The Man Who Sold the World (last update: 2/3/2025)

"Oh no, not me

We never lost control

You're face to face

With the man who sold the world

- Lyrics from The Man Who Sold the World, 1970, David Bowie.

***

Amusingly, the day Donald Trump was inaugurated this song trended on YouTube. The Man Who Sold the World was an early Bowie tune which never received much airplay till British pop-diva, Lulu - whom DB adored - brought it to the top of the UK charts several years later.

Nirvana covered the song in the 90s - above is an MTV performance - and totally nailed it. But, meanwhile, hiding in the Saturday Night Live archives is, perhaps, DB's most definitive interpretation of the "man" who is revealed to be an eerily puppet-like figure. (Also see.) Featuring the German performance artist, Klaus Nomi, the full video can be found here.

***

"I was saved by God to make America great again."

- A grandiose (delusional) statement attributed to Donald Trump on the day of his inauguration sourced from USA Today's Donald Trump sworn in as 47th president, declares 'America's decline is over'.

America's "decline" is over? No, judging by the news headlines over the past 8 days, many, both here and abroad, secretly fear the alleged "decline" may have just begun.

Moreover, America may be losing the support of friendly nations and allies due to the present administration's seemingly pathological disregard for diplomacy. (See article here and videos of officials from Germany, Ireland, and Denmark.)

Observe: 

• Trump is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement (again), reversing U.S. climate policy

• Trump administration launches nationwide immigration enforcement blitz

• Trump’s new gender rules gut a key part of the Prison Rape Elimination Act

• Trump uses mass firing to remove independent inspectors general at a series of agencies

• What is US birthright citizenship and what does Trump’s executive order do?

• Brazil slams US after dozens of deportees arrive handcuffed

• Trump imposes tariffs, sanctions on Colombia after it refuses deportation flights

(Update)

• US freezes foreign aid for almost all countries including Ukraine, except Israel and Turkey

• Trump offering buyouts to all federal workers

• Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump administration freeze on federal grants and loans

***

The news is coming fast and furiously these days. I've never seen anything like it. Every day introduces a new abomination... with the leader of the new administration shooting out executive orders with machine gun-like rapidity. If this is an element of his strategy then it's effectively disabling us, leading some Americans to wonder: has there been a coup?

Seriously...

(Continued below the jump...)

Vale, O Queen!

 

Tina Turner, the Queen of Rock & Roll, died yesterday. She was a one-off and another powerful feminine force to be reckoned with. And, her voice - I can't imagine a world without that incredible voice. Rock on, Tina!

Tina & Bowie? Sublime.

"She and Bowie always had one of the most endearing rock-star friendships — they always brought out the weird in each other. They duetted on his strange Pepsi commercial, starring David as Dr. Frankenstein and Tina as the rock goddess in his laboratory, both singing on “Modern Love.” They also duetted on a weirdly touching synth-reggae version of “Tonight” in 1984, about lovers separated by death, their voices meshing for the payoff lines “I will love you till I die/I will see you in the sky/Tonight.”

- Via the Rolling Stone tribute: We’ll Never Live in a World Without Tina Turner. The Pepsi commercial can be found here.

Conjuring up David (#2) (New: 2/27/23)

 

"I will sit right down

Waiting for the gift of sound and vision

And I will sing

Waiting for the gift of sound and vision

Drifting into my solitude

Over my head

Don't you wonder sometimes

About sound and vision?"

-  Lyrics from Sound and Vision, 1977, David Bowie from his ground-breaking album, Low.

(The video above replaces this live version of I'm Afraid of Americans. Original video with Trent Reznor.)

Conjuring Up David

 

"Every chance,

Every chance that I take

I take it on the road

Those kilometres and the red lights

I was always looking left and right

Oh, but I'm always crashing

In the same car.."

I'm Always Crashing in the Same Car - Low - 1977, David Bowie

***

It's been too long since last I mentioned David.

The Starman and the Swan People (Part III): The Second Dream

The lid of a second (smaller) music box... (virtually) composed
of mother-of-pearl fragments inlaid into black stone, 2017, DS.

