#lifewriting — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #lifewriting, aggregated by home.social.
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My first literary essay is out in Wasafiri.
“Breathing Between Bubbles: A Leib-University in Exile” is about a university that survives beyond walls — through memory, care, language, laughter, and the fragile membranes that keep us connected.
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My first literary essay is out in Wasafiri.
“Breathing Between Bubbles: A Leib-University in Exile” is about a university that survives beyond walls — through memory, care, language, laughter, and the fragile membranes that keep us connected.
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My first literary essay is out in Wasafiri.
“Breathing Between Bubbles: A Leib-University in Exile” is about a university that survives beyond walls — through memory, care, language, laughter, and the fragile membranes that keep us connected.
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‘Part Fable, Part Porridge’: Jackie Kay & Dame Hermione Lee on Writing the Self
For many theorists of autobiography, the form assumes a self that can be known & a life that can be accounted for. But how do you write an autobiography when your origin & identity are unknown, uncertain, or multiple?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBRPfyW2Vjk
#Scottish #literature #writing #autobiography #lifewriting #identity #ScottishIdentity #adoption
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‘Part Fable, Part Porridge’: Jackie Kay & Dame Hermione Lee on Writing the Self
For many theorists of autobiography, the form assumes a self that can be known & a life that can be accounted for. But how do you write an autobiography when your origin & identity are unknown, uncertain, or multiple?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBRPfyW2Vjk
#Scottish #literature #writing #autobiography #lifewriting #identity #ScottishIdentity #adoption
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‘Part Fable, Part Porridge’: Jackie Kay & Dame Hermione Lee on Writing the Self
For many theorists of autobiography, the form assumes a self that can be known & a life that can be accounted for. But how do you write an autobiography when your origin & identity are unknown, uncertain, or multiple?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBRPfyW2Vjk
#Scottish #literature #writing #autobiography #lifewriting #identity #ScottishIdentity #adoption
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‘Part Fable, Part Porridge’: Jackie Kay & Dame Hermione Lee on Writing the Self
For many theorists of autobiography, the form assumes a self that can be known & a life that can be accounted for. But how do you write an autobiography when your origin & identity are unknown, uncertain, or multiple?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBRPfyW2Vjk
#Scottish #literature #writing #autobiography #lifewriting #identity #ScottishIdentity #adoption
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‘Part Fable, Part Porridge’: Jackie Kay & Dame Hermione Lee on Writing the Self
For many theorists of autobiography, the form assumes a self that can be known & a life that can be accounted for. But how do you write an autobiography when your origin & identity are unknown, uncertain, or multiple?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBRPfyW2Vjk
#Scottish #literature #writing #autobiography #lifewriting #identity #ScottishIdentity #adoption
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7 Years by Lukas Graham is a nice song, isn't it?
I really like well written songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHCob76kigA -
7 Years by Lukas Graham is a nice song, isn't it?
I really like well written songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHCob76kigA -
7 Years by Lukas Graham is a nice song, isn't it?
I really like well written songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHCob76kigA -
7 Years by Lukas Graham is a nice song, isn't it?
I really like well written songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHCob76kigA -
7 Years by Lukas Graham is a nice song, isn't it?
I really like well written songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHCob76kigA -
BECOMING A MAN INSIDE A MAN’S BODY — Why I Couldn’t Fit Into Sexual Roles
I lived for a long time between definitions — not wanting labels that didn’t fit, yet not feeling prepared for the roles I was told a man should embody.
This piece is about becoming, not explaining.
About learning to inhabit the self without force or performance.🔗 Article link below
#Masculinity #Identity #SelfDiscovery #InnerWork #Becoming #PersonalEssay #LifeWriting #ConsciousLiving
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NEW BLOG: 'Life writing, family stories and "history from below"', by Alison Twells, author of 'A Place of Dreams: Desire, Deception and a Wartime Coming of Age'
'We still have so few accounts of ordinary peoples’ lives told in their own voices and on their own terms [...] might Norah’s diaries allow a different kind of access to a working-class girl’s interior life?'
