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A lyrical interpretation
by Jonathan Greatorex
The Man Who Sold the World
Mercury 6338041 - Jan 1971
re-released Nov.1972 RCA 4816
November 1970
A gap of 12 months separated "The Man Who Sold the World' and `David Bowie'. During the interim, David and Angie had moved back into their flat in Bromley, attempting to adopt a `low profile'. The Songwriters Guild of Great Britain awarded him the Ivor Novello prize for originality and he had toured Scotland in support of an old schoolmate, Peter Frampton, who was playing with Humble Pie. Bowie also collected first prizes at two European song festivals, returned to Britain and new buddies, most notably, Marc Bolan. Marc, the `mythical pixie' had followed a similar route to Bowie through the sixties and was introduced to Bowie through the mutual friendship of Tony Visconti. An instant karma was felt between the two and on March 6th,1970 Bowie, Bolan and Visconti, supported by John Cambridge on drums, cut the single `The prettiest Star', In one interview David says that it was written for Angie, yet on the notes for Hunky Dory, he appears to direct it towards the pre-birth of Zowie, his son, and as a reaction to Angie being pregnant. The truth of the matter probably lies somewhere between the two.
The cut of this 1970 single, apart from being the first of Bowie's Master Tapes to subsequently `disappear', has a much more delicate tempo than the later RCA remake. Bowie apparently liked the single on the grounds of the numerous guitar errors made by Bolan. Also in March, following Home Office pressure concerning the expiatory date of Angie's visa, she and David got married on the 20th.
`Memory of a Free Festival' was also re-cut, this time featuring Mick Ronson and Mick Woodmansey on guitar and drums respectively. This was followed by a further single `Holy Holy', neither of which received any real acclaim.
Ken Pitt gradually faded from the managerial scene, to be replaced by `starmaker' Tony De Fries.
Things were not looking too well for David. Along with the last two record failures, the Arts Lab was forced to close and pennies were becoming scarce. With such depressive thoughts in mind, one can appreciate much of the morbidity of the material contained within The Man Who Sold the World. In contrast to `David Bowie', `The Man Who Sold the World' was not a collection of specifically written songs. In fact only `The Width of a Circle' had been completed when the 21-day studio allocation was authorised by Mercury. Consequently much of the material was musically very similar with additional chord progressions thrown in for the sake of variety.
Lyrics, too, were conceptual, reflective of both his associations with Bolan and the theological anguish which wracked the writer. Song titles also wandered around. The track `The Man Who Sold the World' became `Saviour Machine with it's heavy `angels and devils' implications. David still hungered after the original title, and in consequence, wrote it additionally.
Recalling the "Madness that calls Now !" from Cygnet Committee, the protagonist (Bowie), sets off pursuing this mental instability in a mammoth effort to confront and understand an extremely deep-seated depression. Through Bowie's own words:
"In this song I tried to illustrate the period of my life from when I left school to the making of the LP It's the most drug-orientated I ever wrote..I was going through Hell at the time."
There is a vague similarity between THE WIDTH OF A CIRCLE and Bowie's earlier vignettes. However, it is also apparent that the depths of thought are grossly more disturbing than a simple narrative recantation The view is retrospective of the path taken by the author to spiritual fulfilment. He was a pawn in some Cosmic Power's scheme. He had followed all the `normal' routes, read the correct books, acknowledged the supreme right of this omnipotent being, possessing a healthy, if ambivalent, outlook. Bowie's personal reminiscences would have been widely diverse in influence:- his deep-seated ambition to become an actor had rubbed shoulders with an equally powerful inclination towards Buddhism.
After many years of unanswered questions and numerous attempts at direct confrontation with this almighty power, he was still totally confused. It is therefore with an almost resigned attitude that he reluctantly rests on his laurels, passing all failure to achieve upon that power he was so desperately trying to communicate with.
