“I want Eagles in my Daydreams, Diamonds in my Eyes” Bowie swoons on his enigmatic new work Blackstar. His soulful longing follows a hubristic rant as a trickster God enticing the faithfully enslaved to sacrifice themselves for him. He’ll take your passport and shoes, your valium and your worship. You might make a martyr, but you’re a flash in the pan, he’s the Great I AM, and he’s laughing as all thePretty Things are going to Hell.
According to rumours by musicians who worked with Bowie ( but denied by ‘official sources’) the song references Isis. Who knows? I have previously suggested Bowie’s work on both Outside and Loving the Alien explores this territory in “Confronting Bowie’s Mysterious Corpses” in the Bloomsbury book Enchanting David Bowie
“Bowie’s linking of violence, spiritual belief and death, and the lack of contemporary, culturally resonant frameworks to meaningfully process these powerful energies explored on Outside is intriguing, particularly when considering why people are attracted to violent expressions of belief, such as “Islamic State”. (Bowie had previously explored the ancient clash of religious ideology in his 1985 song “Loving the Alien”, singing of terror and torture from the crusades through to modern times: “Watching them come and go, the Templars and the Saracens…Torture comes and torture goes …terror in the best laid plans…Christians and the unbelievers, hanging by the cross and nail”).
Grace’s corpse on Outside seemed the end result from the convergence, subversion and dysfunctional channeling of these primal drives. Bowie sang in several guises across the 1995 album, from Detective Nathan Adler, who had undertones of a cryptic “Grand Inquisitor” figure (Dostoyevsky, 1880), [xiii] to murder suspect, Leon Blank, a reversal of Noel, herald of emptiness, a Holy Fool cutting esoteric zeroes into the fabric of time and perceiving hidden mysteries through “These Architects Eyes”, a name for God in the mystery traditions. [xiv] Deliberately ambiguous, the project possibly intimated the Detective himself could be the Minotaur serial killer who murdered Baby Grace, a theological implication perhaps cryptically reflected in “The Next Day” single and film clip with its contempt for exploitative religious leaders who “work with Satan while they dress like saints” and corrupt institutions of power that exploit and destroy the Grace they should protect and illuminate.” Confronting Bowie’s Mysterious Corpses, Stark July 2015
Blackstar was released the week following the Bataclan Slaughter at the Eagles of Death Metal concert. The killing began during their song Kiss the Devil. It was recorded long before. They had already played Don’t Speak, I came to make a Bang.
“Don’t move, don’t speak, even whisper/There’s something happenin’ but don’t be scared/I’m too smooth, you never see me coming … I’m your fabulous weapon/ I’ll hit your target… but don’t be scared/I’m in too tight, gonna feel it tonight, yeah/Baby girl, gonna take your whole world/I came to make a bang, yeah” Eagles of Death Metal (setlist here)
According to a witness, music journalist Pierre Janaszak those lyrics seem to have played themselves out at the Bataclan:
“[The terrorists said] in French, of course, to the free hostages – one woman, her boyfriend and another guy – “Why are you crying? Why are you crying?” And the guy said: “Because I’m scared” He said – “You don’t have to be scared, you will be dead in few minutes, so don’t worry”… This girl just stopped crying, instantly…”.
At the time of the slaying the Blackstar symbol, seen on Bowie’s ‘holy’ book was everywhere. Most curiously, it showed up on the hand of the Josh Homme, playing drums years earlier in the film clip for Speaking in Tongues. That song came to lead singer Jesse Hughes in a dream, he claimed. Fully formed.
“The first songs I ever wrote, like “Speaking in Tongues” and “Flames Go Higher,” they came in my dreams. I shit you not. I woke up with the whole song lyric and everything in my head. That was really easy.” Jesse Hughes
This idea of the synchronistic manifestation of symbolism in the dreams and visions of seers and artists is something I’ve explored in depth across the past 4 years. Jung’s manifestations of the collective unconscious, if you will. And what I’ve learned is not to dismiss it offhand. Much of this territory is archetypal and open to interpretation, to be sure, but thats why it’s in the subjective realms of poetry, art and spirituality.