Read the post: https://blogs.openbookpublishers.com/life-writing-family-stories-and-history-from-below/
Read the book: https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0461
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NEW BLOG: 'Life writing, family stories and "history from below"', by Alison Twells, author of 'A Place of Dreams: Desire, Deception and a Wartime Coming of Age'
'We still have so few accounts of ordinary peoples’ lives told in their own voices and on their own terms [...] might Norah’s diaries allow a different kind of access to a working-class girl’s interior life?'
Read the post: https://blogs.openbookpublishers.com/life-writing-family-stories-and-history-from-below/
Read the book: https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0461
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NEW BLOG: 'Life writing, family stories and "history from below"', by Alison Twells, author of 'A Place of Dreams: Desire, Deception and a Wartime Coming of Age'
'We still have so few accounts of ordinary peoples’ lives told in their own voices and on their own terms [...] might Norah’s diaries allow a different kind of access to a working-class girl’s interior life?'
Read the post: https://blogs.openbookpublishers.com/life-writing-family-stories-and-history-from-below/
Read the book: https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0461
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NEW BLOG: 'Life writing, family stories and "history from below"', by Alison Twells, author of 'A Place of Dreams: Desire, Deception and a Wartime Coming of Age'
'We still have so few accounts of ordinary peoples’ lives told in their own voices and on their own terms [...] might Norah’s diaries allow a different kind of access to a working-class girl’s interior life?'
Read the post: https://blogs.openbookpublishers.com/life-writing-family-stories-and-history-from-below/
Read the book: https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0461
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NEW BLOG: 'Life writing, family stories and "history from below"', by Alison Twells, author of 'A Place of Dreams: Desire, Deception and a Wartime Coming of Age'
'We still have so few accounts of ordinary peoples’ lives told in their own voices and on their own terms [...] might Norah’s diaries allow a different kind of access to a working-class girl’s interior life?'
Read the post: https://blogs.openbookpublishers.com/life-writing-family-stories-and-history-from-below/
Read the book: https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0461
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Decide How You’ll Write About Your Life
We here at WU believe in fiction’s power, and work every day to improve how we wield it. But many of life’s real events can be spun into equally engrossing stories. This raises a quandary for the writer who hopes to process, and then share, an aspect of their life on the page.
https://writerunboxed.com/2025/10/09/decide-how-youll-write-about-your-life/#REALWORLD #Writinglife #creativenonfiction #KathrynCraft #lifewriting
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Decide How You’ll Write About Your Life
We here at WU believe in fiction’s power, and work every day to improve how we wield it. But many of life’s real events can be spun into equally engrossing stories. This raises a quandary for the writer who hopes to process, and then share, an aspect of their life on the page.
https://writerunboxed.com/2025/10/09/decide-how-youll-write-about-your-life/#REALWORLD #Writinglife #creativenonfiction #KathrynCraft #lifewriting
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Decide How You’ll Write About Your Life
We here at WU believe in fiction’s power, and work every day to improve how we wield it. But many of life’s real events can be spun into equally engrossing stories. This raises a quandary for the writer who hopes to process, and then share, an aspect of their life on the page.
https://writerunboxed.com/2025/10/09/decide-how-youll-write-about-your-life/#REALWORLD #Writinglife #creativenonfiction #KathrynCraft #lifewriting
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Decide How You’ll Write About Your Life
We here at WU believe in fiction’s power, and work every day to improve how we wield it. But many of life’s real events can be spun into equally engrossing stories. This raises a quandary for the writer who hopes to process, and then share, an aspect of their life on the page.
