This title track to one of Bowie's hardest rocking albums is easily one of his most mysterious ever. Beginning with a slithering snake charming riff, the narrator sings about meeting another person "upon a stair."

Bowie presumes that the person he meets had "died alone, a long, long time ago." The person tells him that no, he "never lost control" and that Bowie is "face to face with the man who sold the world." But who is this person the narrator meets? The answer is simple.

Bowie is meeting Christ, the one who "sold" or convinced the world that he was God. Christ "died alone a long, long time ago" and Christ has enabled the "millions" in the song who also died alone, to yet still be alive, resurrected.

What is the setting of this song? The song takes place in heaven. Bowie is there with the millions of others who "never lost control" and are now "face to face" with the one who convinced the world.

The song fades with a chant of joyous triumph as millions sing together in heaven, reunited with their loved ones.

Here is a response I got to this thread on another message board. The responder is answering an objection from another poster who says he'll believe my interpretation only if it came out of Bowie's mouth:

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It doesnt matter if it came out of Bowie's mouth or not, the nature of literary interpretation is such that we take the meaning as that which is negotiated by the reader/listener with the text.
As a literary academic I think Blackcobra's reading of this seminal text is both astute and erudite, and I subscribe to his interpretation totally, particularly when it is read within the gnostic/western esoteric spiritual context of other works of this period such as "Quicksand" or "Width of a Circle".

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Incidentally, "black cobra" is my username over there.

You know, that makes an awful lot of sense. Not sure if that's what Bowie had in mind, but it definetely works.

"I'm simply not clicking on a link to foreskin.org. No, I'm not." - Emil

This is certainly interesting, but I'll take the liberty to point out in the place of the moderator that threads like this and the one you made about 'I'ts No Game' rather belong in the 'Interpretation' section. No big deal here, of course, but this is just for you future knowledge

''I like reality a lot! I'm hungry for it.'' - David Bowie

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The answer is simple.

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What idiocy. If "literary interpretation" is all about what the words will allow in terms of plausible meaning, how can you say that there is any single "answer," much less a "simple" one?

Oh, and don't answer the question, either. I just posed it to make you look bad, not because I care how you answer it.

zigbot

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Oh, and don't answer the question, either. I just posed it to make you look bad, not because I care how you answer it.

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Well Zigbot, you seem to be a nice guy...

Anyway, i never thought of TMWSTW in this way, but after all why not?


There's this feeling that we're going to be living until the end of time

Yeah and Dara is a nice chick too.




You should not underestimate people, not everybody is as thick as you.

Bowie is meeting Christ

A long, long time ago I read an interpretation of TMWSTW ( the whole LP, i.e.) which also had this idea of Jesus = The Man Who Sold The World.

Taking this as the basic assumption, I was always wondering
if TMWSTW is portrayed as a positive or a negative person - I never figured that out...

/Carsten

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Well Zigbot, you seem to be a nice guy...

Anyway, i never thought of TMWSTW in this way, but after all why not?

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Why does everyone think I'm a "guy"? Anyway, bibiStardust, as I explained HERE, what I termed "idiocy" was not to_dizzy's interpretation itself, but his smug, self-satisfied editorializing that he had not only found the one, true, and ONLY interpretation of this song, but that finding that ONE "answer" was, for a man of his great intellect, "simple."

To_dizzy purposefully says stuff like that because he knows I'll take the bait and call him on it. I must be predictable. But also predictable is to_dizzy's false indignation at my anticipated responses to his high-flying statements. This whole thing is starting not to be fun anymore.

zigbot

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Why does everyone think I'm a "guy"?

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Because you chose the handle "zigbot", and everyone knows that robots are by default male, just like males are by default robots.
To avoid this confusion, you could have chosen a name like "zigbotette" or "zigbotrix" or something.

2005 Vicious Post Count: 3