Shapeshifting or Authenticity?
In which I wonder if change is the only constant and if shapeshifters are the most consistent people of all
I first fell in love with David Bowie when I was six years old. There was a little boy who lived up the block named Gabriel and we would often play in each other’s yards. On rare occasion we would spend time in one of our living rooms. We usually played video games, which I liked the most, but one special day we walked in to his home and channel surfed until we came across some muppet movie about goblins. My first exposure to David Bowie and the film Labyrinth was a mishmash of commercial breaks without context of the first third of the movie. I was still enchanted by it.
As a child of divorce, I spent many of my early summers visiting with my mother in Maui and the rest of the year in California with my father. When we went to the video store in Maui to rent some movies with my mom, I told her I wanted to find the movie about goblins and the maze. She had no idea what I was looking for, but somehow we found our way to Labyrinth and that became the summer where she introduced me to David Bowie the musician. By the time he made Labyrinth, he’d already been in the spotlight for some fifteen years and been perceived in dozens of different ways. A decade later, by the time I saw the film, he was nearing his fiftieth birthday and still remained a prolific artist, renowned as a chameleon.
I don’t need to write an essay to tell you who David Bowie was or what his reputation is. I never met the man, never saw him perform live, and spent most of my life thinking of him as some sort of alien that should transcend concepts like time and mortality. As I approach my own middle age, I reflect more and more instead about how that “alien” nature to him was likely his commitment to truly pursuing his own sense of wonder and joy, something innately human and gifted to all of us at birth. We live in a world that often rewards repetition and commitment to a single path, regardless of how our own passions and interests may shift over time if we allow them to blossom.
On January 8th, David Bowie would’ve turned 78, and I decided to sit with his catalog to see all the twists and turns he took over the course of his fifty years as a performer. While it’s undeniable that he had a capacity for shapeshifting, what struck me most as I visited with some of his most outlandish mid and late career work, was just how little commercial appeal factored into his decisions as an artist. While it’s evident Bowie was often curious about the state of popular music and would emulate trends he saw, it’s just as clear that he would follow a strange thread that caught his interest no matter how strange. In the mid-90s his partnerships and interest in the work of artists like Trent Reznor and David Lynch led him to create off-kilter industrial and art rock albums. They may have carved their way into my heart, but they hardly sound like bids for some sort of great success. Instead, they feel like a man who has the luxury of creating freely doing exactly that. We may not all be blessed with the talent, time, and legacy of someone like Bowie, but the more I sit with the music he made in his forties through his sixties, the more I wonder how many of the creative people I know would blossom fully into adventurous and fearless artists who seem to change direction every few years if they knew it would be safe to make such drastic turns without it proving a threat to their stability as artists.
As I mentioned in my last newsletter, another group I’ve sat with a lot lately is Ulver. While foolish listeners would love to pigeonhole them as a metal group who lost their way (based on the first five years of a career that now spans three decades), I see them as artists following the same sort of unconventional path, albeit with far less public notoriety and a strangely divided fanbase. I was not given a divine mandate to decide what is or isn’t authentic in the arts, but what I’ve learned about myself is that I have a strong fondness for artists who are not afraid to make mistakes when their goal is constant evolution and self-discovery. It feels more honest to me for every human to spend their entire life engaging in regular self-reflection and changing course as needed. I love a band like Cannibal Corpse and I truly believe they love playing death metal, but when I reflect on my own time in death metal bands from ages 19 to 23, I can’t help but wonder how long I could’ve done that without needing it to mutate. Perhaps I could still perform that kind of music, but I understand more and more why many groups incorporate new elements or make massive stylistic shifts after a few records have come out. Almost every great painter has different “periods” in their careers, even if some are less often praised. Why then is it that other forms of art (writing and music, as far as I can tell) are so rigid with their artists, especially when many of the most vibrant and earth-shaking ones are those that ceaselessly change their approach in the pursuit of total creative joy?
I started writing when I was a child. I wrote poetry. I wrote short stories about fantasy characters, often clearly inspired by my favorite books and video games. I wrote little journals that I would immediately destroy for fear of my parents learning anything about my inner experiences. I started writing for public consumption in high school when I got my first internship with an NPR affiliate and began making This American Life-style pieces at age 16. When I was 25 I started writing about music and, perhaps foolishly, forced myself into genre-specific writing for nearly a decade. Now I am 37 and I am trying to use my passion for the arts to untangle the messy threads of my own existence. Art is a universal lens. Being myself is a kind of suffering that is, fortunately, mine alone to experience. When I talk about art, I am trying to share some of my own existence with the people who wish to see me, knowing they also have tangled and beautiful worlds inside them that long to be seen and understood by others. If I continued to only do the things that I initially received praise for, I would likely have a proper career in some form of journalism or in the music industry. I would also likely despise myself and the type of dishonesty it would require of me. I hope that I will always write and create in a way that matters to me, to express myself. When I reflect on my favorite artists now, the ones who seem to “change shape” all the time, I realize that they’re probably doing what I do: refusing to change shape at all, but rather documenting who they are today and making space to be whoever they will be tomorrow. Thank you for being here with me while I continue to discover who I am every day. I hope I that one day I can write an essay, a poem, or a song that will inspire you to make something new of your own.
