“‘He’s a hypocrite, and I hate hypocrites!’” Z said imitating a woman complaining about someone. The tone Z used to imitate the speaker informed A that Z had no respect her complaint. “Wait a second, so you’re philosophically pure? Let me guess, this hypocrite is someone who won’t let you do something. I’m also going to guess that the two of you know that you’re going to do it anyway, because you’re a grown woman who can do whatever she wants, but you know you’re going to feel guilty about it. Calling them a hypocrite is your super-secret way of breaking them down, so you transfer to him whatever guilt you might feel for doing it anyway.”
“You said all that to her?” A asked.
“Of course not,” Z said, “but I wanted to, and she seemed like the type of person who needed to hear it.”
“I no longer ask who is hypocritical,” A said. “I now ask who is not? Seriously, it’s such a malleable charge that we’re all vulnerable to it. The idea that anyone practices what they preach 100% of the time is just silly. Some might be more hypocritical than others, of course, but we’re all vulnerable to the charge. Anytime I hear someone say something like, ‘I hate hypocrites!’ My first thought is, I know I could nail you on something, and I know you could nail me. It’s such a situational charge that I just don’t take it serious anymore.”
“Hypocrite.”
“Funny.”
“If we had a third party sitting here,” Z said. “You couldn’t, ‘No, you’re a hypocrite’ me. That would be childish, and you’d know it, so I’d win. By accusing you of being a hypocrite first, I would insulate myself from the charge.”
“How many of us evaluate the person making the charge?” A asked. “How many of us analyze their motivations? We’re more apt to get behind the indignant and righteous raised fist of the speaker.”
“We might call this psychological projection, and we might also wonder if the projector suffers from some faulty wiring that could lead to a fire if we don’t inspect for narcissism?”
“Narcissism is another charge I hear bandied about.”
“How do we lose contact with external realities?” Z said. “Narcissism lines most low-level impairments, and they can be resolved with some acknowledgement of narcissism.”
“Narcissism might be as situational and malleable a charge as hypocrisy,” A said.
“It could be,” Z agreed, “but wouldn’t that put us in some kind of obscene circle.”
“With everyone labeling the person to their left a synonym of imposter?”
“The imposter synonyms,” Z said, “or the imposter syndrome?”
“The imposter syndrome is more of an internal psychological concept we use to explain those who feel guilty for achieving something,” A said. “Who am I to achieve this level of success? Everyone is going to eventually find out that I’m a fraud. A syndrome tends to be more internal, but when we project it outward to others, we might want to call it a phenomenon. The imposter phenomenon.”
“Whatever the name is,” Z said. “When we project it outwards, we’re saying everyone to the left of us is a fraud, an imposter, a hypocrite, everyone except me.”
“And that comes equipped with its own level of insecurity,” A said. “I might not be much, but at least I’m not an imposter, or a fraud, like you. Then, we have those who get behind us when we make these charges of hypocrisy or narcissism, and we form groups against the other. Divided we stand. Divided we fall.”
“But we prefer to fall strong,” Z said, “we fall stronger than we would be if we stood alone. Charges like hypocrisy can unify. Let’s say you didn’t get a promotion because another was more qualified. We could sit around and be sad, or we could get righteously indignant, and what better way to get angry than to have a group get behind us and all the charges we level.”
“And they don’t have to be true.”
“They have to be so true to us that we believe it though,” Z said. “That’s essential. We can give excuses, but most of us don’t believe our own excuses. We need something we know to be true, in our hearts, even if it isn’t. Why did Gene hire Joel over me, because Gene is a fraud, hypocrite, imposter! “Sing it sister!” the group shouts, and that vindication and validation gives us a sinister smile.
“I’ve seen it too,” Z continued, “They weave some powerful yarns that they believe. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be so convincing. The yarn they weave is so beautiful that I would love to believe it too. I don’t want to think anything is my fault. I don’t want to think I didn’t receive that promotion because I didn’t have a quality resume, or I didn’t perform well in the interview. I don’t care who you are, rejection hurts, and it’s a painful reminder that I have to improve. Rather than go through all that work, I would much rather believe that there is something wrong with them. There was something wrong with my parents that led me to be the person I am. There’s something wrong with all those girls who rejected my advances. Wouldn’t we all love to live in a world where none of our faults were our fault?”
“I don’t know if it’s because our boss has bosses, and an employee handbook to back him up, but these accusations are less effective in the work place,” A said. “They’re much more effective in the home though. I’m not entirely sure what drives it, but parents seem to care when their kids comment on their performance.”
