January 17 – Planet Earth is Blue

Planet Earth is Blue

I need to credit a fellow member of the WNEW-FM Fan Club for posting just those words on Monday morning. Nothing else, no picture, just those four words. Planet earth is blue. Nothing else needed. So following that example, this won’t be a long post, for me.

I wrote about Bowie during the early days of The Walrus Was Paul, when the blog started and the purpose was listening to my old albums from A to Z on my then new turntable while exercising to them, recalling all those odd memories of the times they summon, and writing about them. That was in September of 2013. An old friend already recollected her own memory for me on Monday with a sweet message about us sitting on my front stoop with Vicki and her sister during our high school years, with the door open and Bowie blasting from inside.

Bowie seemed to have planned out his life and indeed his death mostly for our entertainment. Right before his death I had watched the movie about his Ziggy Stardust days and concert footage with the late Mick Ronson, who really was the poster child for the ugly guitar player face that is mocked in This is Spinal Tap. Bowie on stage looked like he was having as much fun as his audience. I wonder how much of a coincidence it is that this rockumentary was been run at that time. I had also caught a portion of his new video before Monday, and thought it particularly weird, and that he looked so old. Somehow though, he sounded exactly the same as he always had. And as I watch the weekend theater review programs on TV, the Sunday just before his death, one of the reviewers had panned the recently opened play that Bowie had co-written and scored, finding it incomprehensible. I don’t criticize the critic as he was probably right, but I’ll bet he’s taken a second look now.

I, like many Bowie fans, do not mourn his death. Corny as it sounds, I don’t think that’s what he wanted. However, I am quite grateful that he was put on this earth, for the time we had him. And as many fans are suggesting by paraphrasing K from Men in Black, “Bowie is not dead, he just went home.”

I’m sorry, I have to do a totally unrelated BTW – You know I love to get facials and massages, right? Well, a friend, who we will refer to as Tabby for reasons she will understand, gave me a Groupon on my birthday for a full-body massage at a spa on Canal Street. I have gotten all sorts of massages including reflexology, acupuncture and even cupping (never again). This was the first time I have been massaged from head to toe, during which the masseuse used her full body in the process. Hands, elbows, knees, feet, she was all over me, and actually sat on my butt, which I barely felt, while she leaned her entire body weight into my back. Though a bit sore today, I loved it. Plus, my masseuse was wearing Winnie-the-Pooh slippers. Thank you Tabby.