This youthful self would "sit and blame the master first and last" because the responsibility was not of his making. Everything in his destiny had been pre-ordained, from the direction he was to follow, through to the philosophy he was required to adopt. Such philosophy, decried as "the prayers small and yellow" written, translated and re-translated on decaying paper, are typical of the Christian dogma upon which the sanity of the Western World so pathetically rests. Lack of innovation or rebellion, and the willingness to succumb to the weighty pressure of complacency are viewed with disgust by the protagonist. They produce a blinkered outlook, forming a `living dead', where all who conform become part of the sleeping sickness "And the rumour spread that I was ageing fast. Then I ran across a master who was sleeping by a tree. And I looked and frowned and the master was me." David realises that this abhorred `sleep', manifesting itself as middle-aged complacency had caught up and was about to stifle him in the same way it had suffocated millions of others. A stagnated wasteland is offered, a future, obscene and revolting, full of other `monsters.
In a belated flash of panic Bowie is spiritually beside himself, and it is this sudden vision which presents him with a key for unlocking his own identity.
His two `selves' greet each other, and the protagonist, dwelling in the awakened side, questions the schizothymic:
"Well I said hello and I said hello. And I asked "Why not ?" and I replied "I don't know" so we asked a simple blackbird who was happy as can be, and he laughed insane and quipped Kahlil Gibran" The blackbird, a creature of freedom, is used as a foil because it's faculties, although pertinent, would not be affected by a society which would gladly deem it as `insane'. Naturally it's answer is therefore free from dictation and can be relied upon for absolute truth.
The truth it speaks is that of Kahlil Gibran, poet and philosopher; the most simplistic, and paradoxically, difficult, of authors to discern. Bowie is probably implying the most celebrated of Gilbran's works - "The Prophet", which concerns itself with the most pure, logical and trustworthy musings of humankind's goodness. Here is a random sample, taken from the Prophet::
..Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by it's own hunger and thirst. When good is hungry it seeks food even in dark causes...Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked. I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek...Your children are not your children, they are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself...For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow...You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you...The lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning to the funeral...But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped and tamed. You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living...And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember; and in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it...He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.. And he who defies his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.
These various components have been selected from "The Prophet", as they serve to hilight much of what Bowie infers in THE WIDTH OF A CIRCLE. The protagonist, aided by the thoughts of Gibran can `liberate' himself from the indoctrination of a society of elders `gone stale'.
Such elders are not competent enough to judge and guide their young, consequently the young must discover the pleasures of Life/Truth for themselves. It is at this juncture that the protagonist,(Bowie), embarks upon his own road to self-discovery. He breaks through the hypnotic self-destruction of his elders, but is greatly saddened by the thought of all the millions who have succumbed in a similar fashion to his schizothymic self, which he leaves as a discarded skin by the tree. "So I cried for all the others till the day was nearly through. For I realised that God's a young man too" It is this youth which becomes his obsessive goal. Within the first thirteen lines of `Width of a Circle', Bowie has taken us from his initial formative enforced beliefs, and through metaphor and fantasy, Described hoes he discovered enlightenment purely by accident when he was on the brink of spiritual crisis. Thus he has given a base upon which we can lay our later assumptions after travelling with him on his road to discover the truth of youth. We know now that all inhibitions have been discarded. Sex and drugs,(the toys of adulthood), are now brought to the fore. Nor does he paddle in the shallow waters, for, in the following two lines he has toked, `tripped' and indulged in a torrid homosexual experience.(all while he was still suffering from the after-effects of pre-enlightenment) ."Smashed my soul and traded my mind. Got laid by a young bordello, I was vaguely half asleep." His credo in the eyes of his peers suffers from such blatant indulgence, but it is only to be expected. However, as a neophyte, such opinions are irrelevant and insignificant when compared to the magic of discovery. "And the moral of this magic spell negotiates my hide. When God did take my logic for a ride."
This new deity is not the Christian God of prayers, small and yellow, but the God of Youth and Discovery.
"He swallowed his pride and puckered his lips. And showed me the leather belt around his hips." The ethics of this newly-discovered Master are the antithesis of the ideology behind his Christian upbringing. This new Master would be called Satan or The Devil. As such, raw sex, sensuality and self-debasement are all desired attributes. The masochistic and homosexual inferences of the above lines pave the new road to fulfilment in the protagonists pilgrimage. Convention, like an angel on the shoulder insists upon a return to Christian morals "(Turn around, go back)" But the masochist . in Hell will hear nothing of it. "He struck the ground a cavern appeared. And I smelt the burning pit of fear. We crashed a thousand yards below. I said do it again, do it again," Still normality and conventional morality plead with him without effect. In the last three verses relating to his sexual encounter/ awakening with the Devil, the protagonist has the vampires teeth deep in his neck, for which there is now no return. He is beneath the Devil's engorged penis, personified as both tongue and Snake. The total sexual experience occurs in a wild orgy of lust. "His nebulous body swayed above. His tongue swollen with Devil's love." The protagonist orgasms and as he does he takes on the masturbatory guise of a Devil himself. "A spitting sentry, horned and tailed."