“It’s the parent trap,” Z said. “Some parents feel handcuffed by it. I don’t know if it’s repetitive messaging from the movies or what have you, but some people parent their child with a fear that they might one day call them a hypocrite. Who cares, I say. I know I’m different, but I don’t care if my kid calls me a name. I actually relish it when my kid floats his trial balloons. “I hate you,” he says. I laugh, because I know he’s feeling me out and seeing what works best for him. I know I’m different, but I cannot view it as a serious condemnation. Some parents do, they stop the music and say things like, ‘Don’t say you hate me Johnny that hurts mommy’s feelings.’ Screw your feelings, Eloise. Your job is to raise a child into a decent adult.”
“If it’s in the child’s best interest to follow your rules,” A added. “Your conviction should be solid.”
“Exactly,” Z said. “You mean to tell me that because I abused alcohol in my youth that I can’t tell my kid not to, because he might hear some stories about my years of drunken debauchery one day and call me a hypocrite. I have no problem with that. I’ll sleep with the same grin I do every night. My experience with alcohol abuse leads me to believe it’s destructive. They say alcohol abuse is genetic, others argue that it has more to do with the climate we were raised in. I don’t know the answer to that, but I want my child to end that legacy. Why wouldn’t I do everything I can to end it, regardless the short-term taints it might have on my presentation? Alcohol abuse is not a divisive issue as most people aren’t against it, but when these parents who abused alcohol in their younger years, debate whether to tell their children not to do the same, do they think their integrity is on the line? If it is, what’s more important, your integrity or your child’s health?
“Are you going to let your kid talk back to you, because you talked back to your parents?” Z continued. “Ok, she’ll grow up with no respect for authority. You’re going to excuse your child for misbehavior in school, because you misbehaved in school. All because you fear them calling you a hypocrite? As I said, the arrows eventually arrow back to narcissism, and in this case, it’s narcissist to try to achieve some sort of philosophical purity at the expense of your child’s mental health and well-being.”
“If you need a device, and some parents do,” A added, “tell them what alcohol abuse did to you. Tell them the stories of what happened to you, how many stupid things you said and did while loaded. Tell them about how many days of your life you missed due to hangovers. Tell them how at one point, you couldn’t picture hanging out with friends without alcohol.”
“Don’t worry about being a hypocrite, a fraud, or an imposter,” Z added, “because you’re going to be all of the above when they want something.”
“Time heals all wounds,” A said. “I hate to use a cliché here, but it’s really true. There will be times when you are all of the above. You’re flawed and I’m flawed, and we will make mistakes. If we spend more time with them, it will more than make up for any mistakes we make along the way.”
“And don’t obsess over those mistakes,” Z added. “Don’t worry about being a philosophically pure parent, a cool parent, or their friend. Just be a parent to them.”
“Did you stop and smell the roses today?” Z asked.
“I smelled a lot of coffee,” A said.
“I ask that because I’m amazed by how many people fail to take stock of their lives,” Z said.
“I know it,” A said. “Life is a series of moments, good and bad, but how many cycle through the good in preparation for the bad? They’re onto the next moment soon after a moment.”
“Some of the times, they’re preparing for the next moment while in the moment,” Z said. “It drives me crazy. Flowers stress them out. “I need to buy a vase now that you gave me flowers. What vase would be most appropriate for this particular flower?” Did you know certain vases don’t highlight various flowers very well? I know nothing about flowers apparently. And if you don’t buy the proper pot for a plant why bother purchasing it in the first place? I have no idea about this stuff. I’m not ready for primetime. They don’t even smell the flower. They smile, and all that, to be polite, but they’re not there when they accept them. They’re in some place where this whole flower thing will somehow go horribly awry. They don’t live in moments. They worry about them.”
“I’m guessing this is probably based on something from their past,” A said after mmm hmming Z through his description.
“Oh it is. There are some matters from their past that lead them to constantly prepare for the future,” Z said. “The minute after they complete a project, they’re onto the next. There is no appreciation of a completed task. They’re onto the next one while they’re doing this one, and when they prepare, they over prepare. They do that because they want everyone to enjoy the moment, which is an admirable quality, but they forget to enjoy it themselves.”
“They actually sound pretty normal,” A said, “and normal can be annoying, but it’s not as annoying as abnormal. My rule of thumb is if people don’t annoy me, they will, eventually, when I’m done digging deep enough. Your job, if you choose to accept it, is to find annoying flaws and determine if you can live with them.”