https://writerunboxed.com/2025/10/09/decide-how-youll-write-about-your-life/#REALWORLD #Writinglife #creativenonfiction #KathrynCraft #lifewriting
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“Connection reaches into Rodge’s work not just as a responsibility, but through his writing method as well”
SNACK Magazine speaks to Rodge Glass about moving to Glasgow, first meeting Alasdair Gray, & his latest book Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir
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“Connection reaches into Rodge’s work not just as a responsibility, but through his writing method as well”
SNACK Magazine speaks to Rodge Glass about moving to Glasgow, first meeting Alasdair Gray, & his latest book Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir
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“Connection reaches into Rodge’s work not just as a responsibility, but through his writing method as well”
SNACK Magazine speaks to Rodge Glass about moving to Glasgow, first meeting Alasdair Gray, & his latest book Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir
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“Connection reaches into Rodge’s work not just as a responsibility, but through his writing method as well”
SNACK Magazine speaks to Rodge Glass about moving to Glasgow, first meeting Alasdair Gray, & his latest book Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir
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“Connection reaches into Rodge’s work not just as a responsibility, but through his writing method as well”
SNACK Magazine speaks to Rodge Glass about moving to Glasgow, first meeting Alasdair Gray, & his latest book Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir
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Today is #welovememoirsday and also @unesco International Day for People of African Descent
To celebrate both, remember you can find lots and lots of #memoirs by #BlackWriters in our collection. The picture shows only a small part! -
Today is #welovememoirsday and also @unesco International Day for People of African Descent
To celebrate both, remember you can find lots and lots of #memoirs by #BlackWriters in our collection. The picture shows only a small part! -
Today is #welovememoirsday and also @unesco International Day for People of African Descent
To celebrate both, remember you can find lots and lots of #memoirs by #BlackWriters in our collection. The picture shows only a small part! -
Today is #welovememoirsday and also @unesco International Day for People of African Descent
To celebrate both, remember you can find lots and lots of #memoirs by #BlackWriters in our collection. The picture shows only a small part! -
The 3rd & final day of #DGAVL #conference today saw another great & diverse mix of topics - from #disability #lifewriting in Argentinian lit. in Malena Pastoriza's paper, to Ines Gstrein's on Ali Smith, Piera Mazzaglia on Humans of New York & Serena Obkircher on Barbi Marković's "Minihorror"...
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The 3rd & final day of #DGAVL #conference today saw another great & diverse mix of topics - from #disability #lifewriting in Argentinian lit. in Malena Pastoriza's paper, to Ines Gstrein's on Ali Smith, Piera Mazzaglia on Humans of New York & Serena Obkircher on Barbi Marković's "Minihorror"...
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The 3rd & final day of #DGAVL #conference today saw another great & diverse mix of topics - from #disability #lifewriting in Argentinian lit. in Malena Pastoriza's paper, to Ines Gstrein's on Ali Smith, Piera Mazzaglia on Humans of New York & Serena Obkircher on Barbi Marković's "Minihorror"...
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The 3rd & final day of #DGAVL #conference today saw another great & diverse mix of topics - from #disability #lifewriting in Argentinian lit. in Malena Pastoriza's paper, to Ines Gstrein's on Ali Smith, Piera Mazzaglia on Humans of New York & Serena Obkircher on Barbi Marković's "Minihorror"...
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The 3rd & final day of #DGAVL #conference today saw another great & diverse mix of topics - from #disability #lifewriting in Argentinian lit. in Malena Pastoriza's paper, to Ines Gstrein's on Ali Smith, Piera Mazzaglia on Humans of New York & Serena Obkircher on Barbi Marković's "Minihorror"...
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Some highlights of this #DGAVL #conference include @NitzkeSolvejg's talk on tree/nature/ #lifewriting as well as Monika Schmitz-Emans on artists' books, Beatrice Nickel on graphic #autobiographies & Patrick Lars Müller on autobiographical accounts of encounters w #aliens 👽- very diverse topics!
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Some highlights of this #DGAVL #conference include @NitzkeSolvejg's talk on tree/nature/ #lifewriting as well as Monika Schmitz-Emans on artists' books, Beatrice Nickel on graphic #autobiographies & Patrick Lars Müller on autobiographical accounts of encounters w #aliens 👽- very diverse topics!
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Some highlights of this #DGAVL #conference include @NitzkeSolvejg's talk on tree/nature/ #lifewriting as well as Monika Schmitz-Emans on artists' books, Beatrice Nickel on graphic #autobiographies & Patrick Lars Müller on autobiographical accounts of encounters w #aliens 👽- very diverse topics!