The audience remain disenlightened, and possibly in the position of the protagonist before he met his monster sleeping by the tree. They are horrified by what has occurred. unable to relate to the event as it is totally against their orthodox beliefs. Yet to the protagonist it is an obvious conclusion for he has reached a required fulfilment by rationalising his position, discovering that something was drastically wrong, and rectifying the situation by pursuing the goal of achievement.
It is the culmination of these events and his eventual accomplishment which prompts him to end the song by declaring that he is now "waiting for you". A Golden Dawn philosophy combined with celebrating the Devil's worship and the consequent provocation of human potential, disregarding reason and conventionalism are more explicitly displayed with greater ambiguity in Bowie's later material, both in the rest of The Man Who Sold The World and Hunky Dory.
The Width of a Circle proves an ideal opening track as it allows Bowie to develop a theme of Christian rejection, in favour of Nietzschean philosophy, as the album continues. He becomes a self-professed atheist who regards the necessity for mankind to believe in a God as historically evaluated symptom of weakness and subordination.
"This world...of eternal self-creation and self-destruction, this mystery world of twofold voluptuous delight, my `beyond good and evil', without goal unless the joy of the circle is a goal, without will unless it is the circle's good will towards itself-do you want a name for this world? A solution to all it's riddles? A light for you too, you who are the best concealed, the strongest and most intrepid, the most midnightly of men? This world is the will to power and nothing else besides. And you too are that will-power and nothing else besides."NIETZSCHE: THE WILL TO POWER pplO67
`Sanity' by definition, irrespective of the state of mental health, is the `tendency to avoid extreme views'. `Insane', also by definition is not, as Could be expected, the antithesis. It is `an adjective, meaning mad or senseless. These two delicate descriptions should be borne in mind when discussing All the Madmen. Should those with extreme notions hold their sanity to question, if such notions are widely accepted as common sense?
Such a statement would be contrary to public opinion. This paradox is central to the song's theme. One has to remember that Bowie, through the open-heart surgery of Cygnet Committee had professed a great disillusionment with Western Society. Nor were his musings `fly-by-night' they were an integral part of his current make-up. He was embittered with society in an almost extreme manifestation of depression. There was no future ahead, no rainbow to relieve the blackened climate. physical effort seemed pointless, all that remained as a possible plausible redemption could be found in the idealism of the l9th Century gothic philosophers principally Marx and Nietzsche. The influence of their speculative thoughts were the only anchors holding him above the precipice. Perhaps it was the latter who related strongest to his sensitivity. 'The age of the death of God', and the morality of that age, which is for Nietzsche, the morality of decadence.
Bowie's half-brother, Terry, had been institutionalised while David was at a very receptive age. Possibly it was visits to such institutions, or asylums, which generated the parallel of the `madmen' being not so much encased but protected from the insanity of society outside. "Day after day they send my friends away, to mansions cold and grey. To the far side of town where the thinmen stalk the streets while the sane stay underground." This role-reversal, where the sane are institutionalised, (the `Underground' movement), while the spiritually deficient, (the Thinmen), are allowed to stalk the streets, is a metaphoric statement in opposition to reason. Bowie, with a fatalistic vision of the future does not wish to be party to the event, desiring only to be with his friends, the `madmen'.
Reason once more at bay, society has incarcerate it's undesirables, not on the grounds of insufficient intelligence, but purely because such individuals cannot conform to it's wishes and `norms'.
Understanding and Reason are left discarded behind the locked door, and because the protagonist does not wish to be indoctrinated into conformity, he has to adopt himself to a likeness of those he wishes to be with. "Here I stand foot in hand, talking to my wall, I'm not quite right at all... Am I ?"