“It’s probably a good rule of thumb,” Z said, “especially since I annoy the people around me by trying to find what might annoy me. Add to that the fact that I’m not getting better looking with age, and I probably shouldn’t be as picky as I am. Most men age well, I have not. I don’t know if I was ever attractive, but I’m pretty sure I’m not as good looking as I once was. Do you still find me attractive?”
“I never did.”
“Speaking of rules of attraction,” Z said. “Do you ever consider how lucky we are that our body continues to operate, at a healthy level, every day?”
“I appreciate that more and more as I age,” A said.
“All right, but you didn’t ask me the question I expected,” Z said with a smile. “Which is how does good health make us more attractive? Since you didn’t ask, I’ll just launch. Some people are just naturally better looking than others, but those of us in the mid-to-lower tiers look for indicators in a mate. The first, and most obvious, are found in the skin and hair, but they’re so obvious that we make conscious decisions on who to date based on what we see in them. Our subconscious decisions focus on other, not so obvious indicators. A great set of teeth, for instance, are an unusual trait to seek, but we all do it in subconscious ways. We all love a great set of teeth, but how many people say I chose to date Amy over Teresa, because Amy has better teeth? And the indicators in her eyes and lips suggest greater hydration practices, and we all want to kiss a healthy set of moist lips, even if we don’t consciously make note of the difference, unless there are exaggerations.”
”I’ve never thought about it with that much focus,” A said, “but I’ll grant you that a person with healthy features is generally more attractive than someone who has something like frayed hair, and poor dental hygiene.“
“What about those people, and we all know one, who can eat anything, drink to excess and smoke, and they’re healthy as an ox?” Z asked. “I live with the notion that God is fair, until I meet those who watch what they eat, exercise 2.5 times a week, and then on Tuesday they come down with liver failure. “What the hell? How did that just happen?” we ask. It just does. It’s the cold water, cruel answer. We can go crazy when it’s our loved one, trying to figure out why, but the point blank, inarguable answer is that some of the times it just happens. What’s the difference? Why does it happen to some and not others? Is it all about genes and genetics, or is it some measure of luck that it doesn’t just happen to us?
“How many people do you know who’ve had their whole world upended due to some devastating malady and injury young in life?” Z continued. “It leads me to think those of us who woke up healthy today are a marvel of science. We’ve all heard the line that everything we do in our younger years catches up to us eventually, and some people abuse their body with food, alcohol, and drugs, but some don’t. Andy Kaufman claimed he didn’t have any vices in life save for chocolate ice cream, and he died of lung cancer at thirty-five. Thirty-Five! How did that happen? It just does. He said he never smoked a cigarette in his life. If that’s true, how unlucky is that? How many people die thinking it was the chocolate ice cream that caught up to them? Andy thought that. Why would he come up with such a ridiculous notion? Because he had no other explanation. He probably went crazy trying to come up with some answer to his devastating situation, and that’s what he came up with.”
“We are lucky on the big things, the life and death issues,” A said, “but we’re also lucky with the little things. A friend of mine started getting ulcers that were so painful they affected his quality of life. He said he practiced good health before, but the ulcers made him a fanatic. How did they pop up in the first place? He and his doctor went over his diet, and they couldn’t find anything in particular. As you said, it just happens to some people. Others have earaches, toothaches, and all the other aches and pains that seem trivial until you’re the one suffering from them. You’re right though, some people abuse their body, and some don’t, but I’m inclined to think that the separation between good and poor health is something as unfair as genes. Those of us who aren’t suffering from some ailment based on genetic predispositions don’t know how lucky we are.”
“Do we have a genetic predisposition to a chemical imbalance in the brain that results in depression?” Z asked. “I knew a guy who became depressed at fifty. As far back as anyone remembered, he was relatively normal, happy, healthy man. Then one morning, he didn’t want to get out of bed. He didn’t have a mind-shattering, life-altering moment that brought on the onset of depression. “It just sort of happened,” they said. The idea that it makes no sense to anyone, including his doctor, is frightening, because if it can happen to him why wouldn’t it happen to us? What’s the difference between him and us? How do we prevent it? Does it just happen to some of us, or are there years of neglect and abuse that lead to it? Is it based on age, a midlife crisis of sorts, diet, lack of exercise. We don’t know. They don’t know. They can’t pinpoint when the depression began, but one day, one month, or one year they find themselves either marginally or clinically depressed. If he experienced some indicators younger in life, we could use genetic predispositions to explain it, but why did the onset wait until he was fifty?
