Heroes is a very black and white album.

Replete with images of greasy pipes, blackouts, guards, brick walls, WWII rockets, barbed wire, guns, and disheveled drunks, one might say that this album is one of the most colorless Bowie has ever created.

Even the cover is made in shades of gray.

However, in the song that is the centerpiece of the album, in the very center of the song, is this line:

I wish you could swim
like dolphins, dolphins can swim

This image of dolphins swimming freely in the deep blue ocean stands out from the drabness and weight of Heroes' imagery. It calls attention to the yearning that these people feel.

Bowie is using light and color here as a painter would; the mind's eye is drawn to dolphins, a symbol of freedom, peace, and a clear conscience.

That is very true. "Heroes" in an amazingly colorless album... though I would say that in addition to the dolphins lines, I've allways seen Moss Garden as a rather green song. I find it to be very colourful, but that might be just me.

That phrase from "heroes" is certainly one the most optimistic passages of the album. But I agree Moss Garden has this feeling as well. I see images of a quiet Japanese garden, with some rocks, a small stream and bonsai trees. Bowie has inserted this as a breather I think. Just like "Strangers when we meet" on 1.Outside. You can't depress your fans too much!

Yes, it's as much black & white as was the Eastern Europe - or at least my country (we weren't allowed to travel much) - in those dark times. It reminds me of the city streets in December, snow mixed with mud and people crawling through it like they crawled in their life under communism. God, that's a painful memory :(

I love Moss Garden, for it's not only 'green', but the synthesized sound of an imaginary airplane lifts you up above the clouds, where there is peace and you're safe, for a moment.

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It reminds me of the city streets in December, snow mixed with mud and people crawling through it like they crawled in their life under communism. God, that's a painful memory :(

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As a socialist I feel inclined to point out that it would more politically correct to say stalinism instead of communism, because the 'communistic' countries of Eastern Europe we no more communistic than modern-day Iraq is democratic.

The so-called normalisation in 72-80 Czechoslovakia was nothing 'stalinistic'. No gulags and so, no cult of personality.

Anyway, our leaders called themselves communists, so I don't mind if it's politically correct or not.

But please don't take this as an insult to your socialistic feelings, it's not meant to be one.

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The so-called normalisation in 72-80 Czechoslovakia was nothing 'stalinistic'. No gulags and so, no cult of personality.

Anyway, our leaders called themselves communists, so I don't mind if it's politically correct or not.

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Admitted and here the fault is mine. I tend to use Stalinism as a general term for soviet communism, when the term one probably should use is Marxism-Leninism. But anyway, no offense taken.

Oh my Sys, you´re a socialist too? And in civil service? (terribly sorry if that wasn´t the correct term) I´m beginning to like you more every day...

Softer than shadow and quicker than flies, his arms are around me and his tongue in my eyes

Very true, even the video for the song heroes, is very bleak and dull, black and white.

However since i heard Bowie say the song is about an alcoholic and his wife in an interview to VH1 last year. I have always interpreted these lines

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I wish you could swim
like dolphins, dolphins can swim

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As meaning the train of thought of an alcoholic. As in he wishes his wife was an alcoholic as well "she could swim".

But it is true , that the lyrics do kind of stick out in the song, and could well be a gesture of resigned fatalistic optimism, as well.

We live for just these twenty years
Do we have to die for the fifty more?

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Yes, it's as much black & white as was the Eastern Europe

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Ah finally someone who understands!
I bear the traces of the Balkan syndrome as well.
Tell me,do you like Goran Bregovic?


A rising tide floats all ships but it does nothing for shipwrecks at the bottom of the sea

I've heard some of his stuff on a compilation cd and can't say I didn't like it.

I can't say I'm much of a fan either.I grew up with the soundtrack to Arizona dream,I recently found Underground(by the way that film perfectly describes the economic situation in Eastern Europe-locked in a basement to produce guns)

Are you from the Chech republic,or Slovakia?
<----------me

A rising tide floats all ships but it does nothing for shipwrecks at the bottom of the sea