.
I always knew I was ‘different’ when I was growing up – ‘different’, until I learned the word ‘gay’ and ‘homosexual’ and finally knew what my shade of ‘different’ was. I can remember seeing him on TV, whether he was in full Ziggy Stardust mode, or that sort of mid-ground – part Bowie, part Ziggy – that gender-bending role he played. I was enraptured by him. I can remember thinking that if this man, who was clearly so ‘different’ (in a good way), and that he was liked and admired for his ‘differentness’, then, maybe, just maybe, there would be people who would like and admire me for my ‘differentness’. He gave me hope. Like any artist, Bowie had his good and bad periods, but even when he stopped being Ziggy and started being the 80s, well-dressed Bowie, he still had that aura of differentness about him. It never really went away, did it? Later, I would find a world of wonder in his music – and, yes, even crappy Bowie is still Bowie, still better than a lot of the crap out there now. But, it’s his persona that inspired me, helped me realize that being different was a perfectly good thing to be. I don’t know that I ever really tried to articulate his impact on me – I knew it was there, I knew what it meant – it was sort of an organic feeling that seeped its way into me. It wasn’t until the jolt of hearing of his death that my thoughts began to solidify into something I could articulate.
I can understand how his death could call forth your muse – as you say, the muse is always there, quiet though it may often be.
I look forward to your new project – you know I’m a huge fan of any words you set on paper!
Be well, my friend.
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Ah, John, yes; ‘thin’ depression, like butter spread over frozen bread, doesn’t seep in, doesn’t coagulate, possibly even slides off; ‘thin’ depression, just when things go a little well, shoulder tap, “…still here”; ‘thin’ depression, like a really tight superhero mask, can’t breathe, like Kang the Conqueror [Marvel character] – no space for the nose.
I agree: depression is the sense – the experience – that something is not quite right, both inside and out, that things/oneself just isn’t what they’re supposed to be (sic, where self and other don’t co-ordinate, which create havoc with syntax); but therein lies some possible gold, as you say: the insight that things isn’t quite right does allow a cleaner, naïve apperception of things (your leaves) if the feeling of ‘I don’t fit’ doesn’t get too much in the way. Maybe ‘things’/the world don’t exist as they appear (or, even, shouldn’t), that everything are (I’m still with trans-dualistic syntax here) wrong, and the feeling of depression is us trying to maintain the illusion in a world which is wrong (‘in a world he did not create’, the tag line for Steve Gerber’s Howard the Duck – no wonder he was grumpy). Depression is not proof that ‘we’ are wrong rather an insight into what ‘things’ truly is. Poetry/writing/photography/art is the representation of that insight – potentially liberative if communicative.
Which is why Bowie was/is important. Bowie NEVER made sense but he wove whole webs of mystery which were extraordinary in their beauty; his work as an artist was to track and bridge the asymmetry, the dichotomy, the dualism in … love of other; eclectic assimilation as a means of meaning ALWAYS far wider than defined. I’ll be looking at his chordings, his octaves, his textures, playing possibly centripetal (or centrifugal) to his words; or not … with a damn good piano solo.
I think Bowie taught me to lose myself to love … other/s-ness; openness in a cultivatedly naïve way … as an ethic, centripetally; I think you were saying the same centrifugally …
anyway; the first piece is out: avvalook – https://mlewisredford.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/sixty-four-sixty-five/
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