The paradox continues, who actually are the sane? Those who populate a world bereft of reason, a society slowly devouring itself. Or those alienated from such a world because they can no longer cope with such a society. If I bang my head against a wall in anguish, if I scream my discontent, which of the two groups will I be associated with? m e futility of being able to do nothing in the decline and deterioration prompts the protagonist to wish more forcibly for the sanctuary of his friends. The pain of the electric shock and numbed brain being the accepted gate through which the `sane' will allow him to enter. "Just my Librium and me and my E.S.T. makes three. `Cause I'd rather stay here, with all the madmen, than perish with the sadden roaming free"
Nietzsche: `I assess the power of (a man's) will, by how much resistance pain and torment it can endure and turn to it's advantage'
The artificial `medical' solutions offered to the `supposedly insane' by the sad creatures roaming free, only serve to disallude the protagonist further, when he enquires, with all humility "Where can the horizon* lie, when a nation hides it's organic minds in a cellar...dark and grim. They must be very dim.
*This horizon is made up of men's vital beliefs and ideas, and of the myths in which these beliefs and ideas are enshrined; if this horizon, this `atmosphere' is destroyed or damaged, most men are condemned to sterility, mediocrity and death.F. Nietzsche `Untimely Thoughts'
The simplistic nature of this comment is amplified by a child's unawareness of the existence of insanity. "He followed me home mummy, can I keep him ?"
The state of affairs witnessed by the protagonist of the chaos all around defy logical explanation. After all, logic attempts to distinguish bad reasoning from good, or more vaguely, good inferences from bad ones. Essentially it is a science of good reasons.
Because the protagonist cannot envisage any logical meaning behind the decadence that pervades, it defies any form of reason. Liberated from `coherent reason', insanity is all that ensues. His sanity is that of the asylum, for there, mental aberrations are not so much self- induced but the product of propositions on a far higher plain. "For I'm quite content they're all as sane as me"
All the Madmen is possibly more ominous than The Width of a Circle, as the sentiments expressed are unilateral in their direction. We are urged to assess the assumptions of our direction, and the methods we, as a society, construct to deploy our future. The pessimism is not so much of mice and men, but of lemmings and lemmings.
The constant refrain throughout `After All' is an intentional play on words, using the children's nursery song `London Bridge is falling down' as a scenario to the Ubermensch philosophy, later developed in the last two tracks of both this album and it's successor, Hunky Dory.
The presence of a Superior Being is respectfully acknowledged and diplomatically addressed: Please trip them gently they don't like to fall....There's no room for anger, we're all very small. The protagonist acts like arbitrator between the Deity and the arrogance of mankind. Men are viewed here as playground bullies who need to be chastised with kid gloves, being ignorant to their own frailties.
The waltzing melody has an eerie quality, almost a lullaby which mediates perfectly with the sinister lyrics. Man is seen as an obstacle to himself, possessing only the experience of his own microcosm. All men are children playing children's games, and indulging in children's tantrums when not given their own way. Even their Christian beliefs have been exposed as fairy-stories which, when deflated, will not incur any response. "So hold onto nothing, He won't let you down" As humanity wanders towards fulfilment it's personnel travel at varying speeds, some run, some walk, some crawl. Those who "sit in silence", possibly internees from the previous song, are referred to as simply "older children"
Serenading this Superior Being is viewed as an act of insolence on the part of the protagonist, however, his music is merely transient, he was only acting out the role of messenger. "I sing with impertinence, shading impermanent chords, with my words. I borrowed your time, I'm sorry I called"
The song ends with the words "Live till your rebirth and do what you will", an encouragement of seeking 'truth' in the real self. This was a direct interpretation of Aleister Crowley's maxim, `Do What Thou Wilt shall be the whole of the law'.
Crowley, the "Great Beast 666", acquired magik through the `Golden Dawn', and justified a more than natural interest in sex as an aesthetic technique of transcending normal human limits in order to achieve the Superhuman.
The lamenting obituary to mankind continues with the opening track of side two, `Running Gun Blues'. At the time David remarked,
`The world is doomed, we are not capable of making it any better: People just aren't going to have reasonable destinies'
Characters who personified the chaos of a world where men's very imaginations were being warped and corrupted, were the American GIs returning in trickles from the Vietnamese War. Although the withdrawal had begun in 1969, it was well over four years before the last of their ranks came out of S.E.Asia.
