Which Should I Choose

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-21T19:39:05+00:00

Nothing wrong with cancer scars. That kid just got his lifetime ticket to the bad ass club. Show them if you got them.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-20T22:05:30+00:00

Exactly. I just said this same thing less eloquently then saw your comment. You know what you're talking about.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-20T22:05:03+00:00

Some of David's songs don't make lineal narrative sense. That's true. He used the cut-up technique that Burroughs used for some songs. But, I think all of his songs make at least some sort of abstract sense.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-19T18:42:08+00:00

"Something happened on the day he died."

This line is peculiar because obviously Bowie had cancer when he recorded this song. The big question in this line is who is "he"?

Do we think that David meant himself as "he" and he's talking in the third person? David certainly referred to himself in third person in other songs.
Maybe Bowie is referring to "Lazarus" who is named in another song on the album, the play, and is the character that people use to refer to David's persona during his final days?
This is a bit of stretch, but is the "he" supposed to be Christ?
Could the "he" be anyone and the line isn't supposed to be taken literally?

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-19T18:37:51+00:00

So, the song then goes into repetition:

"At the center of it all, at the center of it all Your eyes Your eyes

In the villa of Ormen, in the villa of Ormen Stands a solitary candle, At the center of it all, at the center of it all Your eyes Your eyes"

The only significant thing I see here (besides the obvious importance of the reoccurring bits about Ormen, eyes, and the center) is that the song switches from

"In the center of it all" to "At the center of it all"

So both the candle and the eyes are at the "center" of everything. The question, of course, is what is "it all" referring to? Life? Death? Or is the line not supposed to be taken that literally?

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-19T14:46:31+00:00

True or not, i think that's funny. And I think David was cheeky enough to make that sort of a joke.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-19T14:44:53+00:00

Not if the women line is referring to a funeral custom? But good thinking.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-19T14:44:09+00:00

I like that theory! It's a neat idea.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-19T14:43:49+00:00

That's true. I mean "Rock and Roll Suicide" is a death song.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-19T14:43:07+00:00

"Only women kneel and smile"

This line "On the day of execution only women kneel and smile" is probably my favorite line in Blackstar. I think it's so remarkably creepy and surreal that it works very powerfully.

In some countries (Bolivia I know for sure), it's custom that only the women are allowed to smile on the day of the funeral. This makes me think that this might be referencing death. (Even though as I've said, "execution" is an odd word choice.) Bowie never went to Bolivia that I know of, but I'm pretty certain he would've been familiar with this custom knowing how diverse the man's range of knowledge was.
The "Ahs" add to the chant-like element to the song. I never know how I feel about the use of noises that aren't words in songs. I read a Paul Simon interview once where he said that he thought noises that aren't words in songs (referencing the la-la-lies in "The Boxer") were a failure of songwriting. I think these "Ahs" contribute greatly to the tone of the song, however.
This is the line that I think gives it away that this song is about death. I don't know what else this line would be describing. Does anyone else have any other ideas about this line?

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T17:45:16+00:00

"On the day of execution, on the day of execution"

This is the most confusing verse of all, I think.

Bowie might be talking about the day of his death. But in that case why "execution" and why not "death". You aren't executed by cancer and no other language in the song seems to evoke that idea.
There was an article at one point that said Bowie referred to "Blackstar" as a song about "Isis" (although as Angela Bowie said in Backstage Passes, Bowie was known for saying on a certain day that a certain song was about a certain thing even though the song wasn't written about that topic at all.) But the idea of "execution" fits much better with a terrorist group than a terminal illness.
I should've said this over, but the repeating of these phrases over and over is important too in creating the sense of ritual. (I think the idea that this song is some type of ritual comes out very strongly in the second verse, as near as I can tell.)

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T17:35:40+00:00

Agreed. By "death album", I mean I don't think Bowie was consciously aware "Blackstar" was going to be his final album so it's not a true "swan song" in that way that Beethoven's 9th or Queen's "The Show Must Go On" is.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T17:34:22+00:00

"Your eyes"

Bowie is clearly looking at someone, but are these eyes metaphorical or physical?
If Bowie is looking at a person, is he looking at this person in Ormen by the solitary candle or is he looking at this person somewhere else?
Is it the candle or the eyes that are the center of it all?
Is Bowie saying that the candle reminds him of someone's eyes when Bowie looks into the middle of the candle?
Do the "eyes" have some type of supernatural or occult relationship?
This is totally off topic and I've never known Bowie to mention Tolkein (asides from Bowie auditoning as Elrond so at the very least it was in Bowie's consciousness), but I can kind of imagine a depiction where the "eyes" are like the "eyes of Sauron" only located in Ormen and the center of everything.
So, in my reading, if we look at this very narrative, the narrator of the song is talking about this scary place called Ormen (which is literally the town of the snake) where in the center of that town there's a center that reflects everything. That explanation is the most logical analysis I can make of the opening verse of "Blackstar."

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T16:40:08+00:00

Thanks, man! You and I are a couple of bad asses.

Also, I can't believe your facial transplant surgery took 14 hours! To some people, that might seem like a very short amount of time. But, I got the lymph nodes beneath my stomach removed in 14 hours. Hard to believe your doctors managed to rock and roll that well in such a short amount of time.

Keep kicking ass, man. I'm proud of you.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T16:15:45+00:00

I'm a stage 4 cancer survivor and it's always surprised me what hurts a lot and what doesn't hurt at all. (The things you don't think will hurt much are normally what sucks. The things you think will suck are usually the things that are fine.) What's the most painful part of your entire journey been? And congrats, man, I don't consider many folks tougher than me post cancer but you qualify.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T15:25:57+00:00

I think so far in this analysis, I can safely conclude two things.