(Click to enlarge)

"I was visiting a strange city... and although I can't recollect having been there before, it wasn't totally unfamiliar to me. I was looking out a hotel window at the city lights and making plans to go out a bit later. David Bowie would be performing at a venue nearby and I planned on being there. The thing is, I was aware he had died the previous year, but somehow seeing him "live" in the present didn't seem unusual to me... it's as if it wasn't merely possible in this place I had come, but, to be expected.

The next thing I remember is that I was at an airport again... walking down a long sort of corridor from which passengers either board a plane or disembark. Suddenly, I thought I saw someone who looked like David Bowie moving towards me, but, he wasn't alone. Although I have no recollection of his companions, they seemed to be walking on either side of him and supporting him as he walked. He seemed unsteady and appeared to be in pain. His face - which was red as if sunburnt  - seemed somewhat distorted. In fact, my impression now is that he may possibly have been in the process shape-shifting, but, this didn't occur to me then, and, by the time we came face to face, he looked younger - in his thirties (?) - but perfectly normal.

We had a conversation then. I don't remember what it was about but DB was very charming and endearing, He came across as a kindred spirit but, ultimately, I felt somewhat sad and remorseful. I impulsively kissed and embraced him, saying "I'm so sorry I never met you while you were still alive."

At which point he looked at me and said: 'There are other lives.'

This so astounded me I woke up."

- The second dream recollection, February 10, 2017, DS. The lovely man with sax (inset left) can be found here.

“Being imbued with a vividly active imagination still, I have brilliantly Technicolor dreams. They’re very, very strong. The ‘what if?’ approach to life has always been such a part of my personal mythology, and it’s always been easy for me to fantasise a parallel existence with whatever’s going on. 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.

That other life, that doppelganger life, is actually a dark thing for me. I don’t find a sense of freedom in dreams; they’re not an escape mechanism. In there, I’m usually, ‘Oh, I gotta get outta this place!’ The darker place. So that’s why I much, much prefer to stay awake.”

- David Bowie, from a 4-part 2013 interview: "I'm Hungry for Reality".
Inset left is Leonora Carrington's And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur, 1953. Note: All Carrington paintings used in the body of this post can be found on this page.

"Another dream-determinent that deserves mention is telepathy. The authenticity of this phenomenon can no longer be disputed today. It is of course, very simple to deny its existence without examining the evidence, but that is an unscientific procedure which is unworthy of notice. I have found by experience that telepathy does in fact influence dreams, as has been asserted since ancient times. Certain people are particularly sensitive in this respect and often have telepathically influenced dreams."

- Carl Jung from his 1974 publication: Dreams.

"The Chinese also developed interesting theories regarding how mental and psychic functioning depends upon different energy forms. They considered the dreamer's soul to be one of the principle agencies of dream production but made a distinction between the material soul or p'o, which regulated body functioning and ceased with its death, and the spiritual soul or hun, which left the body at death and carried the appearance of the body with it. It was the hun that was involved in dreams, because it could separate temporarily from the body for nighttime excursions to the land of the dead. There it would communicate with spirits or souls of the dead and return to the body with impressions from these visits."

- Excerpt from Our Dreaming Mind by Robert L. Van de Castle, Ph.D. (1927-2014). Inset right is the painting Dervault by Leonora Carrington.

"Reveal thyself to me

and let me behold a favorable dream.

May the dream that I dream be favorable;

may the dream that I dream be true.

May Makhir, the goddess of dreams, stand at my head;

let me enter the temple of the gods and the house of life."

- Prayer of a Mesopotamian "incubant" or dream-seeker.* Note: Dream incubation is the ancient ritual of going to sleep in a sacred place in anticipation of receiving a helpful or precognitive dream from a divine benefactor. It was common in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and amongst the earliest Christians.

***

Well, finally, after stalling for so long, I decided to cut-to-the-chase and post both the second dream and the new music box lid right at the beginning of Part III (the last part) of this series. I can only hope they were worth waiting for.

