“And in the death, as the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare,
the shutters lifted an inch on Temperance Building high on Poacher’s Hill
and red mutant eyes gazed down on Hunger City.
No more big wheels. Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats,
and ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes,
coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers,
like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of LoveMe Avenue,
ripping and re-wrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now leg-warmers,
family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald.
Any day now.
The year of the Diamond Dogs.
‘This ain’t rock ‘n’ roll
This is genocide!’”
One of the things that has always appealed to me about the Druid path is its focus on the vital importance of the bardic arts. I was born with a soul-deep love of music, drawing, painting and storytelling, so those arts have always been hugely important to me. The 10th anniversary of the death of David Bowie on January 10th 2016 got me thinking about his art and its role in my Druidry.
I first saw Bowie live at Glastonbury Fair in 1971. As the bright Sun rose over Worthy Farm on the morning of Wednesday 23rd June, Midsummer’s Eve, I roamed the festival field singing The Incredible String Band song, ‘Sleepers Awake,’ from their 1969 LP, ‘Changing Horses.’ It was a beautiful sunny morning and I didn’t want my fellow festival-goers to miss it.
Bowie started his set at 5am as the rays of the newly risen Sun illuminated the first pyramid stage. It took me a while to realise who he was. I remember saying to someone, “Isn’t that the guy who did Space Oddity?” Among other songs, he performed ‘Changes’ and ‘Oh! You Pretty Things.’
That first Glastonbury was a remarkable event, not least because it was free. Yes, you heard me. Free. Last year, tickets cost just shy of £400 each. Changes indeed. As Bowie's set progressed, more people woke up and some stumbled down to the stage. By the time he closed the set with ‘Bombers,’ a song about the explosion of a nuclear bomb, there were enough people awake to give him a decent round of applause. He had gone onstage thinking it might be his last ever gig. Our applause convinced him to carry on. Near the end of the set, he told us, “I just want to say that you’ve given me more pleasure than I’ve had in a good few months of working, and I don’t do gigs any more because I got so pissed off with working, and dying a death every time... It’s really nice to have somebody appreciate me for a change.” I like to think I helped a bit by waking people up just before he came on.
The next time I saw him was on The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC2 on the night of February 7th 1972. The change that had taken place in the intervening 8 months was extraordinary. The long-haired, hippy Bowie of Glastonbury was now the legendary androgynous sci-fi pop god, Ziggy Stardust. Backed by the band we came to know as the Spiders From Mars, he performed ‘Queen Bitch’ and ‘Five Years.’ I was transfixed, entranced. Having grown up as a weird kid, an outsider, a freak, I knew what a lonely, difficult existence it could be, exacerbated by being one of a handful of hippies in an area predominantly inhabited by skinheads. As Ziggy, Bowie demonstrated that it was possible to actively, openly and magnificently celebrate one’s weirdness. From that night, Bowie’s career took off and I was a devoted fan. Throughout the rest of his career, he showed himself to be a shape-shifter, constantly re-inventing himself. I've long regarded shape-shifting as one of the core abilities of a Druid, one frequently represented in legends recorded in the medieval manuscripts of Wales and Ireland.
June ‘72 saw the release of ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars’ LP, which I immediately bought and listened to over and over again.
‘Diamond Dogs,’ the opening monologue from which is reproduced at the head of this piece, came out in May 1974. It too was played repeatedly. The monologue, titled 'Future Legend,' is a prime example of seership mediated through art, like the awenyddion of medieval Wales who spoke prophecies in spontaneous verse. Such seership is central to the ovate path in Druidry. In 1974, I would sometimes roam the streets of my home town proclaiming 'Future Legend' loudly, on one occasion joined by friend and co-conspirator, John Wilde, who later became lead singer with the band, Expandis. The apocalyptic tone of the whole album seemed to perfectly capture the sense of a world spiralling uncontrollably into decadence and decay following the death of ‘60’s optimism. 1974 was also the year I discovered the Druid path.
The ‘Let’s Dance’ album, released in 1983, was Bowie’s most commercially successful despite being one of his least artistically satisfying. Even so, in between the Nile Rogers-produced pop songs was one gem, a remix of ‘Cat People (Putting Out Fire with Gasoline),’ the original of which graced the soundtrack of the 1982 film, ‘Cat People.’
This was adopted as the unofficial anthem of the British Druid Order on the day I asked Emma Restall Orr, craft name Bobcat, to become joint chief of the Order. Bobcat had been trying to persuade me to work with her since September 1993. In February of 1995, as we sat on a bench on Eastbourne seafront looking out across a grey, overcast, rough sea, I put the idea to her becoming joint chief. She said she would on one condition; that I allowed her to, as she put it, “Light a fire under the BDO.” I readily agreed, because that was exactly what I wanted. Her phrase brought to mind ‘Putting Out Fire with Gasoline.’ Bobcat turned out to be as big a Bowie fan as I am, having also found inspiration in him during a youth of ostracisation and rebellion. The fact that she is herself a Cat person made the track even more appropriate.
