I just finished reading David Bowie: Starman by Paul Trynka. What follows isn't a review as much as it is personal observations.
Anyone who knows me knows that I've been a music fan from a very early age. It accompanies me every day. I listen at work. I listen in the car. I listen when I'm writing. I'm listening to an obscure Bowie release right now (In Bertolt Brecht's Baal). I'm a fan of music, but as a part of that I have always been a fan of the musicians. For me to really get into a band or musician I need to be fascinated by them as people. I follow careers.
I'm just young enough to have missed the whole Glam era of David Bowie, and as much as The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars is respected now it wasn't a massive hit in the United States when it was released. I didn't become aware of Bowie until his single, Rebel, Rebel was released in 1974. The opening guitar riff of that song is one of the key moments that made me a rock and roll fan. The other was the opening of Alice Cooper's School's Out. Nothing can make me twelve again like hearing either of those.
I bought Rebel, Rebel and played it over and over on my tiny, mono speaker record player. The b-side was the song Lady Grinning Soul. At the time this song did nothing for me. I think I only played it through a couple of times. Now I love it. I was thrilled to see this was the song that Dakota Fanning, as Cherie Currie, lip-synched in full Aladdin Sane makeup in The Runaways.
I saw very few pictures of Bowie during his glam years back then. Diamond Dogs was the first album of his I was consciously aware of. Either he wasn't getting a lot of coverage in the music mags I was reading or he had moved into his Thin White Duke persona by then, wearing tailored suits instead of colorful spaceman outfits and makeup. If I had seen the Ziggy or Aladdin Sane outfits I'm sure I would have bought the albums. I'm pretty aware that it was the costumes and makeup that made me interested in Alice Cooper, KISS, and even Elton John at the time.
I bought the single for Fame and even then I think I would have listed it as one of my favorite songs of the era. But for some reason, as I moved on into buying albums instead of singles, I never picked up a Bowie album. At the time I was most into KISS and Queen, Bowie was recording his Berlin trilogy of albums, Low, Heroes, and Lodger. The singles from these didn't get a lot of airplay in my market then, and even if they did, these albums were so experimental that I don't think my 1970's KISS-addled Rock and Roll brain would have appreciated them.
Around 1980 I bought a used, dull primer gray-colored Ford Granada with an 8-Track player built in. The previous owner had left his copy of Heroes in the dash. This was the first time I ever listened to an entire Bowie album. Like I said, it was experimental, and not what I was used to at all. But something about it clicked. I loved the album, weird instrumentals and all. The song Heroes quickly became a favorite and remains one to this day.
Even then 8-track players were becoming a thing of the past, and I installed a cassette player. Most of what I played in it were home recordings of the vinyl albums I owned, but I did purchase a few new cassettes. Ziggy Stardust was among them. Somewhere in there it became a desert-island album for me, one of the few records in my life that I think of as a perfect album (and I recognize how debatable that statement is about any album).
But I still didn't really go back and explore his career or catalog. He was always there in some form, but for some reason he remained on the periphery of my musical life. In one of my early excursions into the world of dance clubs and bars a friend and I went to a club in Wheeling called Tin Pan Alley. There was a lighted dance floor straight out of Saturday Night Fever, playing all the disco hits. I settled into a chair in the smoky attic room and listened to a cover band. The only song of theirs I remember is Space Oddity (Ground Control to Major Tom). I did buy that album around then, along with Aladdin Sane.
Bowie was part of the video revolution of the 80's. I remember seeing the videos for Let's Dance and Ashes to Ashes and liking them. I loved the song Blue Jean and remember seeing the extended 20-plus minute short film. I cracked up at the antics of Bowie and Mick Jagger trying to outdo each others mugging for the camera in their Dancing in the Streets video (which I remember first seeing on the big screen in a theater for some reason).
I saw Bowie on his 1990 Sound and Vision tour, billed as the last time he would ever perform his hit songs. That wasn't true of course. This was my first trip to the Star Lake Amphitheater. The show was amazing.
Finally, as part of the CD revolution, I started going back and picking up Bowie's back catalog of records. They were being released with tons of extra tracks, so my timing was good. In the intervening years I've become a little obsessive and have most of his available work.
Back to the book.