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Can you be in 2 places at once...? 🤔 Well, the #FIDAAC can! We're currently not only at the #conference of the #DGfA in Siegen but also at the one of the #DGAVL (Dt. Gesell. f allg. & vgl. Lit.Wiss) in Gießen, which discusses #lifewriting from many angles. Pls say hi if you're here or there, too!👋
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Can you be in 2 places at once...? 🤔 Well, the #FIDAAC can! We're currently not only at the #conference of the #DGfA in Siegen but also at the one of the #DGAVL (Dt. Gesell. f allg. & vgl. Lit.Wiss) in Gießen, which discusses #lifewriting from many angles. Pls say hi if you're here or there, too!👋
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Can you be in 2 places at once...? 🤔 Well, the #FIDAAC can! We're currently not only at the #conference of the #DGfA in Siegen but also at the one of the #DGAVL (Dt. Gesell. f allg. & vgl. Lit.Wiss) in Gießen, which discusses #lifewriting from many angles. Pls say hi if you're here or there, too!👋
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Another great panel at the GAPS #conference heard Cherise Fung talk about silence & agency of Asian women in care, Tola Ositelu on meritocracy in 3 #memoirs by Black British women, and Dorit Neumann on Danaé Wellington's poem "The blue jeans asks her"
#BlackPoetry #PostcolonialStudies #LifeWriting #BlackStudies
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Another great panel at the GAPS #conference heard Cherise Fung talk about silence & agency of Asian women in care, Tola Ositelu on meritocracy in 3 #memoirs by Black British women, and Dorit Neumann on Danaé Wellington's poem "The blue jeans asks her"
#BlackPoetry #PostcolonialStudies #LifeWriting #BlackStudies
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Another great panel at the GAPS #conference heard Cherise Fung talk about silence & agency of Asian women in care, Tola Ositelu on meritocracy in 3 #memoirs by Black British women, and Dorit Neumann on Danaé Wellington's poem "The blue jeans asks her"
#BlackPoetry #PostcolonialStudies #LifeWriting #BlackStudies
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The Songs Of David Bowie And Other Meaningful Relationships
And its only years later that you realise, it’s not the songs that changed, it’s you. Everything you felt, everything that had once seemed so real, so vital. It has become nothing more than an echo of a time, a place, a relationship, that you can’t get back or to. An echo reawakened, and somehow repeated, in a different song, by a different artist, in this life now far removed from what you knew.
And for a split second all you really want is that confirmation. That sense of agreement and mutual recognition. That somewhere in those soaring, glacial, synths, those chiming guitars and sequenced beats, are those traces of the songs, those traces of the albums, you had once so keenly shared and admired. It’s Low. It’s “Heroes”. It’s Bowie in Berlin. Warszawa and Always Crashing In The Same Car. Sense Of Doubt and Moss Garden. 1977 becomes 2024 becomes 2025. The Smile. Cutouts. Foreign Spies.
Just as you have found them in a song as unrelated, as it is interconnected. Speaking to both the here and now and a world already been and gone. So, you will find yourself looking for them in all those other songs, those other albums, linked as much to those people, and those places, as they are to the artist. The artist you still associate with a past never fixed, the past never finished, always returning and overlapping. Those scenes condensed and out of focus. Shifting in perspectives and levels of importance. What was yours and what was theirs. The end as the beginning. The beginning as the end.
– The Bewlay Brothers – Track 11 – Hunky Dory –
And so the story goes they wore the clothes
They said the things to make it seem improbable
I can’t decide if that is really how we were, or if that is just how I like to see it after the fact. The two of us forever romanticised in our winter coats. Not really brothers in the traditional sense, but brothers of a time and a place and a particular set of circumstances that seemed to push us together. Those years of nothing much to look forward to. Those dead-end jobs and bland suburban streets. The shaded rooms of elusive weekends lost to drinks and music. All those early morning hours pitched somewhere between desire and hopelessness. The life, or the lives’, being lived without and outside of us. The laughter. The melancholy.
The song itself is almost as unsettling as it is immersive. The anecdotal, or fictional, account of Bowie’s relationship with his half-brother, or his doppelgänger. A song steeped in psychic terror and coded references, while somehow remaining open enough for the listener to fill in the spaces. To find themselves, or find the narrator, in these moments of haunted nostalgia. A reminiscing laced with a fear both past and present. Is this Bowie exploring the fragile nature of his own identity? Is it Bowie confronting his anxieties around some future loss of sanity, a disintegration of his carefully curated reality?