From the start of our working relationship, Bowie’s music was an important part of the bond between us. On our trips to America together, whilst being driven around US towns and cities we would sing the chorus to ‘I’m Afraid of Americans’ from the 1997 album, ‘Earthling:’
“I’m afraid of Americans
I’m afraid of the world
I’m afraid I can’t help it…”
We sang it in the same sardonic way that Bowie originally intended it. After all, some of our best friends are American. It has, however, taken on a whole new layer of meaning since the giant orange man-baby returned to the White House. With the change of an initial letter:
“Donny wants a brain
Donny wants to suck on a Coke
Donny wants a woman
Donny wants to think of a joke
Donny’s in America…
Donny looks up at the stars
Donny combs his hair,
and Donny wants pussy and cars
Donny’s in America…
and I’m afraid of Americans.”
Donny himself, of course, revels in the fact that the world is becoming increasingly terrified that his narcissistic petulance will plunge us into World War III, a war few of us are likely to survive.
But I digress. Or do I? After all, Druidry encourages us to honour and celebrate life and diversity, to work for harmony and with the spirits of Nature. Druidry should, therefore, encourage us to call out those who stand against peace and whose actions ravage our planet and threaten its inhabitants. The 18th century Druid revivalist, Iolo Morganwg, gave his Gorsedd of Bards of the Isle of Britain the motto, “The Truth Against the World,” meaning that we have a moral and spiritual duty to speak out against those in power who would spread lies and disharmony among us, against their petty greed and personal aggrandisement at the expense of others, against their warmongering and unwarranted arrogance.
The last time I saw Bowie perform live was at the NetAid concert in Wembley Stadium on October 9th 1999. Sadly, Bobcat couldn't make it. She was running a workshop in Ireland. The acoustics were terrible but his stage presence and the excellence of his backing band overcame them to turn in a wonderful set, starting with a pared-down version of ‘Life on Mars’ featuring just Bowie’s vocals and Mike Garson’s piano and ending with a rousing, foot-stomping rendition of ‘Rebel Rebel,’ a song which, perhaps more than any other, encapsulates all the reasons why people like myself and Bobcat love Bowie so much.
“You’ve got your mother in a whirl
She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl
Hey, babe, your hair’s alright
Hey, babe, let’s go out tonight
You like me and I like it all
We like dancing and we look divine
You love bands when they’re playing hard
You want more and you want it fast.
They put you down, they say I'm wrong
You tacky thing, you put them on.
Rebel Rebel, you’ve torn your dress
Rebel Rebel, your face is a mess
Rebel Rebel, how could they know?
Hot tramp, I love you so!”
Over the 52 years I’ve been calling myself a Druid, it’s become apparent that many of those attracted to the path are, like Bobcat and myself, what used to be called ‘weird’ but is now fashionably referred to as ‘neuro-divergent.’ For those of us who are so strangely blessed and cursed, Bowie embodied a beacon of hope and empowerment in an often hostile and determinedly disempowering world. We followed his many Ch-ch-ch-changes and thought, if he can do it, so can we. As he sang on the Whistle Test that transformative night in 1972, we looked at her, “so swishy in her satin and tat, in her frock coat and bippety-boppety hat,” and thought, “Oh, God, I could do better than that.” So we embraced the Ch-ch-ch-changes and found ourselves ‘Loving the Alien,’ and our lives and the world were hugely enriched for it.
At the heart of Druidry as we practice it in the British Druid Order is the concept of awen, a Welsh word variously translated as ‘inspiration,’ ‘poetic frenzy’ and ‘flowing, feminine spirit.’ We see it as primarily a gift of the goddess Ceridwen, whose name means ‘Close sexual partner.’ It is the divine source that inspires all art. The art it inspires goes on the inspire creativity in others, who inspire others in turn. Thus the spirit flows between people and across time. Bowie was one of the purest embodiments of awen to have emerged during my lifetime. We were blessed to have him.
And if 2026 does turn out to be the year the orange man-baby in the White House and the bald man-baby in the Kremlin bring us World War III, I can only hope that enough of us survive to roam the radioactive streets repeating loudly to anyone left alive to listen or, if not, to ourselves:
“And in the death, as the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare….”
So, erm, Happy New Year, and let’s do everything we can to ensure it isn’t our last, and personally, while I'm still alive, “I want eagles in my daydreams, diamonds in my eyes…”
Thank you, David, thank you,
Greywolf /|\
I loved reading this! Thank you.