I enjoyed the read. Bowie is a complex person, and I don't think I know him any better now than I did before. But that seems to be part of the theme of the book. Lots of people who know Bowie don't seem to know him very well. I don't read a lot of biographies, so I don't know how this one stacks up. There was a lot of information, and reading what was going on at the time of the recording of the various albums gave me new insights into a lot of the songs.
But, what I found most interesting wasn't inherent in the book itself, but the multimedia experience it became for me thanks to modern technology. In the introduction Trynka describes an early appearance of Bowie performing Starman on Top of the Pops in Great Britain and the effect it had on the country and an entire generation of viewers. He described it in great detail: the costumes, the implied bisexuality, Bowie wrapping an arm around guitarist Mick Ronson. While reading I wished I could watch the video. I quickly realized that thanks to YouTube, I could.
This proved true throughout my reading of the book. I had seen many of the videos, of course, but it was fascinating to read of some specific performance and then to be able to watch it immediately. This added greatly to my enjoyment of the book. I read about Bowie's coke-infused appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, and then saw it for myself. In the section that described the writing of the song Jean Genie the point was made that the guitar riff came straight from the Yardbirds version of Muddy Waters song Mannish Boy. The musicians were afraid to release it, but did so anyway. Three months later, glam band The Sweet released their song Blockbuster with the same riff. Thanks to YouTUbe I watched Muddy Waters, then the Yardbirds, then Jean Genie, followed by Blockbuster. These are all songs I'm very familiar with but hearing the musical throughline once it was pointed out to me was amazing.
If you're a Bowie fan, I recommend the book. Keep your computer nearby to enhance your experience of it. Someday books like this will have these things embedded right in the text (like I've done a little bit of in this blog).
Last week I read the new book Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture. This is a collection of ruminations on the most quotable quotes from those things held dear by self-proclaimed geeks and nerds everywhere: Comic books, movies, Fantasy and Science Fiction books, and television, among others. The premise of the book is that these well-known and oft-quoted phrases are more than just a secret language allowing Geeks to find each other, but form a body of wisdom that are part of a secular, Pop Culture, mythic interpretation of the universe. A variety of authors contributed to this book and the whole was edited by Stephen Segal.
I need to say up front here that Steve is a friend of mine, and has been for quite some time now. I first met Steve when I was writing articles for In Pittsburgh Newsweekly and he came on staff as an Arts editor and eventually moved on to the Editor in Chief position. He also became a customer of mine at Phantom of the Attic Comics and our mutual love and shared interest in these topics cemented our friendship. We have had both a professional and personal relationship ever since. Steve is the editor perhaps most responsible for shaping my journalistic writing skills, and as a writer I followed him from In Pittsburgh, to Whirl Magazine and Pittsburgh Magazine.
So I'm kind of biased to like what he does is what I'm saying here. With that caveat in mind, read on.
Since leaving Pittsburgh Steve has worked for Weird Tales Magazine, won a Hugo Award, and is currently an editor at Quirk Books. Geek Wisdom is simply the most perfect project that Steve could have done. This so clearly reads like most of the conversations I have ever had with him. He has tapped into a concept here that every Geek knows deep in their soul. We all have these conversations all of the time. Our pursuits are not the frivolous, ephemeral things most people would believe, but are the result of a tremendous amount of thought, intelligence and, yes, wisdom.
The book begins with the well-known quote from the first appearance of Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15. “With Great Power there must also come, great responsibility!” Since I fall primarily in the category of comics geek, this made me very happy. I see this as one of the truest things ever said in comics, and it provides one of the most pure motivations for a hero ever. But beyond the scope of the comic it is something anyone who wields power in any form to remember, whether that is political power or physical power, or whatever. Our words, the words of each and every one of of us, have to power to inspire or to hurt. We need to be aware of the power we have over those around us every day, and to use them responsibly.
And that's just where the book begins. While it does deal with heavy issues it never loses its sense of humor. That alone is one of the hallmarks of Geek Wisdom.
No matter how secular our society has become, or how far from traditional religion anyone has gone, we are all still seeking meaning in our lives, a way of understanding our place in the world and the universe. We are looking for stories by which to live.
