Ziggy Stardust Goes to Church

I had really had enough after court today, but I came back after a hearing I lost very badly, and worked on a legal memorandum for another case – I worked straight through lunch until the end of day. I even forgot about a meeting to watch police videos at 2 p.m.

After work at the Public Defender’s Office, I headed over to Knoxville for my church office hours. I dropped off a long letter with 25 pages of supporting documents by 1st TN Bank requesting the trustee over a trust benefitting our church allow expenditure of funds to keep the building from falling down/keep it parts of it from falling on us! By the time I got to church, I was even more tired than before. I was praying on the way that nobody would come by to see me. I was in no condition to be pastor to anyone. I walked in the church building, towards my study, and I could hear some awful music playing. The custodian/groundskeeper was working upstairs and some terrible country music was playing (well, maybe it was good for country music, but that is still terrible to me). So, I just got my little music box, took it into the chapel, and put in a live recording of David Bowie from 1972. My niece, Catherine, loaned it to me today. I am really glad she gave me that today. I just sat back and listened to Ziggy Stardust and Changes and Five Years, and for some reason I just felt a little more alive, and a little less dead. And, then, I heard someone coming through the door. It just happened to be someone who attends my church that was the best person for me to see. We sat around an hour or so working on a couple of things I was helping him with, and, well, life seemed a little more balanced out.

I am listening to that David Bowie CD right now. “Ground control to Major Tom . . . “ I have liked David Bowie from the first time I heard him in middle school, still liked him through high school and college and even now. I don’t know for sure what it is I like about David Bowie. I think it is because he is just so distinctive and his music just comes out of him, like he just never gave a shit whether anyone else liked it or not. It is as if he just had to write and sing this music to live. And, I like it – always have. Probably my favorite song he every wrote or played is “Rebel, Rebel,” which is not on this live CD. But, well, I take that back (I’m still listening), I take that back: “Moonage Day Dream” is my favorite right now!!!! And, well, Changes and My Death and Jean Jeanie and Ziggy Stardust!

Now, I probably won’t put David Bowie on for a few days or even a month. This is music that I like to listen to up loud and with no one around, except maybe my son, who really likes it too.

David Bowie music is not love songs, not so much story telling songs, but an expression of intense experiences and imaginings in words that form a picture and music that cries out with those words. David Bowie is not political music, but just these expressions of life and yearnings for life. It has love in some of it, rebellion in some of it, sadness in some of it, reflection in some of it. But, in all of it, it has life. It is music for life in the midst of a world that often feels like tiredness and death. It is the life of Bowie music that I really like. It is irreverent in one sense, but shows “reverence to life” in its depths. Bowie does a great cover of Waiting for the Man by Lou Reed.

Well, let me close while I crank up “Moonage Day Dream” one more time. Bowie, envisioning himself with a real alien, sings: “Don’t fake it baby; lay the real thing on me. The church of man, love, that’s such a holy place to be. . . Don’t fake it baby. Let me know you really care. Make me jump into the air.” Bowie is just imagining and experiencing and letting it rip in a ‘MoonageDay Dream.’ And, the guitar is ripping too, and it takes me somewhere I am happy to go. Bowie had this strong feeling about who he was and there just wasn’t anywhere in society to express it, no roles that fit him. So, he cast himself as a character in his own play: Ziggy Stardust, imagined himself in space at times, coming into this world as an alien at times. And, somehow he made it work. That kind of will to live, to not be suppressed, to take risks . . . there’s really something in there that feels like hope and faith. It feels like life, the upspringing of life, and certainly not feeling dead while you are alive. The Chapel felt dead until I turned on Bowie’s music in the Chapel: something about Ziggy Stardust in the Chapel made me feel good. Sometimes I forget how strange I really am!