“I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we’ve made of them, really. I’m quite Jungian about that. The dream state is a strong, active, potent force in our lives…the fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey. Combining the two, the place where the two worlds come together, has been important in some of the things I’ve written, yes” David Bowie in Crashing Out with Sylvian Stark 2015
The Deftones were in the Bataclan audience as well, scheduled to play songs from their album Diamond Eyes the following night. That album is full of eerily prescient songs, including This Place is Death that once again, references the liminal world of dreams.
I want Eagles in my Daydreams, Diamonds in my Eyes?
This Place Is Death (from Diamond Eyes)
You arrive in my dream Beside me every night…You and me, we explode through the scene, We try to drain the night empty….No one goes off in every way…Like you do… We spray the scene in red…No one else has a hold over me…Like you do… This place is death, I know you feel the same.
The Prince ( Diamond Eyes)
The mindset/Of a killer…With your gaze/You paint the room/Blood red/ With tears/Pouring from the stage……Now open your empty hands/Cause here comes the fun here comes the end…Then clear out the room/Blow kisses, wave them goodbye…Goodnight.
Rocket Skates (Diamond Eyes)
You’re red soaking wet… I’m right next to you…You’re red soaking wet…Let’s writhe, Let me see you trip. One move that will keep you wet/Let’s fall in a long sadistic trance…Put the keys in our hands…GUNS! RAZORS! KNIVES!
Strangely prescient.
I have no idea why The Eagles of Death Metal seemed to be linked with Bowie and Blackstar, but the moment the Paris massacre happened, there seemed to be weird synergies about.
I’ve come to the working hypothesis, that, as mysterious as they are, synchronous occurrence of archetypal and more specific imagery is a real phenomena that some people are particularly sensitive to perceiving.
Advocate, adversary or acolyte of angels or devils, those mortals with antennae perpetually tuned to the zeitgeist -the prophets, the madmen and the artists – swim in prescience and synchronicity. Perhaps what Jung called the Collective Unconscious could arguably be called the Powers and Principalities referred to in the New Testament, or Energies to New Agers. I guess it depends on your perspective. There are enough reports throughout history on visionary experience, madness, temporal lobe epilepsy and mysticism to know something is going on. (See Javier Alvarez-Rodriguez’s concept ‘hyperia’ in Psychic Neuronal Hypersynchronies: A new Psychiatric Paradigm, for example. ) The challenge is perhaps less one of credibility, but of how to hold this extra sensory awareness in balance and not fall into hysteria, depression, psychosis or mania, or at least, stay there.
When David Bowie portrayed Pontius Pilate in the controversial film The Last Temptation of Christ, right wing Catholic extremists in Paris bombed the St Mitchel Theatre where the movie was playing. Allegations of blasphemy so stoked the angry flames in the hearts of the devout, some decided the best way to avenge Christ’s honour was through murder. (And they literally used sulphuric acid as the trigger). Sadly it sounds all too familiar.
“Before the film opened, the Archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, condemned it without having seen it. He said, ”One doesn’t have the the right to shock the sensibilities of millions of people for whom Jesus is more important than their father or mother.” After the fire, Cardinal Lustiger condemned those responsible for what the police suspect was arson. ”You don’t behave as Christians but as enemies of Christ,” the prelate said. ”From the Christian point of view, one doesn’t defend Christ with arms. Christ himself forbade it.” New York Times, Oct 1988
Based on Nikolas Kotzankiszis book, Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ is theologically intense and confronting and throws up complex questions around personal agency, the character of god and the devil, good and evil, and our capacity for delusion and self deception. There are intriguing conflations of psychosis with visionary experience, destiny and desire. Classic Bowie territory. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s an important one.
Bowie’s portrayal of Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ is much like that of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquistor who, in turn, seems to reflect the character Bowie is portraying/channelling in Blackstar. When confronted with an imprisoned and silent Christ incarnated in Spain, the Inquisitor berated Christ for his follies of freedom.