When you know the stories, when you’ve read that expert analysis, a song like this becomes whatever you want it to be. Your life informing that deeper interaction with the narrative and its sub-texts. Which means that just as Bowie is singing, or perhaps just alluding, to his half-brother Terry, then I am somehow reminded of mine both real and otherwise. The stories we left between the lines. The things we left unsaid. Bowie’s indefinable collage becoming all of those moments I have tried to forget. The unwanted warmth of that first brother’s breath. The lingering smell of his sweat. The realities of one intruding on a lazy day longing for the other. Again, with those winter coats. Those days. Those nights.
As one song metaphorically fades out, so another will slowly fade in. Following along those lines of the discography, while remaining somewhat out of sync in my memories. The rooms of his parents’ house. The bedroom, the backroom, and the kitchen. Where we’d navigate the hours between things. The lack of funds and lack of enthusiasm or somewhere else to be. His iPod dock kept on the dark wood table or rickety side cabinet. The two of us forever fixed in our seats across from but not facing the other. Those bottled beers in hand.
If this was where we would first hear the song, then it is not where the song would stay. It would slowly move with us through those different time zones and continents. Through all those heartfelt emails and disparate city walks increasingly set years apart. Those snapshot visions of ourselves in our own and someone else’s impending apocalypse. The lovers that we could intermittently see and silently call back to. Our youth already fading. Lost inside those dreams that never quite came to fruition.
– Five Years – Track 1 – The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars –
Pushing thru the market square
So many mothers sighing
News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
Somehow the song seems to belong more to him than it does to me. Or at least it does on this grey day stranded at the edge of things. That North Sea breeze rattling those faded fences and the gate that needs fixing. Casting the room in its perpetual state of nowhere. The life opening up to what was and what could be. Drifting in and out of view.
I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour
Drinking milkshakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine
Don’t think you knew you were in this song
On different days, in different moods, this verse, these lines, have been him and been her and some other half-imagined someone. A lover I never met. The lover I passed without realising. While still serving as the lead in, the prelude, to that one line we always kept coming back to. The one line that seemed to briefly define us, that time, and how we felt about ourselves, and our lives.
And it was cold and it rained and I felt like an actor
Because of course this spoke to our shared sense of detachment, our sense of alienation, and that vaguely stranded feeling. The endless rows of houses forming a kind of apathetic barrier around our mass-produced aspirations and desires. You clock in. You clock out. You take the train into the vast and anonymous city. Still trying to figure out exactly who you are or could be. Those roles we would somehow try to embody when we finally arrived beyond that usual state of things. The job. The home. The life that’s not your own. If you just look that bit more closely, you’ll see that I’m a lover, I’m a rock star, I’m a raging force of nature. On stage and in print.
And when this didn’t work, when this didn’t stop that aching feeling, reality siding up that bit too close to me. Then maybe it gave our lives a sense of some grander scale, or meaning. The alternative framings for mundane evenings and everyday heartbreaks. He’s waiting at the bus stop just after that first, long-term, relationship has ended. I am reading about it so many days later. In the internet café that isn’t there anymore. At the top of the hill just after or just before the station. By the greasy spoon where we so often enjoyed those Sunrise breakfasts. Where I would always be so strangely amused by the amount of ketchup he’d use.
‘Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.’
‘What can I say. I need my ketchup.’
‘Salt, yes. Pepper, maybe.’
It became a kind of running joke between us. A routine performance of a bland and theatrical excess. Complete with an addict’s twitching nervousness, that hunched defensiveness. Those ironic pauses and sly looks left and right. And I wonder if he still does this. The same routine repeated for his latest audience. Played for similar laughs and points of conversation.
‘You and your ketchup.’
‘What can I say baby. I need it.’
And she smiles and shakes her head. And he pretends not to notice. And as he does this I am reminded, once again, of just how interchangeable we are, that is, until that very moment we aren’t. Because she could be me and she could be Clara, the star, the focus, that illuminating, blissfully revelatory centre, of all his emails from Paris. Just as he could now be Anna, or he could be Zoe, the first woman that I ever really loved. The first woman that ever really loved me. Stirring three, or maybe four, of those disposable packets of sugar, into that cup of black coffee. The two of us in that little café by the arts college. Not far from where she was living.
‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘What. What am I thinking?’
She doesn’t answer. She just keeps on stirring. With a look of slightly indulged bemusement. The soft dark curls of her hair. That denim jacket.
– Somebody Up There Likes Me – Track 5 – Young Americans –
He’s everybody’s token on everybody’s wall
Blessing all the papers, thanking one and all
Hugging all the babies, kissing all the ladies
Knowing all that you think about from writing on the wall
Originally titled I Am Divine, the song, lyrically at least, serves as a kind of bridge, a kind of amalgamation, between the characters of the preceding Glam rock years and what was soon to follow. Replacing the messianic bi-sexual alien rock star, the faded Hollywood actor, and urban guerrilla, for a messianic authoritarian leader. What would eventually mutate into that mad, fascistic, aristocrat, the Thin White Duke. Another would-be superman in a crooner’s ensemble. White shirt. Black waistcoat and trousers.
He’s the savage son of the TV tube
Planets wrote the day was due
All the wisest men around
Predicted that a man was found
Who looked a lot like you and me
Anyone with sense could see
Nothing left his eye unmoved
He had the plan, he had to use
If the song could be said to lean on the authoritarian leaders of the then, not so distant, past. The authoritarian leaders of distorted ancient symbols and mass movements. Those strange blends of nationalism and destiny driven futurism. Then it also predicts (like so many other things) those leaders to come. Those leaders of that TV tube, now the leaders of our social-media driven landscape. With those same strange promises of yesterday and tomorrow. The clock turned back. The present altered.
Leaders come, they hate all the people know
That given time, the leaders go
Tell me, can they hold you under their spell?
Can they walk and hold you as well as a
Smile like Valentino? Could he sell you anything?
Of course, the sheer exuberance, and almost anthemic nature, of the music distorts this. With all its soft gliding strings and synthesizers, with its soulful and seductive backing vocals, that driving and uplifting saxophone, it becomes something that is almost impossible to resist. To not get caught up and carried away with. Submitting whole heartedly to that impassioned and extended outro. All handclaps and harmonies and a preacher like call and response. Is it blue-eyed soul? Is it funk?
Soul shine
So divine
I am still trying to place us, Zoe and me that is, somewhere in the midst of this. The stereo on. The two of us half-dressed, and half-entwined, on the narrowest of single beds. Those posters on the wall. Lou Reed. Iggy Pop. Is it possible that I am remembering it wrong? Is it possible that this is really just another auto-fictional attempt to rewrite those last remaining snapshots? Those fading points of reference for another failed relationship.
Because somehow this just works better with a soundtrack pulled from Young Americans and Station To Station. Somehow it adds depth and texture, and the sense of something else being lost or gained. The songs shared becoming songs not just for me, but for us, for then, for that year when everything seemed to change. That room still marked by the shadows of what had already happened briefly reclaimed.
Was it her laughter? Was it the sex? Was it the way that she smoked her cigarettes?
In trying to write her, in trying to bring that time, however briefly, back to life, I realise that I am failing her all over again. I realise that what I am seeing, is just a version of how I wanted things to be. Everything ultimately reflecting some cool and detached and stylised ‘self’ back at me. Those albums that I introduced her to and the albums she grew to love. The albums we would playfully contrast and compare.
‘I don’t know how you can say, with a straight face, that Ziggy Stardust is a better album than Aladdin Sane.’
‘Because it is.’
‘Drive-In Saturday. Cracked Actor. Time.’
‘What about Soul Love? What about Moonage Daydream?’
‘Great songs, yes. I’m not disputing that.’
‘You’re just saying the ones that you like are better.’
‘Well, yeah.’
And did she smile and shake her head? Did she lock her arm around mine and press herself against me? The two of us walking through one of those parks of the city. The sun creeping through the gaps in the trees.
Sometimes I find myself wondering what she thinks of those last, late career, Bowie albums. The Next Day. Blackstar. I wonder what she would have thought of those albums I explored after we had gone our separate ways. Black Tie White Noise. Outside. I try to find her voice, her image, those almost deadpan facial expressions, in all that useless internal analysis I can never quite bring to a conclusion. Those alternative track lists for what had once been called The Gouster. Low and “Heroes” condensed to a single album. This Is Not America as some wider musical direction. As the start of something more substantial.