“At one point in his decade long battle with depression, they had to switch his medication,” Z continued, “and they say that his reaction to the medication was such that he took his own life. Did the medication over balance one chemical, or fail to balance the way the first medication did? Is the whole process of balancing chemicals one that once we become more familiar with them, we’ll be able to regulate the stew better? Will further study of DNA and RNA help us understand it better? Is a high functioning liver genetic? What about the pancreas, and the lymphatic system? How do all of our systems work in harmony, day after day, to maintain good health?”
“We have a miraculous machine no doubt,” A said, “and even though I believe the difference between good health and poor health has a lot to do with genetics, I question that too. I question it only because I’m overwhelmed by the idea of it. You mean to tell me that one of the primary reasons my friend died of lung cancer and I didn’t is based on the lungs the two of us received from our respective lineage? I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it’s difficult for me to grasp. I don’t know what I’m talking about in this area, and as I’m about as far from a geneticist as one can be. I understand how understanding our gene code better can unlock a number of these mysteries, but can it explain everything? Atheists complain that the religious use God, and His mysterious ways, to explain the current gaps in the explanations our modern science provides, but do modern scientists use the gene code in the same way? The science we have now suggests that genetics plays a major role in good health, but will we believe the same thing 100 years from now? Will future science embolden and strengthen this concept, or will future scientists laugh at our present reliance on DNA to explain gaps in our current knowledge?”
“It’s way above my pay grade too,” Z agreed, “but what about those who do make that money? What do our current minds of medicine do to cure the body of its ailments? They prescribe pain pills to help us deal with the pain of healing. “No wait, I’m really hurting here, and all you’re giving me is a pain pill? I want you to fix my organ and get it working again.” Our best course of action, they say, is to let the body heal itself. But, I’ve seen supplements in drug stores that suggest that it can aid in restoration. “Those claims are mostly crap,” our doctors say. Our marvelous machine often heals itself better than the most brilliant minds of medicine can. They also know that it’s better for the body to heal itself. Healing hurts of course, and some of the times the best plan is to take pain pills that help us deal with that pain, and “call me in two weeks if the pain persists.” Relying on the body to heal itself doesn’t always work, of course, and when it doesn’t they go to the next course of action, but it works so often that most brilliant minds of medicine know that the best course of action is to simply sit back and wait for the miraculous powers of the human body to heal itself.”
“We shouldn’t neglect the healing properties of water either,” A added. “My doctor asked me about water one time. “How much water are you drinking?” he asked. Now, I knew water was a good thing, and I tried to drink more of it for better health in a more general way, but he added, “It can cure what ails you.” I considered that a throw away line. I thought it was something he said so often, to so many patients that it didn’t have much meaning, but I know enough about myself to know that such lines will stick with me if I didn’t badger the doctor for more details.
“What do you mean water can cure what ails you?” I asked.”
“Well,” he said, “drinking enough water can cure muscle pain, it can make you feel better in ways that can aid in achieving better mental health, and it can balance out salt in the body.” He’s all about the word can, because he knows how much we love our absolutes and the resulting unrealistic expectations that follow.”
“Most of us have heard that cure-all stuff,” Z said, “and we all know that this simple element is the best prevention for dehydration, but how many of us sit back and think about the depth of a line like what your doctor said, it can cure what ails you. Drinking more water can promote greater wellness and prevent some of the debilitating conditions we’ve talked about today. When people talk about good health, they all go to food and exercise, you are what you eat and all that, but I drill down deeper to the fundamentals of good health, and laying at the bottom of that well is water and sleep.
“Yeah, don’t forget about sleep.” A added. “Water and sleep. Body builders are always looking for that magic elixir to greater muscle development. They seek brightly packaged supplements that aren’t shy about selling their brand of nirvana. How many supplement stores do you have in your area? They’re everywhere. They’re like the stagecoach charlatans of yesteryear rolling into a town square to sell their miracle cures to unsuspecting customers. Are their claims entirely fraudulent, probably not, but they’re not nearly as over-the-top effective as they claim. I’ve heard some, who are not in the supplement industry, claim that you can throw most of those supplements and protein shakes out the window and get an extra hour or two of sleep for similar and sometimes better results.”
