Gina

Spring Break Afternoon: Baking buttermilk biscuits, making myself a cup of decaf, & cleaning the house to Young Americans. I really know how get rowdy, clearly.

Ohmygoodness. David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Gail Ann Dorsey do “Queen Bitch.”

This is delightful for a lot of reasons, but what I really love about it is how everyone is smiling & giggling in this kind of dorky, goofball way. They are so obviously just having an awesome time.

David Bowie & Tilda Swinton in a short film/music video for Bowie’s newest single “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)”. Lots of 50s kitsch & camp, fantastic outfits & make-up, Swinton as Bowie & Bowie as Swinton, genderfuck & glitter, and sex & flesh (or, at least, as much sex as they could get away with in a music video on youtube).

Also, the opening credits of this music video honestly remind me of porn opening credits. Fellow pornicators & porn fans, do you also see the pornyness? I mean, I seriously fetishize this kind of glam rock spectacle, so it is likely that I would read it through a sexual lens no matter what because that is how I roll. But still.

Bowie is crucially and kind of embarrassingly important to me as a cultural figure. I don’t think of him as perfect or awesome in every way — dude has fucked up a lot over the years, for sure. But uncomplicated relationships are for uncomplicated people.

Part of why Bowie’s music and general pop culture iconography are so fucking important to me is that he is both an early pervert root for me and an early genderqueer root for me. I mean, I’m kinda joking when I use the word root, but I’m also kinda not? It’s not just that he’s a musician whose work I enjoy (although that is also true). It is that his albums and music videos and general persona & spectacle made me feel both less alone in the world when I was in middle & high school, and they made me feel hot — in the sense of feeling turned on, and in the sense of feeling desirable.

Bowie’s music gave me my body back in some fundamental ways. I could write a whole book about this. I might, some day.

(I might also, some day, make the glam rock excess/spectacle porn movie I keep fantasizing about.)

abellandapomegranate:

Bowie/SWINTON/the spectre of fame/both of them as each other/lots of things being said but I’m not quite sure what they are.

So, that’s a thing.  All I know is, Tilda Swinton doing retro femme is extraordinarily queer.  Possibly, so is David Bowie in a dad cardigan.

Well, late for Ash Wednesday is better than never, right?

Baby, baby, baby, I won’t ever let you down. I can’t stand another sound. Let’s find another way in.

I know Bowie & Brian Eno were probs on HELLA COCAINE when they were working on this album, and that a lot of the lyrics are just nonsense rhymes, but STILL. This album gets me every time. This song gets me every time.

Let’s find another way in. Let’s find another way in.

I dunno. I’m an Aquarius. It’s kinda what we do.

Oh, WOW. Footage from the only time I have ever seen David Bowie in concert (at a Bridge School benefit when I was 13) is up on youtube! It is grainy but awesome. THANK YOU, INTERNETS.

Iggy Pop & David Bowie performing “Fun Time” on The Dinah Shore Show. Wow.

See also, my last class is Wednesday afternoon. I feel like this is a fairly accurate representation of how I will be feeling by Wednesday night.

This song is kinda hitting me in the heart.

Which is funny, because I’m working on a chapter* that is heavily influenced by Bowie’s Berlin-era work, specifically & especially the album & song “Heroes.” Very different from “Scary Monsters.” But, oh, oh, OH, this song! Such a good adolescent rebellion soundtrack.

*Some of you might remember this as my Girl Talk piece from this past year. It’s like 100x more awesome now. :) I’m still tinkering with it, but I’m psyched about it!

Folks, this is truly one of the coolest things I have ever seen. It’s an hour-long tribute to/mash-up of a bunch of (mostly early) David Bowie, set to a lovely queer trippy gender-bent romantical film of Bowies Chasing Bowies & Bowie on Bowie Action, with guest appearances by Iggy Pop & Lou Reed & tons more. I am admittedly biased because I am a nerd/slut for all things Bowie, but still. There is a plot arc that involves Freddie Mercury & “Under Pressure” and then it morphed into “Heroes” & the lovers by the Berlin Wall and, I am not kidding, I actually started crying. I don’t think a music video has ever *moved me to tears* before. So that is saying something.