People don’t want freedom, he taunted, they want bread, tricks and someone to blindly tell them who to worship and what to do. They desire to be Slaves. Not joint heirs of the kingdom. You failed all three tests of the Devil in the wilderness, he accused. Who wouldn’t want Power, Wealth and Magic?
“I believe this…” David Bowie 2002.
Give me peace of mind at last/Show me all you are…I would give you all my love/Nothing else is free/Open up your heart to me/And I would be your slave
Skulls and Crucifixes.
In The Last Temptation of Christ, Bowie as Pilate sent Christ off to Golgotha, the Place of Skulls to be crucified. In Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamokov, when the Inquisitor finished his admonishment, Christ silently walked over and kissed the Inquisitor on his cold lips. Seemingly rattled, instead of sending Christ to his death, he released him out into the dark alleys of the city. Significantly, “The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea”.
Who will kiss the Devil? the Reverend Jessie Hughes, nicknamed ‘the Devil’ was singing when ISIS stormed the Bataclan. “I will kiss the devil on this tongue” he gleefully replied, seemingly oblivious that Old Nick might take him literally.
Pleased to meet you. Hope you guessed my Name.
Bowie has always had a thing for that ol’ gospel call and response. Remember Width of a Circle with Bowie’s “tongue swollen with devils love”? “Turn around and go back”, warned the lyrics to little avail. “Wanna stay underground” Bowie’s gospel choir sang in Underground, the soundtrack to Labyrinth.
“…the hallways became a labyrinth…” Jesse Hughes describes his desperate attempt to outrun the terrorists.
Daddy Daddy get me out of here.
Descents, Nekyia’s, Night Sea Journeys what ever you want to call them, are all archetypal ways of describing the journey into the darkness of ones (and perhaps societies) soul. They are pivotal and important, but however mesmerising or despairing the process, shamanic or otherwise, you have to resist the temptation to remain in the subterranean netherworlds. You must find your way back to the light. If “Something happened on the day he died, spirit rose a metre and then stepped aside” then perhaps a psychopomp is in order. Eternal hovering, strung out in heavens high, is no good for anybody.
Bowie is definitely a Seer – some intriguing mix of prophet, madman and visionary artist. Whether he is a liar, well, again, who can tell. Reviews of Blackstar the album have noted its similarity in tone to Station to Station. That album marked an apex of creativity, but personal abyss of addiction, spiritual confusion and mental hell that he barely survived. It was the time of The Man who Fell to Earth, (the ‘prequel’ to Lazarus) from Kether to Malkuth, of glowing visions and occult headfucks. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s “David Bowie Is…” exhibition reveals an aborted line from Station to Station as “You love like a bomb/You smell like a ghost’. Weird.
Incidentally I’ve got an image in that exhibition. It’s a shot of Bowie Matryoshka’s at Trinity College, Dublin. Layers upon layers of Bowie personas that stack inside themselves. “Something deep inside of me, a yearning deep inside..”
In 1976, a manically inflated Bowie was interviewed for Rolling Stone by a young Cameron Crowe. Yet, in what may have seemed like nonsense 30 years ago looks pretty damn prescient in the face of ISIS now.
“I think we are due for a revival of God awareness. Not a wishy-washy kind of fey, flower-child thing, but a very medieval, firm-handed masculine God awareness where we will go out and make the world right again. I’m feeling more and more that way.”