This is almost where I would leave things with Matthew. The friendship becoming a hostage to what it was, while ignoring what it actually became. All those long and awkward silences. Either in real life or on-line. That sense that you are just going through the motions. Because somewhere along the way that connection has been lost. Everything that brought or held you together, has fallen apart. To the point where the relationship now just feels forced and false. Everything at that same surface level we had been so desperate to get beyond. That new way of speaking that would somehow feel far more in keeping with an acquaintance, or a relative you have some obligation to see. Hey Uncle Pete. How are things?
Even now, I’m still not sure exactly what it is that I wanted. The two of us somehow resisting the years passing, those changes of circumstance, to maintain that place, or space, that we had always left open for the other? The continuing sense of something vital, something important, being shared? Was it an outlook? Was it a feeling? Was it a way of being?
Maybe I just couldn’t accept that things had moved on. Maybe I just preferred to remember what we had, and how it was, than try to embrace what we had been left with. The imitation of a friendship. The two of us talking, but not really saying anything. The distances between everything we had been and what we now represented. If I became that mirror to the past. A voice reminiscent of all those youthful aspirations. Someone else to measure his life against. Did he become a witness to my pointless dreams and failings? Did he become just someone else always too willing to remind me of the things that are never going to happen? Someone else I used to know?
– Bring Me The Disco King – Reality – Track 11 –
You promised me the ending would be clear
You’d let me know when the time was now
Don’t let me know when you’re opening the door
Stab me in the dark, let me disappear
If the song is perhaps only being chosen because it seems to relate less to Matthew, or less to Zoe, than it does to me. If it is only being chosen because it seems to briefly remove me, and remove this, from them, the past, that first brother never really forgotten. Then I could just as easily have chosen those songs with a similar sense of respite, or escape. I could have chosen The Motel or I’m Deranged. I could have chosen Seven Years In Tibet or Everyone Says ‘Hi’. I could have drawn on the years lost to depression and someone else’s grief. Strangers When We Meet. No Plan.
To a certain extent, any song that I had chosen at this point, would have felt, at least on some level, contrived. It would have felt like a deliberate attempt to distance myself from them and the past and of all those things I have been trying to leave behind. Which perhaps only brings them that bit closer towards me. It makes them more a part of me. Because in trying to find a space without them, in trying to find a place without those versions of myself, I am really just marking things by their absence, or lack of influence. Those songs being chosen less for what they are and more for what they’re not. Golden Years. Fascination.
Somehow Bring Me The Disco King manages to reside in those spaces outside of this. If not directly removed from the Bowie oeuvre, its wider narrative, those facts I still recall, then at least where it seems to resonate within me. Somewhere not quite here and not quite there. Is it a window, is it a mirror, towards some vaguely imagined, some vaguely familiar figure, of the future? Is it a way of seeing Bowie as he unwittingly approaches what becomes that ten-year hiatus between albums? Reality. The Next Day.
In that piece outside the piece, that piece I can never quite commit to, or keep hold of, always running parallel, I make the point of saying that Bring Me The Disco King, was first recorded, and then ultimately left off, Black Tie White Noise. That it was recorded for, and then omitted from, Bowie’s industrial rock and techno, his jungle enthused, Earthling. That the version we eventually hear on 2003’s Reality, has been reworked and slowed down. It has been redefined by its distinctively stripped back approach. By those elements of samba, tango, and jazz. That beautiful piano work of longtime Bowie collaborator, Mike Garson. The song’s weary themes of regret and retrospection, perfectly bookending an album preoccupied with old age, and lost opportunities. With desperation, fractured psyches, and post-9/11 politics.
Memories that flutter like bats out of Hell
Stab you from the city spire
As the day moves along its grey cloud introspections. As that North Sea breeze continues to distort the surrounding gardens and the branches of distant trees. I think of those other Bowie songs and these relationships through the years. Those faces, those moments, that will appear in those abstract landscapes, those cities as real as they are make-believe. The names almost whispered between verses, between breaks.
I think about the life that has been and those alternative paths yet to come to me. Everything that is still waiting to play out, within the confines of a song.