There were many other global skirmishes occurring at the time, but perhaps Vietnam was given more media coverage by the English than most, due to Anglo-American links. Nearer to home, the War in Northern Ireland had been gaining impetus. In reflection, it is therefore not so difficult to appreciate the sentiments expressed by a man of Bowie's sensitivity. The `civilised' world, drawing upon amoral perversions was forcing it's youth into situations alien to their enforced beliefs.
In this climate the GI returns home, his body's locality altered yet his mind still obsessed with oblivious paranoia and a frenzy to kill. Many of the war-veterans were later to confess that they were simply trained to kill. Very little de-briefing or counselling was provided upon their return. Extracting them from the horrors of monsoonal guerrilla warfare and placing them back almost immediately into the `material world' proved a grossly inept act. Their psyche's were to remain violently charged, many behaved like captive wild animals, with these, re-allotment into civilian life became an almost impossibility. "I count the corpses on my left, I find I'm not so tidy. So I better get away, better make it today. I've cut twenty three down since Friday" Aware of his actions, the protagonist is incontrovertibly programmed. "But I can't control it, my face is drawn, my instinct still emotes it" There exists here an echo of Charlie Starkweather, who, after placing himself atop a tall building, began indiscriminately shooting the innocent civilians below.
In a similar capacity the song's central character cannot psychologically distinguish between the Vietcong,(Gooks), he had been killing, and the innocent fellow Americans in the streets around him. He feels betrayed by the communistic leaders who withdrew him and his companions out of the war. "It seemed the peaceful's stopped the war. Left generals squashed and stifled. but I'll slip out again tonight...and I'll plug a few civilians". His reasoning is that which "promotes oblivion", disregards authority and illegally possesses his old rifle, (running gun). The firearm is solely a means, the real weapon is the man, who has no other compromise than total destruction. "I'll slash..kill..break..crack their heads. I'll slice them till they're running red"
An apocalyptic song, similar in content to `After All'. Again a narrative, in which an omnipotent force is referred to as being able to have an assertive power over mankind. The Saviour Machine evoked by this force appears as a new religion. This, the Achilles Heel of humanity from ancestral times, being the necessary for a belief in something metaphysically greater then the frailty of man's erring nature. "They called it the Prayer, it's answer was law. It's logic stopped war, gave them food. How they adored it" However, such adoration and fanatical devotion soon decayed into unquestioning obedience. (A reassertion of the philosophy underlying the path to decadence found in the opening stanza's of The Width of a Circle ?). The human recognition of the Superhuman's ruling power was an initial requisite, yet the ensuing dogma of a personal God entitled to obedience as recognised on conduct and mental attitude in the form of benign complacency, becomes tedious. "Please don't believe in me, please disagree with me. Life is too easy" The mental conceptions of mankind to religion are false, too excessive. The Saviour Machine was not, as prescribed, an advocate of divine truth, but a provider of answers, not the answer. "A Plague seems quite feasible now. Or maybe a war. I may kill you all."
The Saviour Machine despises the limitations of the human mind and the idiosyncrasies of prejudices therein. It needs to be removed from the minds it has infiltrated. The initial idea has turned sour and the Machine resents this. Far from being powerless, it is overtly powerful, and unless the philosophical and logical prepositional attributing to it's idolisation are removed from the mind of mankind, then the only route is one of annihilation.
"Don't let me stay, my logic says burn so send me away. Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen. you can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine" The Superhuman is merciful, it's logic feels otherwise, yet it can exist beyond the confines of logic and would gladly share such wonders with humanity, if humanity in return were not so bigoted. "I need you flying, and I'll show you that dying is living beyond reason" Consequently, perhaps the only way in which humanity can achieve the dimension of living beyond reason is by refusing to adopt a Saviour Machine too unsavoury to have mankind staked upon it.
The title track presents the listener with an ambiguity of theme. On one hand Bowie is relating personal attention to the plight of his audience through conceptual re-iteration, on the other he attempts to convey an expression of a world created by the late writer of fantasy H.P.Lovecraft. This is achieved through a variation on the Nietzschean theme of Homo Superior. Lovecraft expressed that the majority of his fictional material was based upon:
`The basic premise of the fundamental lore or legend that this world was at one time inhabited by another in practising black magic, lost their foothold (of the planet earth) and were expelled, yet live on outside, ever ready to take possession again.'