“We would much rather buy good health than rely on fundamentals like water and sleep,” Z said. “Imon Point says, “I have a product that helps the muscles heal 30% faster after a workout.” “That’s interesting,” Mary Quite Contrary, interjects, “but did you know that my product has the capacity to also build muscle while aiding in the healing process? You simply must try my product.” I have product, do you have product? We want better health, and to get there we think we have to spend money on it, so we buy machines, products, and gym memberships.”
“How many gym memberships are purchased and rarely if ever used?” A asked, nodding in agreement.
“It’s an incredibly profitable industry,” Z said, “because the no-shows do not put the wear and tear on machines that they would if everyone showed up. You would think that if people decided they were not going to enjoy the fruits of their membership that they would cancel their membership, but cancelation rates are extremely low.”
“Because canceling a gym membership is like canceling your quest for good health.”
“Exactly!” Z said. “My dad was an interesting character. He purchased a series of books on the lives of saints. They were leather bound and lined with gold flint. They were beautiful books. As a kid, I was not permitted to touch them. My dad didn’t touch them either. My mom said something shocking to him one day, “It’s not enough to own them, you have to read them.“ The fact that my dad repeated that line so often suggests that the thought never occurred to him. I think he thought to own them is to own them. I think he thought the purchase, and the careful preservation practices he employed made him more holy. My guess is he thought St. Peter would greet him at the gates with, “I saw that beautiful collection you bought on us. That must’ve set you back a couple paychecks. Come on in my friend.“ Gym members might be equally shocked to learn that purchasing a gym membership is not the key to good health. You have to use it.“
“It is fascinating to think how much we complicate matters by trying to buy the products that promote greater health, better well-being, and some marketed form of absolute serenity,“ A said. “When if we just concentrated more on the age-old fundamentals, like drinking more water and getting more sleep, we might be able to cure more than we ever dreamed possible.”
“As with everything else in life, some of the times it’s not that simple,” Z said. “That’s the line you hear most often from complicated people who complain about complications. If you dare to propose to them that their complicated problem could could have a simple solution, they treat it like a personal insult. “It’s not that simple for me, I have an ailment that defies your age-old fundamentals. Trust me, I tried them.” Some of the times, it is more complicated, but some of the times, the solution is so simple that most people disregard it, because it can’t be that simple.”
“The complicated people who love to complain,” A said. “I know them well. I was raised by one. They might know as little about their problem as we do, but they know the wrong when they hear it. You spent your whole life complaining about various health problems, trying to make them appear more severe than they were. Now that you actually have a severe health problem, does it validate all of your complaints, or does it nullify them by comparison, and when you’re finally laid to rest, what are you going to talk about?”
“In the absence of something to complain about,” Z said. “We will find something to complain about.”
“He’s just so weird,” my mom said when David Bowie took the stage on a 1970s, variety show called The Midnight Special. Before the marketing teams learned how fascinating weird could be to us, being weird was not a good thing. We strove to avoid the weird, so no one would call us weird. I didn’t want my mom to think I was weird, I didn’t want my friends to think that, and I didn’t want to be seduced into thinking I could be weird if I watched him, so I shut it off. We writers love to rewrite our past to suggest that we were so hip that we were bucking the system at eleven-years-old, so we can fortify our artistic bona fides. I wasn’t. I was a normal eleven-year-old who wanted to learn how to be more normal, so other kids would like me, and my primary conduit to absolute normalcy was my mom. So, when Bowie walk out onto the stage, I was floored by his appearance. My mom must’ve sensed how confused I was, so she quickly told me to turn the channel. I asked why, she said, “He’s just so weird,” and I turned the channel.
David Bowie was weird, there’s no point trying to argue, minimize, or qualify it. He even admitted as much, telling TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek to, “Stay Strange.” Thanks to artists like David Bowie, we’re all a little weirder, stranger, and everything outside the mainframe. The typical narrative might depict me in front of that TV, experiencing an epiphany, with a “That’s me, mama,” explosion of excitement that she never could quell. It might just be me, but I needed to establish a solid foundation of normal before I could start exploring the weird, strange and just plain different avenues of my otherwise immature and fragile psyche. So, before we continue, let me send out a shout out to my mom for all the effort she put into giving me the most normal upbringing she could before I could explore the other side with more maturity.
David Bowie feared he was a weird person at a very young age. He believed that he was susceptible to the schizophrenia that haunted his half-brother, Terry Burns. We can only guess that before he embraced the fears of falling prey to that mental disorder that haunted his mother’s side of the family Bowie sought the comfort of normalcy. This duality, as anyone who has worked their way through Bowie’s catalog can attest, would affect his artistic output.