It's funny, but when I read over my dream recollection above, a track from Bowie's Low - A New Career in a New Town - started going through my head. Which was kind of appropriate. One (unmentioned) element of Bowie's performance in the strange city of my dream is that it was to take place in a small, intimate venue. And, you might say, that for Bowie to be performing in small, intimate venues would (indeed) be a "new career"...

The Starman & The Swan People (Part II)

"Some Sanskrit mystics locate seven planes of being, the seven spiritual lokas
or worlds within the body of Kala Hamsa, the Swan out of Time and Space..."
- From The Voice of the Silence by H. P. Blavatsky.
(Link to the image above has been lost.)
(All images in this post can be clicked-on for original size.)

"While scientists are still in heated debates about what exactly consciousness is, the University of Arizona’s Stuart Hameroff and British physicist Sir Roger Penrose conclude that it is information stored at a quantum level. Penrose and his team have found evidence that 'protein-based microtubules - a structural component of human cells - carry quantum information - information stored at a sub-atomic level.'

Penrose argues that if a person temporarily dies, this quantum information is released from the microtubules and into the universe. However, if they are resuscitated the quantum information is channeled back into the microtubules and that is what sparks a near death experience. 'If they’re not revived, and the patient dies, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.'"

- Excerpt from the August 13, 2017 article: Life After Death? - Physicists Says "It's Quantum Information that Transcends from One World to Another." (Inset left: a Penrose tiling)

***

I never could wrap my head around the idea of death; even as a child. Most especially as a child. My first "dead" person was, in fact, my mother's mother. I never really understood why everyone was so dismal when Grandma died. I was, after all, quite convinced she still existed; I could feel she was still there somewhere. In my mind - my primary reality - she just, well, went away. In other words, she went elsewhere, leaving her sick body behind; which was sad (for us) but certainly not tragic (for her). And, really, if she managed to find a better place and feel well again, that was a good thing, wasn't it?

And, to this day, part of me - the part that never "grew up" - still feels the same way. The adult part, on the other hand, is unsure and doesn't know what to think. The adult part mourns. The adult part can't handle death. So, when David Bowie - our Starman - set sail, the adult was devastated and perplexed. Then, one morning - about a month later - I had a strange dream (described in Part I). Or, perhaps, my inner child had the dream. In any case, in the dream the Starman did not die; he "left with the Swan People"... which, in terms of a child's imagination, is not really an odd thing for a Starman to do. Hardly more odd than, let's say, imagining a flock of swans might carry a person to the moon. But, in 1638, Francis Godwin imagined just exactly that...  and wrote about it (inset right). More importantly, nobody even thought he was cracked; some people (Edgar Allen Poe, for one) thought he was ingenious.

(Very obviously) a young swan.

Now, had my adult self merely accepted the dream and moved on, this post would not have been necessary. Instead, "self" felt compelled to google "Swan People," forgetting that, when researching on the web, one invariably gets sucked down a rabbit hole. Call it "obsessive research disorder," a syndrome peculiar to cyberspace where information is (too) easily accessible, and what begins as innocently clicking on a link leads to a dizzying minefield of other links, each a tiny rabbit-hole all in itself.

So, the Starman and the Swan People - originally intended to be merely one (fairly short) post - somehow morphed into three separate posts. Sorry about that, but I can't seem to wrap things up in a lesser number. Could it be a Tesla kind of thing, that is, the Rule of Three? Maybe. Not that it did Tesla any good...

The Starman & The Swan People: A Dream

Swanstar - Prismacolor drawing on Bristol Board - 1976, DS
(Currently in the collection of a friend.)
(All images in this post can be clicked-on for original size.)

"I've been dreaming of David Bowie for the past few nights; they're the first dreams I've had of him since his death in January. Unfortunately, they were so vague and elusive I can hardly remember them. The only one which actually stuck is the one I woke up from early this morning, and DB wasn't even present in it. It was a short dream and different from the others in that it had this peculiar realistic quality about it similar to a lucid dream. At the same time, I felt like a sleep-walker throughout the dream; one who has suddenly woken up in a very strange place with no rational reason for being there.