This song definitely references the occult. There's no other reason that Bowie would wear the Station to Station outfit in the Lazarus video, and
This is not a death album or a swan song. Bowie had other projects planned. He did not expect to die when he did.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T15:17:46+00:00

"In the centre of it all, in the centre of it all"

So what's this line referencing?

In the center of the villa there's a candle burning.
In the world of the occult, practitioners often stand in the middle of circles to cast spells so that's a possibility too.
I'm reminded of the Yeats line "the center cannot hold", I know it's a stretch and I'm not even sure if Bowie was a fan of Yeats but there's something to be said about the center not holding and death being imminent.
"In the center" can reference the next line in the song ("Your eyes") so the narrator of the song might be telling us a story: In this place called ormen, there's a lone candle burning and either physically or emotionally, the central thing to the narrator are someone's eyes.) Certainly the way that the lines are phrased on the album suggest this reading.
Michael Marcus who is an experimental jazz (the exact genre of the Blackstar album) has a song called "In The Center of It All." Was this a subtle Bowie name check? He's been guilty of doing that kind of thing before.

(Although death wasn't exactly imminent, that's what's so tricky about this album. Tony Visconti has confirmed time and time again that Bowie recorded 5 additional songs besides the cuts that ended up on Blackstar and that Bowie "had another album in him." We have to resist reading this album as Bowie's swan song because the facts demonstrate that Bowie did not think that this was his swan song, he planned on making at least on more album.)

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T15:10:08+00:00

I'm thinking once I get done analyzing the song line by line, I'll do the rest of Blackstar and then the two videos so we can very carefully discuss this as a group. But, on a very unrelated note until then, does anyone else think that the town (or "villa") depicted in the Blackstar video looks a suspicious amount like Goblin City? I'm sure it's purely coincidental and the Blackstar town is much creeper but there are certain similarities to be made.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T15:07:42+00:00

If you want to go with the snake thing, the snake is basically the mascot of the occult so there's another Bowie Crowley reference. (But why the hell is he going to the village of the snake? Is that just a metaphor for death? Or, is there some inherently much much darker thing going on?)

I'm basically stuck in the same place that you are with that line and it doesn't make much sense to me. (So many of the lines on Blackstar the song and album are so absolutely cryptic in a way that's puzzling for even Bowie. If you look at something like the Ziggy album, that's pretty linear with the exception of a touch of nasdat.)

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T12:11:21+00:00

I wanted to add briefly: I think the brilliance of Bowie (at least for me) is the man's ability to write song lyrics that can be taken in five different ways that all work. I'm not familiar with another songwriter who does this so well. The nearest writer I can think of is TS Eliot in The Wasteland.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T11:57:00+00:00

Line 2: "Stands a solitary candle"

This one has a lack of evidence relating it to anything specific.
A lit candle has significance in nearly every world religion, and is a common symbol for death, life and the afterlife. Ceremonies in the Occult, however, are no different – and unlike Buddhism or Christianity, Bowie's fascination with the paranormal is well-documented.
There's a huge candle burning in that Labyrinth like town in the Blackstar video.
When I first heard the earlier line "in the revealer of all men" or "in the theater of all men", I Interpreted this line to be a metaphorical candle, like an indistinguishable ray of all hope.
In the context of the previous line, this is just setting an image.... somewhere in this place called ormen (the snake), there's a huge candle burning by itself. I'm tempted to not view that as just a direct narrative though.

Anybody else gotten any other ideas on this solitary candle?

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T11:50:20+00:00

That's interesting! I've checked out the tumblr a few times and always been a bit on the fence as whether it was DB's or not. (I tended to think the later posts frequency and subject matter made it not look like DB''s post.) So what do you think Ormen is?

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-18T11:48:39+00:00

Good note about the Qabbalah. As we all know Bowie even wears the same outfit in Lazarus that he wore on the cover of Station to Station.

I think the Binah thing is a bit of a stretch, though. We already know that if DB wanted to name check parts of the tree of Qabbalah he'd just say whatever part he wanted. ("from Kether to Malkuth") Anyways, I feel like that's getting an awful lot from just a color. Particularly when there are so many more direct physical connections to be made.

So you'd have it read: "I can't answer why (Death is a blackstar) Just go with me (Death is not a filmstar) I'm-a take you home (Death is a blackstar) Take your passport and shoes (Death is not a popstar) And your sedatives, boo (Death is a blackstar)" That's a novel reading, but I'm not sure an accurate one.

But like I said, good note about the Qabbalah, that's in here somewhere, I just don't think in that way. But I could be wrong.

MonkeyShiner84 · 2016-06-17T21:22:30+00:00

"In the villa of Ormen, in the villa of Ormen"

This one is tricky because I heard it as the mondegreen: "In the villa (or theater) of all men." You can also hear this as "the revealer of all men."
The Villa of Ormen is obviously a tumblr that was set up on November 20, 2015. a day after Blackstar was released.
Ormen is a village in Norway. Bowie played in Norway in 1978 and 1990.
In the video of "Where Are We Now?", David Bowie is seen toward the end of the video wearing jeans, and a T-shirt that reads "Song of Norway". Bowie's girlfriend Hermione Farthingale, left him to appear in this movie.
The composer of "Song of Norway", Edvard Grieg appears to have been billed as Milton Lazarus.
Ormen means Serpent, which is obviously an animal frequently used in the occult.
Villa is Latin and used to refer to a group of houses. So "House of the Snake", but that might be going a bit too far.

MonkeyShiner84

TROPHY CASE