“I’m not so sure how much of it is madness,” Bowie would ruminate to Yentob. “There’s an awful lot of emotional and spiritual mutilation that goes on in my family.”
He was “too weird” for my people. He was even too weird for me when I was too young to fight that two-word condemnation. My mom told me he was “too weird”, and even if I had the moxie to fight everyone else, I couldn’t fight her. I was too young to know how different I was, and even I if did, I wouldn’t acknowledge it, because I didn’t want to be weird. I wanted to have friends, and when my friends told me something was not only weird, but “too weird,” I backed away, into them, and their more comfortable groups.
High brow, low brow, or no brow?
David Bowie shocked in an era that didn’t want to be shocked. Shock value was not commodity in Bowie’s peak years. The New York Dolls were shocking people in New York, Marc Bolan was doing it to England, and Alice Cooper and KISS were putting it to the United States, but shocking people was not yet part of an artist’s marketing package. Those guys tapped into a tongue-in-cheek definition of the weird, but it was all a part of their schtick. There was something unnerving about Bowie’s strain of strange that made it feel a bit more organic. When we saw it, we could tell he wasn’t having a laugh. It was a part of him, the alien part, and perhaps the schizophrenia part.
Watch the shows of David Bowie on YouTube, circa 1972, and try to put yourself in that audience. It’s hard to do now, now that we’re so accustomed to performers playing around in the more customary borders of shock value now, but in 1972 Bowie had people actively avoiding him and his alien nature.
Even after I made it past my mom’s “too weird” block, I still wasn’t attracted to him artistically. I thought he sang songs to make tons of money, become a rock and roll star, and then become a celebrity. All the power to those who do that, but it wasn’t for me.I thought he was the artistic equivalent of a beautiful person who is fun to look at, but doesn’t have much more to them. My attraction to his music is a love story, and to sum up that story, it wasn’t love at first sight. It took him a long time to win me over, but I have been in a relationship with David Bowie’s music for about 30 years now.
I already knew most of his hits by the time I discovered Bowie, so I wasn’t blown away by those songs. The genius of his deep cuts did not blow me away either, in the manner the Beatles’ deep cuts did. I don’t know how anyone else characterizes Bowie’s genius, but it wasn’t immediate for me. His subtle artistic creativity required repeated listens, until I found myself working through his constructs when I wasn’t listening to the music.
I now liken listening to Bowie to sliding a foot into a great pair of socks. I’ve never met anyone who was absolutely blown away by a pair of socks. Slipping into a great shirt, and finding a pair of pants that fit just right can be mind blowing, but I never went nuts over a pair of socks, not when I slipped them on for the first time anyway. There are some socks that fit so well that when we put them on, they just feel like us, and we begin wearing them every day. When I began seriously listening to Bowie on a daily basis, I found philosophical artistry that fit me like a great pair of socks. Art is relative of course, and I’m sure some identify with Elvis Costello in the same ways, but I’ve heard numerous people recognize Costello for who he was in the music world for decades. Up until about the last ten years, very very few listed Bowie in their elite artists’ discussions. It didn’t affect what I thought of him, but I couldn’t understand it. The only answer I could come up with was that he was just “too weird”.
***
I appreciated Bowie’s reincarnation on MTV from afar, as a kid, but the Let’s Dance, China Girl songs seemed more like period pieces in the Madonna/Whitney Houston mold. Pop stars buy great songs from great songwriters, I thought, but a weird, music freak seeking deep, multi-faceted artists doesn’t dive deep into the catalog of pop stars like David Bowie. We wait until the radio stations play their singles. I thought David Bowie was just another good-looking pop star who bought great songs that were probably written by someone else. It was important to me, even back then, that an artist write their own music, because, to my mind, that was the difference between a star and an artist. I thought Bowie was just another 80s pop star who had a 70s catalog that I had no real interest in exploring, until an unusually perceptive friend of mine, named Dan, dropped this line on me.
“This crazy, weird musical path you’re on all points to one man, David Bowie,” Dan said.
“David Bowie?” I asked with disdain. “The Let’s Dance, China Girl guy?” I couldn’t believe Dan, the guy who had a long history of introducing me to deep, powerful music, was now saying I should be listening to an 80s pop artist. I’d been on the other end of his “if you like those guys, you’ll love these guys” suggestion so many times that I always gave his recommendations a shot. Over the years, Dan proved to be one of the few people I’d ever met who knew more about music than I did, but he didn’t know “my music”. He introduced me to Miles Davis, King Crimson, and Frank Zappa in the past, and while I liked and respected those incredible artists, they didn’t reach me on that other, “my music” level.