In the beginning, I seemed to be milling about with a number of people in what resembled an airport type of structure. We had all gathered there for a common purpose, although - initially - I had no idea what the purpose was. At some point, we arrived outside of a glass-enclosed room which might've possibly been some variety of control center... or maybe a television news production studio... with rows of seated people gazing at glowing monitors in the semi-darkness. Suddenly, an announcement was made, and I immediately realized that this was the information that I and the others had been waiting for. Although I don't remember any physically audible broadcast, the news was somehow conveyed to all present... and it went something like this:

"It is now official. We have just learned that David Bowie has left with the Swan People."

And, that was it: the end. I woke up with the words "swan people" reverberating in my head and it seemed imperative that I remember those words."

- A dream recollection, DS, February 4, 2016.

***

It's been well over a year and a half since the Starman left us, and almost as long since I had the Swan People dream (above), so, it probably seems strange to be posting about it now. I intended to post about it last year - as evidenced by my original Music Box series menu - but, after my last Music Box post in May of 2016, the series was stalled by a number of real-time misfortunes, and, as for the "alchemy of love," well, cats and kitties, I just wasn't feelin' it.

But then, in February of this year - almost a year to the day of the Swan People dream - I dreamt about DB again. The Swan People were not in evidence, but, this time the Starman was. And, he said something in the dream that's stuck with me for months - which I'll reveal later on in the post* - but, it wasn't until I throughly researched swans (and Swan People) that I found a link between the two dreams... and some renewed inspiration!

So, in part, this post is about the mysteries of dream symbolism - specifically the swan symbol - but, it's also a tribute to the mysterious Starman himself; a tribute long overdue.


* I (optimistically) assumed I'd be able to finish this post in one part. The second dream will now appear in Part II... Part III.

___________________________________

In Search of the Swan People

The Lid of the Music Box

"As swan people, these dreamers must have been able to envision the bands as groups of swans flying together along a trail of the seasons. From my knowledge of this and the other empowering stories of Dunne-za medicines, the swan people seem to be the only ones given the vision required to direct the communal hunt. If any of the medicines are to empower the communal hunt, it must be that of Swan. People with "swan power" could look ahead and see events beginning to materialize beyond the imagination of others. They saw in the events of one season omens of seasons to come."

- Excerpted from: Changes of Mind: Dunne-za Resistance to Empire (download), Robin Ridington. Inset right: a vase - Swan Maiden - by sculptor A. G. Quinn.

” Naachin or “Dreamers,” according to Ridington, “are people who have experienced the Trail to Heaven in person. They have known the experience of dying and going to heaven. Unlike ordinary people, who die once and do not return to the same body, Dreamers leave their bodies, grab hold of a song that carries them forward, and then return to earth on the trail of that same song.”

- Another reference to the Dane-zaa from The Dane-Zaa Indians and the Vision Quest (.pdf) by David Martinez.

"The vision has this power over individuals and communities because they believe in the relevance of dreams. Unlike the western intellectual tradition that often feels like it knows more the more it debunks or demystifies things, Indigenous cultures are certain that they have a more profound appreciation for the world by presupposing that the world is ultimately mysterious, in the sense of being sacred and thereby beyond the realm of philosophic reason. Yet, dreams are a source of knowledge. More specifically, they constitute an existential encounter with an alternate mode of awareness.This awareness for the developed dreamer enables him to experience the transformation of his lived world into something mythic and superordinate...

...Because of the fundamental nature of the visionary experience, one cannot satisfactorily interpret dreams because they contain both the known and the mysterious. The visionary landscape and the lived landscape are enfolded into one another... To enter the dream world means, in this sense, to alter consciousness and enter into an implicit dreaming order—the unfolded, psychic potential of the visionary realm— that has a structural, morphological effect on consciousness.” 

- Excerpted from Stories of the Vision Quest Among Dunne-za Women, 1983, Robin Ridington. The wonderful image (inset left) is one of two featured in this post by alchemical artist Karena Karras. The other can be found in the Alchemical Swan section (Part II).