#AutoFiction #ClassicRock #DavidBowie #LifeWriting #Music #RockMusic #TheSmile -
🎧 HÖRTIPP: #Forschungspodcast #MindsOfMainz – #DerGutenbergTalk | Folge 15: Das Leben am seidenen Faden – Erfahrungen von Kindern und Jugendlichen mit #Krebserkrankungen | mit Dennis Wilke 👉 https://www.magazin.uni-mainz.de/minds-of-mainz-der-gutenberg-talk_alle-folgen/ @dfg_public
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🎧 HÖRTIPP: #Forschungspodcast #MindsOfMainz – #DerGutenbergTalk | Folge 15: Das Leben am seidenen Faden – Erfahrungen von Kindern und Jugendlichen mit #Krebserkrankungen | mit Dennis Wilke 👉 https://www.magazin.uni-mainz.de/minds-of-mainz-der-gutenberg-talk_alle-folgen/ @dfg_public
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🎧 HÖRTIPP: #Forschungspodcast #MindsOfMainz – #DerGutenbergTalk | Folge 15: Das Leben am seidenen Faden – Erfahrungen von Kindern und Jugendlichen mit #Krebserkrankungen | mit Dennis Wilke 👉 https://www.magazin.uni-mainz.de/minds-of-mainz-der-gutenberg-talk_alle-folgen/ @dfg_public
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🎧 HÖRTIPP: #Forschungspodcast #MindsOfMainz – #DerGutenbergTalk | Folge 15: Das Leben am seidenen Faden – Erfahrungen von Kindern und Jugendlichen mit #Krebserkrankungen | mit Dennis Wilke 👉 https://www.magazin.uni-mainz.de/minds-of-mainz-der-gutenberg-talk_alle-folgen/ @dfg_public
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"feeling singular" by Ben Bascom looks at #queer #Masculinities in the #history of the early United States - a #QueerStudies approach to the #biographies of 5 unique but lesser-studied individuals at odds w traditional masculinity
#AmericanStudies #AmericanHistory #MasculinityStudies #LifeWriting
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"feeling singular" by Ben Bascom looks at #queer #Masculinities in the #history of the early United States - a #QueerStudies approach to the #biographies of 5 unique but lesser-studied individuals at odds w traditional masculinity
#AmericanStudies #AmericanHistory #MasculinityStudies #LifeWriting
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"feeling singular" by Ben Bascom looks at #queer #Masculinities in the #history of the early United States - a #QueerStudies approach to the #biographies of 5 unique but lesser-studied individuals at odds w traditional masculinity
#AmericanStudies #AmericanHistory #MasculinityStudies #LifeWriting
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This 2021 essay collection, edited by Baisnée-Keay et al, explores the relationship between words & images in women’s #lifewriting & visual art incl Georgia O'Keeffe, Alison Bechdel, Zelda Fitzgerald & more
https://opac.sub.uni-goettingen.de/DB=1/XMLPRS=N/PPN?PPN=1776482328
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This 2021 essay collection, edited by Baisnée-Keay et al, explores the relationship between words & images in women’s #lifewriting & visual art incl Georgia O'Keeffe, Alison Bechdel, Zelda Fitzgerald & more
https://opac.sub.uni-goettingen.de/DB=1/XMLPRS=N/PPN?PPN=1776482328
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This 2021 essay collection, edited by Baisnée-Keay et al, explores the relationship between words & images in women’s #lifewriting & visual art incl Georgia O'Keeffe, Alison Bechdel, Zelda Fitzgerald & more
https://opac.sub.uni-goettingen.de/DB=1/XMLPRS=N/PPN?PPN=1776482328
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This 2021 essay collection, edited by Baisnée-Keay et al, explores the relationship between words & images in women’s #lifewriting & visual art incl Georgia O'Keeffe, Alison Bechdel, Zelda Fitzgerald & more
https://opac.sub.uni-goettingen.de/DB=1/XMLPRS=N/PPN?PPN=1776482328
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2 new books for all enthusiasts of women's #biographies & #lifewriting in our collection!
Find out more in the replies!
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2 new books for all enthusiasts of women's #biographies & #lifewriting in our collection!
Find out more in the replies!