“I’m telling you,” he added, “Bowie is T. Rex, Hanoi Rocks, and Roxy Music, and that music is Bowie in a way that you won’t understand until you hear this.” He handed me a copy of a Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (AKA Ziggy) compact disc. I’m not going to rewrite this section either and suggest that that compact disc glowed or that there was a sound equivalent to Heaven’s Gate opening when he handed it to me, but that is how I now remember it. “This is David Bowie 101, and when you start loving the alien, I’ll introduce you to other elements of the alternate universe he created.”
I thought Ziggy was a quality album when I first heard it, but I couldn’t get passed the pop artist and “too weird” hang ups I had with Bowie. Those hang ups led me to think the single Ziggy Stardust was so immediate that it might be too immediate. After repeated spins, I started zeroing in on the other songs on the album, and I started dissecting them in the “parts are greater than the whole” mindset. Soul Love was the first song that nabbed me, and I put that song on repeat numerous times. At the end of that week, I forgot to return the disc to my friend. The music on Ziggy Stardust became “mine” in so many ways that I forgot the actual, physical disc was not. When he reminded me that I forgot to return his disc, I did and went out and bought one of my own.
I was already a Ziggy freak by the time Dan suggested I listen toHunky Dory and Diamond Dogs. I was hesitant, thinking Bowie might be a one-album wonder. After a couple weeks, I was hooked on everything Bowie. The “too weird” notions I had of Bowie began to fall away, and I stopped borrowing the discs from my incredibly perceptive friend. I bought them. I did something different with my Bowie-obsession than I did with every other artist to whom I became obsessed. I bought a Bowie album, and I inhaled it. I lived each album, until I knew just about every lyric and every beat of those albums. I thought there was something different to know, feel and experience on each album that I never had before with any other artist. Each album was so different that I could see what everyone was saying when they said he was too weird, but by this time, I recognized that I was a little too weird too, and I began to think David Bowie was singing about me. I listened to each album as an art enthusiast might when examining a painting, slowly ingesting every little nuance until they discovered what it meant to the artist.
When my excitement to buy another album overrode my good sense, I moved onto the next album, only to discover I wasn’t as done with the previous one as I thought I was. Bowie, I realized, was one of the very few musicians who could have one foot planted in the pop world and another in the world of art. My peers told me the man was weird, “too weird”, and I listened. Soon after taking a deep dive, I regretted how much I missed by refusing to listen to him for so long. There are very few artists that affect me so much that I regret not listening to them sooner. I thought of all the years I wasted listening other artists when I could’ve been listening to Hunky Dory, Alladin Sane, and Diamond Dogs. I thought he could’ve changed my world just a little bit sooner back then, and I know that sounds silly, but the effect of his music on me was that profound.
When I finally made it past the obsession, I had with what some now call the Five Years chunk of his catalog (Man Who Sold the World through Diamond Dogs), I graduated to his Berlin Trilogy; Low, Lodger, and Scary Monsters. We listen to music, albums, and artists for a variety of reasons, and I’ve had so many obsessions that I don’t have enough fingers or toes to count them, but there was something different about my obsession with David Bowie. We could label his music in all the pedantic ways, deep, meaningful, and spiritual, but that “not just weird, but too weird” characterization that influenced my refusal to listen to Bowie became the primary reason I listened to him in my adult years.
Whereas most singers sang about love, sex, drugs, and rocking out, Bowie sang about estrangement, an alien nature, and various other themes we deem “too weird”. In places where an artist might go over the top, and be weird for the sake of being weird, Bowie displayed restraint. In places where an artist should shows restraint, Bowie went over the top. He could write a song that that would live on in the history of FM radio (Space Oddity, Changes, and Heroes), and on the same album he would leave a deep cut to cure our longing for great, weird, and offbeat music that only aficionados love (Alternative Candidate, It’s no Game (part 1), and Lady Grinning Soul). Bowie was the consummate artist who found a way to reach me as few artists could. Most music aficionados don’t intend to downplay the effects of hits, but most quality artists have some hits in their catalog. The difference between Bowie and most quality artists is that he spent as much time perfecting his deep cuts as he did his hits. He had a conventional side and an artistic side, as most of us do, but unlike the rest of us, David Bowie managed to cultivate his normal side, coupled with the “emotional and spiritual feelings of estrangement” from his mom’s side, and this duality led him to craft some excellent pop songs and some brilliant, “too weird” deep cuts.