"Did you know that the beautiful Swan is one of the Native American Totems? Sister Swan gives a message of Grace.  She teaches us to surrender to the grace of the rhythm of the universe and to slip away from our physical bodies to enter the Dreamtime. Swan people have the ability to see the future as they surrender to the power of Great Spirit. They are accepting of the healing and transformation of their lives when that surrender takes place."

- From this Native American Totem page.

***

As you may have suspected, I take dreaming very seriously, but - and, as I've probably said in the past - dreams are tricksy things. The most we can say for sure about them is that they emerge from the unconscious mind and often utilize a language based on symbols. Sometimes they seem informed by recent conscious experiences. For instance, as it was, immediately previous to the Swan People dream, I had just finished (digitally) creating the Music Box panels, the lid of which (above) - although it consciously escaped me at the time - very much resembles a pair of swans making a heart-shape with their necks, as they often do in reality (inset right).

Then again, the dream was in reference to our (beloved) Starman. As It was, it was his unexpected loss to a large degree that propelled me to begin composing my Music Box series to begin with. And, predictably, not long after his fateful day, journalists often referred to his last album, Blackstar, as his "swan song." So, either occurrence may have filtered into my brain triggering the dream. But, somehow, I never really thought so, and now - after further research and a second dream - I suspect something else might have been at work...

Oblique Strategies... and the Circles of Time

The first set of the "Platonic" Cyclohedra cast in 1988. (Photo: 2016, DS)
(click on photos to enlarge)

"Lateral thinking is solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. The term was coined in 1967 by Edward de Bono."

- Via the Wiki entry for lateral thinking.

"They were most famously used by Eno during the recording of David Bowie's Berlin triptych of albums (Low, "Heroes", Lodger). Stories suggest they were used during the recording of instrumentals on "Heroes" such as "Sense of Doubt" and were used more extensively on Lodger ("Fantastic Voyage", "Boys Keep Swinging", "Red Money"). They were used again on Bowie's 1995 album Outside, which Eno was involved with as a writer, producer and musician. Carlos Alomar, who worked with Eno and Bowie on all these albums, was a fan on using the cards, later saying "at the Center for Performing Arts at the Stevens Institute of Technology, where I teach, on the wall are Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards. And when my students get a mental block, I immediately direct them to that wall."

- From the Wiki entry for Oblique Strategies, a card game created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt and first published in 1975. David Bowie's personal deck (pictured above, inset, right) was found here.

Les stratégies obliques (and here)

"Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture)"

- The "oblique strategy" presented to moi when I clicked the link for the online version of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies. (English only, but there is a French version on the web somewhere... at least there was... as well as a Japanese version.)

"As it happened, the subject of maps came up that day, during a game of Triakis, a game which was fairly new to the Prince, and one for which his uncle insisted he needed training. As it was, he'd just made, what he thought, was a strategic move, but when his uncle's turn came, the boy lost another avatar.

"You will never understand this game, Nathaniel," his uncle grinned, flipping the tetrahedron in the air and then catching it, "until you look at the board as if it were a map."

But, all the Prince really saw when he looked at the diamond- shaped board was a mosaic of triangles, and he said so.

"Well, yes, the board is composed of triangles, but, look closely: those triangles are really portions of hexagons, and it's by the hexagons one calculates the most advantageous moves to make," explained his uncle.

"But, that's not like real maps," Nathaniel complained, "not like the ones of Elidon Wold you have in the library." 

"Well, no," laughed his Uncle, "not like those I own, but precisely like the ancient maps that were made by the Avians."

"Avians? Do you mean, actual birds?" his nephew asked incredulously. "Birds made maps?!"

"The Avians weren't exactly birds, Nathaniel", explained his uncle, "but, like birds, they could fly. Ultimately, it was they who discovered Elidon Wold, and gave it its name. But that was in a different circle of time..."

"Do you mean, when you were a boy, Uncle?"