Bowie continues: “…Rock & roll has been really bringing me down lately. It’s in great danger of becoming an immobile, sterile fascist that constantly spews its propaganda on every arm of the media. It rules and dictates a level of thought and clarity of intelligence that you’ll never raise above. …Rock & roll too — it will occupy and destroy you that way. It lets in lower elements and shadows that I don’t think are necessary. Rock has always been the devil’s music. You can’t convince me that it isn’t…
…I have to carry through with my conviction that the artist is also the medium….I believe that rock & roll is dangerous. It could well bring about a very evil feeling in the West. I do want to rule the world. There’s always a pendulum swing, right? Well, we’ve had the high with rock. It’s got to go the other way now. And that’s where I see it heading, bringing about the dark era… I feel that we’re only heralding something even darker than ourselves…”
Jesse Hughes from the Eagles of Death Metal mades some striking similar comments in 2015:
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to take full fucking credit right now for fucking the destruction of everything good, OK? Because it’s true,” he says. “Everything that the Bible thumpers said about Elvis is fucking true. It destroyed everything: Intimacy, the ability for people to be married — society at large is gone. [Pop culture] brought us the Internet, mass pornography, the death porn of Quentin Tarantino. It’s all fucking darkness and evil and has one goal, dude. And it’s not anything good for us. That’s the fucking reality of it, dude…”
Back in 1976, Bowie went on to say:
“I have this dream. I’d like to host a satellite television show and invite all the biggest bands onto one stage. Then I’d come out with a great big wheelbarrow of machine guns and ask them, ‘Now how many of you are gonna do anything? How many are going to pick up a gun and how many of you are gonna cling to your guitars?'”
Bowie got damn close to seeing this dream in Paris.
Amidst the inflation, the delusions of grandeur, and the smatterings of paranoia, perhaps redolent of bi-polar or drug induced mania or psychosis I still ask is there something else going here? And my answer, after years of pondering the intersection between madness, genius, creativity and mysticism, is yes. And it seems the best psychiatrists agree. Some people, especially those at risk of going ‘mad’ are literally channeling the zeitgeist at levels their rational minds cannot process. Be clear I’m not drawing causative link here. This is a very important distinction. Much of this stuff functions at the level of instinct and unconsciousness, bubbling to the surface. Weather vanes do not cause the weather, do they?
Bowie claims that Mark Chapman, who assassinated John Lennon, had him next on the list. Bowie was acting on Broadway at the time, playing Elephant Man. Bowie says Chapman had tickets to the show beside John and Yoko, and the night following the murder he was confronted by three empty seats in the front row. Who knows? Whatever the case, Lennon and Bowie’s collaboration Fame takes on an eerie tone knowing Chapman held his gun, Valentine style, in his scrawny hands and tiny heart, and waited for Lennon to return in his limo before shooting him in the back.
“Fame, what you want is in your limo, Fame what you get is no tomorrow”.
But beautifully, it’s not always dark stuff than seems to push through the veil. Moments after Lennon was pronounced dead, Dr Lynne, who desperately cut open his chest to physically pump his heart with his hands recalls “All my Loving” came across the hospital speakers as he prepared to break the news to Yoko Ono.
“Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you, Tomorrow I’ll miss you
Remember I’ll always be true, And then while I’m away
I’ll write home every day, And I’ll send all my loving to you…”
Try and listen to that and not cry.
To all those who were slaughtered by evil at the Bataclan, Rest in Peace. Know Everyone Says Hi. To those who lost loved ones at the Bataclan may you honour their lives through freedom and love. To the Eagles of Death Metal – Peace, Love and Life. And yes, you are right, Reverend Jesse “..a great reason why so many were killed is because so many people wouldn’t leave their friends…So many people put themselves in front of people.” That’s what real Saints looks like.
There is no greater love.
Speaking in tongues, synchronistic phenomenon, prophetic energies, symbolic mysteries, blackstars or white… whether any of this is real or not, well, it’s all pretty moot in the end.
Love trumps it all.
1 Corinthians 13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reason
Pax
Tanja Stark.
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Jesse Hughes on Jesus Christ, Suicide Bombers and Evolution.
Famous Musicans who allegedly predicted their deaths.
“In the Villa of Ormen, stands a solitary candle.”
Bowie Blackstar 2015
“I’ve got to do this,” [Bowie] says, pulling a shade down on the window. A ballpoint-penned star has been crudely drawn on the inside. Below it is the word “Aum.” Bowie lights a black candle on his dresser and immediately blows it out to leave a thin trail of smoke floating upward.” Rolling Stone 1976
Walk in Freedom.
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