I started listening to David Bowie obsessively about 30 years ago, and I bought his new releases on the date of their release. I enjoy a majority of them, but Bowie captured magic in a bottle during the Five Years albums and the Berlin Trilogy. Hours…, Reality, and Blackstar were my favorite late Bowie albums, but they couldn’t compare to the great eight.
Years before his death, David Bowie experienced something of a rebirth. All of a sudden, and seemingly out of nowhere, I began hearing his peers begin listing him as one of their primary influences. I heard one or two artists do this before, but not to this degree, and I was paying attention. Fans began listing Bowie just a bit outside the greatest artists of his era. They called him revolutionary, a pioneer, and all that stuff we’re accustomed to hearing now, but save for a few artists here and there, I didn’t hear the adoration society crown him in a way he richly deserved for most of my life. I’ve often wondered why, and how, this happened.
If an artist moves into the pulse of the zeitgeist after decades of being on the outer rim, we can usually pinpoint when and where this happened. The artist probably had that one song, movie, or another momentous event that put them over the top. Unless you consider Nirvana’s acoustic cover of The Man who Sold the World that momentous event, it did not happen with Bowie for most of his career. Some of the albums in the “back nine” (or in Bowie’s case the back eight– Outside to Blackstar) of his career were good, but they weren’t so great that they should’ve moved the needle on a retrospective analysis of his career. Before I get to the primary reason I think Bowie moved from just another artist putting out music to a cultural touchstone in the zeitgeist, there were years after 1980’s Scary Monsters and before 1995’s Outside when Bowie got lost in the artistic wilderness. Having said that, I don’t think Bowie moved to us as much as we moved to him in a cultural appreciation of everything he accomplished throughout his glorious career. I think we, as a culture, became more weird, or at least we embraced the weird far more in 2002 (roughly) than we did in 1972. As I wrote, I was already a Bowie fanatic by the time Heathen came out, but others were suddenly calling Heathen his best Bowie disc since Scary Monsters. I liked, and still like Heathen, but I didn’t think it was as good as Hours…. and I didn’t understand how everyone missed what I consider the Great Eight albums from Man who Sold the World and Scary Monsters.
If you’re one who remains on the sideline for whatever reason, I suggest that you cast that cloak aside for as long as it takes to make an individual assessment of his material. My bet is that he reaches you on a level you’ve never considered before. Music, like every other art form, is so relative that his artistry might not appeal to you on the level he did me, but if you’re anything like me, you now know, as my friend Dan predicted it would for me, my definition of “my music” all goes back to Bowie.
Other than providing me an excellent entry point to David Bowie, with Ziggy, Dan was notoriously poor at providing me an entry point to the artists he loved. To introduced me to Frank Zappa, for example, but he loaned me an advanced Zappa album that he loved as someone who had been listening to Zappa for decades. I eventually grew to love that album, but it took me a while. I needed to start at a better entry point to appreciate what Zappa did throughout his career. With that in mind, I thought about an entry point to David Bowie. I would compile the albums Hunky Dory and Ziggy into a playlist, and I would cut the songs Eight Line Poem and It Ain’t Easy (personal preference). Best of Bowie is another great place to start to learn the more normal side, as most people prefer normal pop songs, or hits, as a point of entry, and if you’re not familiar with those songs, it’s an excellent starting point. For those who know those the hits so well that they seek deep cuts, or songs beyond the hits, I’ve compiled a list of those songs that have made it onto so many of my Bowie playlists. Some of them were marginal hits in their era, but I still consider them so deep and meaningful that I had to include them.
1) Alternative Candidate (It’s no longer on Spotify for some reason. It’s on YouTube though.)
2) It’s no Game (Part 1)
3) Lady Grinning Soul
4) Sound and Vision
5) Kooks
6) African Night Flight
7) Soul Love
8) Dodo (This song is also not on Spotify. Here’s the YouTube capture.)
“I no longer ask who is hypocritical,” A said. “I now ask who is not? Seriously, it’s such a malleable charge that we’re all vulnerable to it. The idea that anyone practices what they preach 100% of the time is just silly. Some might be more hypocritical than others, of course, but we’re all vulnerable to the charge. Anytime I hear someone say something like, ‘I hate hypocrites!’ My first thought is, I know I could nail you on something, and I know you could nail me. It’s such a situational charge that I just don’t take it serious anymore.” 
Rilaly 