searching for satellites

No Bowie appearances in the released Mistigris body of work… and yet, an old memory tickles. There it is – file dated July 30, 1998: a poem, omitted from M-9808 (not that it ended up waiting all that much longer for the big reveal, as it turns out.)

observation while star-gazing
examples of how the sky has been sold
he says this is a david bowie song
“searching for satellites.”

and I feel violated
like innocence stolen
but worse
culture relived (and it wasn’t even my culture
no redemption in nostalgia)

profound sadness
is it no longer possible to live in a modern world
without experiencing post-modern apostasy?

“He” would have been The Laughing Fool, the starlit cloudless summer sky likely observed from our pseudo-rural Kerrisdale/Southlands corner on the edge of Vancouver, far removed from the bright lights of downtown.

After having our stargazing (perhaps punctuating an overnight on Tower Beach after a spate of late-night coning) interrupted by one too many satellites, we shifted focus and began explicitly satellite-gazing. (cf. Wikipedia: Because of the shape of the Iridium satellites’ reflective antennas, the satellites focus sunlight on a small area of the Earth’s surface in an incidental manner. This results in an effect called Iridium flares, where the satellite momentarily appears as one of the brightest objects in the night sky and can even be seen during daylight.)

I believe he was mistaken; to the best of my knowledge, David Bowie never did make reference to watching satellites in any of his songs – probably what my friend intended to convey was that the situation was Bowie-esque… but what I got out of the remark was a frustration at the apparent impossibility of being the first person to encapsulate and enshrine an experience in art, the notion that no matter the idea, someone older (that garish spectre haunting my older sister’s bedroom in pin-up form during my childhood) had already gotten there first – potentially decades earlier in this case, not satisfied with his generous share, having to reach far into the future and snatch seeds of potential greatness right out of my grasp. Had I thought to unpack the remark a bit, I might have taken the comparison as a compliment, but that perspective would have been fundamentally incompatible with the freshly-minted Serious Prose Poet, who always finds the storm cloud to any silver lining: “I feel violated / like innocence stolen / but worse”. Oh, get over yourself!

“But worse.” This was not an unknown device for the period, sometimes employed with tongue lodged firmly in cheek as in “thank you”, recently released in MIST2000 (and with less irony as in “her braid; i obeyed” in M-9806-A):

thank you for reminding me

last night

that I am not a hot stove -
that I am capable of contact

sustained
without immediate withdrawl
and mutual discomfort.
I did not
burn you
though you did
touch me.

Perhaps worse.
Perhaps with a capital “T.”

(I don’t recall there being
a “t”
in “Perhaps”…)

Wherever a poem by a Serious Prose Poet starts, gravitational physics dictates that its predictable trajectory is oriented only in one possible direction: downward. Even on rare occasions where it may appear to be raising in exaltation, an obligatory twist or implied subtext of tragic flaw invoked at the conclusion will spike it down to the ground like Icarus, the volleyball of the gods; Serious Prose Poems understand that all emotions are bad, but that good emotions are worse because the world is still bad and the speaker is merely sadly deluded. But the icing on the cake:

is it no longer possible to live in a modern world
without experiencing post-modern apostasy?

Dense, huh? Here, permit me to translate:

ATTENTION LADIES: do not permit this man to insert his penis into any portion of your anatomy.

Fortunately, they seemed to have gotten the memo, instead reserving their erotic interest and devotion to more suitable subjects who weren’t so prone to flying into histrionics upon realising that they weren’t the only ones to ever taste their particular sweet breath of air; calmer, more sedate and successful subjects, which brings us right back around to David Bowie.

Early on in my accordion career (indulge me in the digression, it finds its place on the meta level), around the turn of the century, I had a method: get booked to provide music for a strangely specific function (eg. a fundraiser to recover from a house fire, hi Ivan E. Coyote!); the afternoon before the show, cram just-recognizable arrangements of thematically-relevant songs (Ring of Fire, Burning Down the House, etc.); perform a totally musically disjointed set; blame the theme. The sets weren’t any good, but you could not accuse them of being off-topic. But in time, I concluded – probably there is more to art than being relevant.

(And so in all likelihood you won’t be seeing a great deal more blog posts of this type 8)

Sorry to disappoint with the poetry (disappointing with poetry: a long-cherished artscene tradition) – if you were hoping for some textmode art with which to commomorate the starman, perhaps I can turn you on to some period teletext Illarterate exposed me to, further teletext by Horsenburger or a hastily-wrapped ANSI WIP from our Blocktronics colleague mypalgoo. Cheers & stay strange, everyone!