REVIEWS
Perfect Chicken- Pecking Order
I think I came across this from a post on Instagram, but I honestly can’t recall. I just know that Perfect Chicken’s Pecking Order is a gem of unconventional rock music. From twang to noise rock to garage pop, there’s a little bit of a lot of things over the course of this album’s fifteen minute run. The whole thing hits the same satisfying feeling I get from listening to oddballs like The Residents, where there isn’t a clear core sound but, consequently, nothing feels out of place. The songs are simple, direct, and charming. I’m not sure if this music can be found for purchase in a physical format or on bandcamp, as it seems to be solely linked on spotify, but I’d love to be wrong.
Thallid- Eternal Spiritual Conquest
I really haven’t wanted to turn this space into a black metal blog because I already did that for such a long time, but when an album as bizarre and fantastic as Eternal Spiritual Conquest comes out, I feel obligated to mention it. Thallid is the work of Lord Bill (Moonworshipper Records, Blood Tower, Drelnoch, Bib, etc) and Ukeparaave Enviavuasan (Vinland Corpse, Nachtlich, Black Kruud, Eerified Catacomb, etc) which either means a lot to you or likely nothing at all. This is the sort of raw outsider black metal that should appeal to those who want things to sound more primitive and evil just as much as it will impress those who were delighted by the first handful of Old Nick demos some years ago. I believe that even the most serious music should be fun to make on some level and this is simultaneously putrid and playful, so it should hit the mark for most of the folks who used to read my old blog. You can probably already tell if this applies to you or not. Happy listening.
RECENT JOYS
LISTENING
David Bowie- Outside
In keeping with my thoughts on the many artistic twists and turns David Bowie took in pursuit of his own creative joy, I’m using this week’s “listening” section to share three of his albums I’ve listened to the most lately. Outside is an album I’ve always known was bold and strange, but I’ll admit that I once thought of those as rather derogatory terms in context of his music. When I was young, I simply wanted more of his glam rock and folk-adjacent music and felt he got sidetracked by his own ego. On recent revisits, I was floored by how strange and magical this massive record is. Interludes building a setting? The manic chaos of songs like “We Prick You” and “The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (As Beauty)” filling up an album only to close with a sentimental crooner jam like “Strangers when We Meet?” Brilliant.
There’s a few moments on Outside that surely would be a little much for the unadventurous or uninitiated, and I’d never recommend it as a point of entry for David Bowie, but it truly feels like the work of someone who is hooked on the excitement of breaking new ground rather than churning out easy hits. It’s phenomenal and bizarre and if you’re one of the folks who heard “I’m Deranged” on the soundtrack to Lost Highway and never explored beyond that single point due to the album’s excessive length, I urge you especially to give it at least two listens to wash over you. It’s a lot, but that only makes it feel that much more satisfying when it all clicks.
David Bowie- Ziggy Stardust
I probably don’t need to tell anyone about the importance of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, but I need to document here that it is probably my favorite record ever made, with a very short list of other massive and dramatic records sitting nearby for the title of “close second.” David Bowie could’ve put this out in 1971 and ended his brief career with it and I still believe he’d be considered the stuff of legend for his contributions to rock and pop music. Instead, his willingness to strip away the popular Ziggy Stardust character just as quickly as he introduced it opened the door for a lifetime of fearless creativity and self-expression that has changed me and so many of the people I know and love. If you haven’t listened to it lately, you deserve to take forty minutes or so and feel the magic from the swelling strings of “Five Years” all the way through the dramatic crash of “Rock ‘n Roll Suicide” and just sit with it all. I fell in love with it at far too early of an age to comprehend the meaning, but that’s only deepened the joy I gain over the years as my relationship to it shifts within context of my own life.