"Oh no," said his uncle, "I was never a boy. I was as you see me now... as I always have and always will be seen. I merely meant a circle of time in which boys like yourself were not physically located."

- Excerpt from the prologue of "The Last Chronicle of Elidon Wold,"  2013, Dia Sobin.

***

As you might've noticed, my usual modus operandi these days is to start a post and then leave it hanging there, unfinished... for days. I'm trying hard to break this habit, but, as of late, there seems to be a large disconnect between my impulses and ideas and my ability to translate them into hard copy. Moreover, by the time I've found the words, I've forgotten the point. The reality is, while "lateral thinking" - the sort of thinking that Brian Eno hoped to induce with his Oblique Strategy cards - might be useful for spontaneous, creative leaps of the imagination and breaking though mental blocks, etc., in the end, it doesn't, in itself, produce anything tangible. It takes a certain amount of logic - that is, linear thinking - to bring any "project," large or small, to fruition. In other words, to truly successfully hatch anything into the world, one has to effortlessly glide between the two modes of thought, the two modes of activity, utilizing each at the proper moment. And it takes a certain amount of faith in yourself to pull this off. The minute your faith falters... well, it's like with any other skill - riding a bicycle, perhaps, or ice-skating - you fail... you fall. Or, worse still, you flounder...

Vale, Man from Mars (...)

Rolling Stone February cover - photo credit: Anton Corbijn/Getty Images
Article: David Bowie's Final Years
(click to enlarge)
For more recent Rolling Stone articles about DB click here.

At your newsstand: this recent TIME publication.
(Click to enlarge.)

Along with so many people, I've been grappling with the death of David Bowie - America's resident alien - since Monday of last week. I think it's amazing just how many of us, all over the world, were not merely saddened or surprised by his death, but truly devastated. That is, we took it personally.

For the past few days I've been struggling to put into words the various ideas that have begun running through my head regarding this transformative event in our collective consciousness, but "words" seem increasingly inadequate. If a miracle occurs and I can finally gather my thoughts into something comprehensible, I'll post again. But, don't hold your breath(s). Meanwhile, I found this charming little video clip from Charlie Rose's 1998 interview with David, that I'll post here... and I'll be replacing the Bowie tunes on the sidebar with some others. At this moment, it's the best I could do.

Bliss to David, and peace to you all.

___________________________


"A pair of wings, a different respiratory system, which enabled us to travel through space, would in no way help us, for if we visited Mars or Venus while keeping the same senses, they would clothe everything we could see in the same aspect as the things of the Earth. The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do, with great artists; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star."

- Marcel Proust. Quote lifted off yesterday's Daily Grail news page, along with this announcement.

As it happens, I've just located a number of applicable quotes by Proust on the Goodreads pages. Here's another:

“Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces.”

"And the rain sets in
It's the angel-man
I'm deranged

Cruise me, cruise me, cruise me, babe"




***

"Barnbrook loved working with David Bowie, he was simply one of the most inspirational, kind people we have met. So in the spirit of openness and in remembrance of David we are releasing the artwork elements of his last album ★ (Blackstar) to download here free under a Creative Commons non-commercial share alike licence. That means you can make t-shirts for yourself, use them for tattoos, put them up in your house to remember David by and adapt them too, but we would ask that you do not in any way create or sell commercial products with them or based on them.
Any questions or commercial licence usage please contact us."

(The Blackstar image above is my own modification of the download. Click to enlarge, and feel free to grab it for your personal, non-commercial use.)

***

For those interested, DB's natal astrology chart is online (link repaired 1/6/2026). Interestingly, he, like myself, was born with his Capricorn sun in the 12th house. Unlike myself, he had a lot of fire and air in his chart, which is reflected by his incredible charisma and success as a performer.

***

(May 4, 2016) This just in: Apparently a fan discovered that the Black Star gatefold inside the interior of the DB's (vinyl) Blackstar album is not solid black after all. When held in the sunlight, a starry view of the night sky appears. I wonder if it's a real photo, and what area of the galaxy it is. Maybe he was trying to tell us something... ;-)