Lovecraft's own work was most probably inspired by the esoteric writings of Frederick Oliver, who in 1894 published a novel called "A Dweller on Two Planets".
The "Necronomicod" was invented by the imagination of Lovecraft, but it was perhaps his other work, the pre-human "Pnakotic Fragments", which is most pertinent here. There is a temptation to suggest that Bowie's association with Bolan may have engendered such literary consumption. Whatever the allegory, the song's protagonist comes into contact with one of the `super-race' while undergoing either spiritual or drug-induced mental elevation. "we passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when" In conversation does possess an awareness of his `friends' past, possibly while inhabiting some previous Bardot; which, "came as some surprise...I thought you died a long long time ago" The Man Who Sold the World, i.e. one who resigned material possession or presence for some astral sphere whether through deliberation or enforcement, still holds insight into the workings of his previous domain. At this point a suggestion can be offered and conclusions drawn upon the last song of the album, `The Supermen' ; which presents a generalisation of this super-race, and also how the process of immortality loses favour to the excitement and creative anticipation of death.
However, the protagonist having made contact, returns to the reality of the world he knows as home.
Following many years of spiritual search in order to discover the form of `meaning' and how it relates to the past; more concretely, the meaning of truth, he is favourably receptive to the philosophy that mankind, venerable and easily manipulated, has indeed walked upon the planet before, and suffered similar crisis to the character confronted in his dream/state.
"I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here. We must have died alone, a long long time ago"
Ultimately, through rebirth, deja-vu, pre-cognitive stages or whatever, we are all universally related through the enactment of re- allocation. Consequently, the doom which awaits us all was in a sense pre-destined and dictated to our subconscious during an existence which precedes the present. The MEN who sold the world still live on today in the shells of the memory of those who have passed before: "we never lost control you're face to face.." emphasises this fact , the destiny of man being pre-ordained and awaiting trial.
Following through from `The Man Who Sold the World', we are presented with the last offering of the album, The Supermen, The song has the ability not only to carry the title track into a form of conclusion, but it also neatly ties the underlying philosophy together in a form of a concept.
We, the listeners, have been subjected to a harangue of enormous implications. In The Width of a Circle we had begun our journey, scanning Bowie's life `in a corner of the past'. He related his lethargy, awakening and rejection of a Christian Deity. He justified such reasoning by the execution of both logical conclusions and the meaning of reason in `All the Madmen'.
In `After All' we first rub shoulders with Homo Superior, a being of spiritual fantasy, deified and requested to bestow leniency to the stupidity and nativity of man. Such stupidity, combined with the fall of moral dignity is overtly emphasised in the backfired actions of societies military protectorate: 'Running Gun Blues'. Salvation through religion provides little comfort as discovered when the scheme for a Saviour Machine' is uncovered and analysed. As there is no future for mankind and little hope, Bowie reflects into man's ancient history to draw parallels between the race of superior beings, imaginary or not, and the plight of today's `homo inferior'.
`The Man Who Sold The World' suggests that the dilemma is part of an ongoing circle of corruption and delusion facing all. The men who sold the world are still `flogging' it today, the only variance being the price increase in the West.
And onto `The Supermen', a poetic masterpiece incorporating a jigsaw of moulded words that discuss the origin and despair of the first superior species to inhabit earth. "The supermen would walk in file, Guardians of a loveless isle." These creatures apart from being emotion-free, were also blighted by immortality. Their intellect and capacity were infinite, yet mammoth placidity and purity of thought became their corruptive pit. "Their tragic endless lives could heave nor sigh. In solemn perverse serenity, wondrous beings chained to life"
Bowie describes the unbelievable perfection of their state where all minds were in "uni-thouqht", the "weird powers" possessed, "no pain, no joy", with "Colossal strength"
The dreams of those who dwelt in the sea are beyond the comprehension of mortal thought. However, such perfection bred universal discontent. With immeasurable time, complete self-satisfaction and pure perfection, what more was there to achieve ? Total knowledge ? But as Bowie assumed in a later work "Knowledge comes with death's release", and "Death's release" was the millstone around these wondrous beings necks: "Man would tear his brothers flesh, a chance to die, to turn to mould" Thus, the fetters of eternity still torment deep "into the red sky, far out from the sad eyes" of a humanity that holds onto the legacy of tearing it's brothers' mortal flesh.