David Bowie- Blackstar
Facing death, David Bowie opts to make an album that explodes with ambition and aliveness. How else could he have gone out besides demanding how his own legacy would be handled? On the day it was released, David Bowie’s last earthly birthday, I met with my dear friend and coworker Jonathan and we had a David Bowie day. We got burritos at a Mexican restaurant before walking to a record store and both purchasing copies of Blackstar on vinyl before heading back to his place with a six-pack. We just sat and listened and processed it all together. As “I Can’t Give Everything Away” came to a close, I told Jonathan that I felt like I’d just listened to the ending credits of a film. Two days later, I nearly threw up when I saw the news. The next day, Jonathan and I both worked together and I went in wearing my own Bowie shirt and I hugged him and we cried. This is not an album I can listen to frequently or easily, but it is such a triumphant and uncompromising piece of art that I can’t help but love it. How fortunate we are that David Bowie lived at all and that he was able to share his artistic soul with the world.
EATING
Beans
This sounds silly, but many of you know of my long bout with chronic illness. I’ll have an essay on it sooner or later, but one of the big things that comes with having a digestive disease is that fiber becomes your enemy. For years, I was forced to stick to a diet of carbohydrates and protein with very few vegetables of any sort. I’m still not sure if I’ll ever be able to eat large amounts of leafy greens or pretty much any raw vegetable, but I’ve been slowly testing the waters with new items as I pass health milestones I never thought I’d achieve. My most recent surgery was over a year and a half ago, and I’ve been enjoying cooked cruciferous vegetables and beans a lot lately. It’s one of those small things you take for granted, but when you’re forced to eat like a picky four year old, you grow really sick of a lot of “fun” junk food and wish you could stomach a nice salad. Playing with grain bowls with beans and a nice dressing feels like the silliest thing you could call “a dream,” but it really feels that way to me. I hope I never lose my gratitude for the simple things in my life, because for a long time I didn’t have many of them at all.
READING
Ursula K. Le Guin- The Left Hand of Darkness
It took months and months, but I’ve finally finished this book. In a way, I think I was afraid to fully give myself to it because I knew of its reputation. Much has been said about the way Le Guin handles gender here and while it’s of utmost importance, I have little to say on this matter that hasn’t already been said far more eloquently by someone far more interesting than me. Over the last six years, she’s become one of my favorite authors and I love how deep and thoughtful she is with the worlds and relationships she crafts. Your understanding of everything from regional cuisine to cultural norms and even wildlife species are handed to you directly in her writing, yet it never devolves into mechanical descriptors. Instead, you are guided gently but thoroughly into another place and you are made to understand the how and the why of something previously foreign to you.
In this, a book that ultimately centers on the joy and worthwhile struggle in connecting with others from different cultures, it makes perfect sense that one should often sit with the friction of uncertainty and unknowing. It is presented again and again until it blurs into acceptance and ultimately familiarity. So many of the most meaningful relationships in my own life have been forged with incredible people who initially shared little with me, but in time we developed something so much more meaningful than simple things like “liking the same bands” or coming from the same type of upbringing. While that’s not nearly the sole message in this book, it made me reflect heavily on how special it is to love without prior context or guarantee of any personal benefit aside from friendship itself. What a beautiful, challenging book this was. I’m glad I finally made my way through it and I should hope that you’ll give it a chance even if you’re not typically fond of science fiction. Le Guin may be in a genre, but her work is so emotionally vibrant that I firmly believe it would connect with anyone interested in understanding humanity as a whole.
IN CLOSING
I’ve spent a lot of time recently reflecting on truth in art and the human spirit. I think of the ways the two are different faces of the same concept. I’ve been thinking about the ways art is devalued and the ways it is celebrated as we live in increasingly “convenient” and automated times. I don’t know how we fix broken systems. I don’t know how we remove ourselves from capitalism. What I do know is that art isn’t just a way for artists to express themselves, but that it allows their audiences to find meaning for their own experiences that they may have lacked otherwise.
When I worked in radio and in music journalism, one of my favorite things was interviewing others. I’ve never been terribly fond of transcribing interviews, but the process of talking to someone else and seeking to better understand them has always helped me to better understand myself. I think the “I hate small talk” mindset is terribly depressing and antisocial, but I find myself enjoying serious conversations more the older I get. Both forms of expression and communication give us such insights into others’ worldview and experiences, and few things are more enriching than understanding the beauty in our differences and how much commonality there is even when we don’t initially see it.
I am currently wrapping up a shorter post for paying subscribers of this newsletter which will include a focused mix of cinematic and ambient sounds that is (hopefully) suited equally well to pensive time alone as it is to a cold winter walk. The next public edition of Trauma Angel will not be the promised “best of 2024” list, as another, far more time-sensitive essay topic has presented itself to me. If you have enjoyed my writing about my personal life in any fashion, I think that my next essay will be of great interest to you. Thank you so much for being here.
As always, if anything in this inspired any curiosity in you or if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them. You can always leave a comment directly or you can send me an email and I will reply as promptly as I can. Have a wonderful weekend.