{"id":258239,"date":"2026-07-13T16:08:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T13:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1kitap1.com\/en\/david-bowie-and-the-search-for-life-peter-ormerod\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T16:08:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T13:08:56","slug":"david-bowie-and-the-search-for-life-peter-ormerod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1kitap1.com\/en\/david-bowie-and-the-search-for-life-peter-ormerod\/","title":{"rendered":"David Bowie And The Search For Life – Peter Ormerod"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What sounds initially like a soft-focus love song reveals itself to be a critique of imperialism: the singer has \u2018visions of swastikas\u2019 and unexplained grand plans. Why? Look at his eyes, and see the whiteness. The menace turns personal: mess with me, and I\u2019ll ruin you, little girl. Bowie later said it was \u2018sort of about invasion and exploitation\u2019.17 By the end, that riff returns, as does that vocal hook, and all is disinfected and sanitized and sterilized, and we are back to the daytime radio playlist.<\/p>\n

It was another masterpiece of subversion, as was its video. There are scenes of a suave Bowie singing alongside a double-bass player, as if in a cool club; there are playful smiles and larks with the apparent object of his affection, played by Geeling Ng. In a scene that got the video censored in the UK, Bowie and Ng appear to have sex amid surf lapping onto a shore. Amid these are images of barbed wire, a top-hatted imperialist who seems to have shot a young Chinese woman, and Bowie throwing Ng\u2019s bowl of rice violently into the air, before she transforms into a kind of fantasy figure and they carry on together in disquieting fashion.<\/p>\n

It was bright enough for MTV, but a dark heart beat within it. The third track, \u2018Let\u2019s Dance\u2019, brings all of this together. It is a colossal work, and it originally sounded quite different from the song everyone knows. It was at first called \u2018Last Dance\u2019; and when the shimmering layers of its immaculate production are stripped away, it reveals itself as a sublime affirmation of love\u2019s power against the forces of annihilation.<\/p>\n

That may sound familiar: \u2018Lyrically, the thing has a lot more to do with \u201cHeroes\u201d than it has to do with a disco lyric song,\u2019 said Bowie in 1983.18 \u2018There\u2019s a desperation behind the lyric.\u201919 After an apparently straightforward and untroubled first verse, we hear of fears of a loss of grace \u2013 maybe God\u2019s grace, a theme of Hans Christian Andersen\u2019s fairytale \u2018The Red Shoes\u2019, to which the song alludes \u2013 and of oblivion.<\/p>\n

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In a blue room looking out over a fading industrial landscape in the northernmost part of the English Midlands, I was weeping and I didn\u2019t know why. It was 1996, shortly after 6 p.m. on Wednesday, 27 March. My brother, eight years older than me, had a lot of old albums in his room, and I would sometimes listen to them. Some I liked more than others, but none had done anything like this to me.<\/p>\n

The album was Hunky Dory by David Bowie. I was 17 and, like most boys my age in the town I grew up in, I kept a tight lid on any emotions. But it was as if frozen wastes were being melted by the rising of a sun. The first rays were cast by the opening tones and hums; within a few minutes, I was lost in it, and found in it.<\/p>\n

Now, 30 years later, here we are. I have long struggled to make sense of why David Bowie could make me cry when little else could. For a while, I assumed that I just really loved his songs. But I started to suspect something else was going on. Yes, the album\u2019s hopscotching between safety and danger, its clarity and confusion, its delicate surefootedness and gentle rebellion \u2013 this all appealed.<\/p>\n

As a teenager, I had always felt rootless, always an observer from the periphery, and Hunky Dory felt like a message from that place. But there was another dimension I had overlooked. Hunky Dory draws on a whole realm of religion, spirituality and philosophy, sometimes hinted at, sometimes shouted about.<\/p>\n

By the end of the first side, I had heard prophecies of a coming race, been told that my species was obsolete and that it was time to make way for Homo superior. There were references to split selves and eternal impermanence, to something called The Golden Dawn, to someone called Crowley, to a bardo, whatever that is, to the salvation of faith, which is simultaneously beguiling and bullshit, and to death and the sublime knowledge that comes with it.<\/p>\n

I had absorbed it all without really noticing it. It took me years of listening to Bowie to realize that this stuff was important. Two months before I heard Hunky Dory for the first time, Bowie had been presented with the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. Few recipients could be more deserving. In the latest edition of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die,1 Bowie has more albums than anyone else, nine in total, ranging in style from glam rock to soul to ambient electronica to avant-garde jazz, spanning 45 years.<\/p>\n

Then there was Bowie live, whether performing as an electrifying otherworldly demi-god in the English provinces or as a stately master of stadiums around the globe.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.<\/em><\/p>\n

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