Limes with Orange

I've been listening to Jordis Unga's version of "The Man Who Sold the World" almost constantly since last Wednesday. [I was actually prepared to pay to download it from MSN Music, but if you don't have a credit card with a U.S. billing address (which, as a Canadian, I definitely don't) then you're screwed. So I resorted to downloading it through LimeWire. I don't imagine that Jordis is actually getting royalties from the version on MSN, though, so I don't feel too bad about that. Now for the actual point of this post...]

I've been listening to the very interesting lyrics of the song and trying to make sense of them:

We passed upon the stairs,
We spoke of was and when
Although I wasn't there
He said I was his friend
Which came as a surprise
I spoke into his eyes — I thought you died alone
A long long time ago

Oh no, not me,
We never lost control,
To face the face
Of the man who sold the world

I laughed and shook his hand,
I made my way back home,
I searched afar the land,
Years and years I roamed,
I gazed a gazely stare,
We walked a million hills — I must have died alone,
A long long time ago.

Who knows, not me,
I never lost control,
You're face, to face,
With the man who sold the world.

As with a lot of Bowie songs, it defies literal interpretation. I like to think of his lyrics as abstract paintings: what's important is the impression they create. So my impression of this song was all about spirituality, reincarnation and renouncing the material world. But I wanted to know if there was more to it, so Google to the rescue with Teenage Wildlife:

The Man Who Sold the World — Lyrical Interpretation

It's a very interesting interpretation, taking the reader from those general impressions to the stories of H.P. Lovecraft and beyond. Worth reading.

Also in my research, I read about Bowie's "cut up" songs and I wondered if this song was one of them. "The cut-up technique was originally devised by the Surrealists, and most famously used in literature by William Burroughs: you take a text, cut it into pieces, reassemble these pieces haphazardly, and thus create something new" (from David Bowie and the Occult). This technique kinda appeals to me; I might have to try that with my poetry some time. (If you want to try out an online cut up machine, head over to Language Is A Virus... very cool.)

Labels: language, music, pop culture, rockstar