Geek Wisdom does not present itself as a replacement for more traditional spiritual paths or religions. It does point out that wisdom exists wherever one chooses to look for it. Most of the analyzed quotes in the book fall firmly within the boundaries of wisdom established by those traditional paths. Pop Culture wisdom is the wisdom of the ages, tarted up in a new post-modern outfit.
I recently read both Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human by Grant Morrison and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes: Harnessing Our Power to Change the World by Deepak Chopra. That's probably a HUGE surprise to everyone who knows me and my interests. Both books covered the same general topics: The concept of the superhero as an image/icon/idea to aspire to (that's a huge simplification). What follows is not meant so much as a review of either of these, but very quick reactions to them.
Morrison makes the point that we are all becoming superheroes and illustrates this through a combination of analysis of the symbol of the superhero through specific comic books and characters, as well as through a sometimes off-topic personal autobiography of his life in comics. I've talked to some people at the store and seen some critiques online that the autobio parts are where he lost people. I found his whole approach interesting. I liked that he made the topic personal and viewed it through the lens of his own experience. I think this was necessary for the point he was making. He claims the title of “Magician” for himself and I think he very definitely views his life as the life of a superhero, at least given the definition of it he proposes. This approach is self-reflective and creates a recursive interplay of the more esoteric ideas he presents with real life experience and examples. A lot of his experiences, specifically his abduction/awakening, can be hard to swallow as “factual” but I accept that he believes it as his truth. Whatever the “truth” of this event it led him on a journey of self-discovery that has been transformational in his personal life. I know a lot of people just can't get past the mystical nature of what he is saying, but if you can't believe it “really happened” then approach it as a metaphor and move on.
Personally, I like his approach a lot (more than most of his actual comics these days). He reflects a lot of the ideas and attitudes I have about comics and superheroes role in pop culture. I won't bore you all with the number of times I was reading this book and thought to myself, “Hey! That's exactly how I covered this topic in my class!” This belief was reinforced last week when I had lunch with one of my students and she said pretty much the same thing, unsolicited by me.
Chopra's book was less impressive to me. The primary reason for this is that Chopra is very obviously an outsider to comics culture, and as such his manuscript is riddled with factual errors. I'm boggled that an editor, or his son Gotham, who is a comics fan and has worked in the industry, didn't correct these before the book went to press. His knowledge of esoteric thought and spiritual matters is great, and I applaud anyone who attempts to present work that makes us all take stock of our way of living in the world and presenting a metaphor for personal growth. I consider myself a prime example of someone who learned a lot of his basic morals and sense of right and wrong from the superheroes I grew up with. But his errors in comic book specifics undermine the perception of validity of the rest of the book. It really wouldn't have taken much to ascertain that Wolverine does not physically transform into into anything like he claims (“...to a range of superheroes like the Incredible Hulk and Wolverine, hereoes who physically transform themselves are plentiful and perennial”), or that Storm from the X-Men doesn't physically become an actual storm (“... or the character Storm transforming into a lightning storm.”).
The other problem I see is Chopra's undifferentiated, generic use of the word Superhero. He uses it all-inclusively. “Superheroes do” this. “Superheroes are” that. It's as if he believes that each and every superhero embodies all of the seven laws of spirituality. This is not only untrue but serves to limit the concept of the superhero and ignores the vast differences in characterization that has taken place over the years. If at any point he had stated that he was using the term as an all-encompassing archetype (and I would have the same problems with that in terms of limitation), or using it the same way a lot of texts refer to Buddha-nature, as an ideal to aspire to, I don't think I would be bothered. I didn't see that distinction in the text and as a result his statements came across as ill-informed, and more importantly, in a way that demeaned (or at least didn't acknowledge) the complexity of comics and the superhero.
Chopra's book is still worth reading for the underlying spiritual ideas if you haven't been exposed to them, but the specifics about comics are very light, and off-putting to those of us who know this stuff better than he does. Morrison's book is the opposite in many ways. His approach is based on an in-depth knowledge of the history and symbolism of comics, but due to his personal spin much of it is so idiosyncratic and specific that his point in the broader sense can get lost.
I love the fact that both of these books are available. It's symbolic of the increased interest in comics as well as the broader base of knowledge and academia being applied to them. Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend.
Separate links for books and Kindle editions.
