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Bowie Song

from The Valley by Nancy Burke

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about

Steve Dawson's prompt: Use the initial few chords from Bowie's "Life on Mars" to create a Bowie-like song.

lyrics

Bowie Song

You never dreamed that you’d be on your own so soon,
Floating through the city in your glass cocoon,
Trying to fly above it all,
Over the smokestacks and your fortress of transparent walls.

They said you’ve sacrificed enough, you’ll get your wish:
A shiny whiff of oxygen served on a silver satellite dish,
Artfully arranged with a side of vertigo,
A signal from an alien who died a million years ago

Here, where I stop and you begin
That silver line, just like the air, that silver line is infinitesimally thin.

You cried, Save me! It’s a God-awful thing to do!
Why, oh Christ, oh why didn’t you save me from you?

It takes forever for a letter to get to Alcazar,
But you can see it at the movies, a signal from a hollow jar,
There’s a show in heaven called Hollywood.
Catch it live if you can, because the reruns aren’t as good.

In this prairie of Amerika, someday a meteor shower
Is going to smash into your arms at a million miles an hour.
Your intravenous voice on the radio
I thought I lost that bandwidth about a million years ago.

From where you stop to where I start,
That silver line, that filigree, that thread of breath
I used to know that map by heart.

You cried, Save me! But I’ve cried out my eyes and can’t see
How, oh Lord, oh how I could have saved you from me?

Don’t worry ‘bout the sirens, everything will turn out fine,
Just a hiccup in the system, only random static on the line,
It’s what the rest of us do for fun,
Learn the planets if you can ‘cause every star’s a setting sun.

Where’s your breath and where’s your skin?
That silver line of plexiglass, that silver line is infinitesimally thin.

Save me! It’s a God-awful thing to do!
Why, oh Christ, oh why didn’t you save me from you?

credits

from The Valley, released June 4, 2022
Music and Lyrics -- Nancy Burke
Instruments -- Steve Dawson
Recorded and mixed at Kernel Sound Emporium by Steve Dawson
Mastered by Carl Saff

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Nancy Burke Evanston, Illinois

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