lazarus raze https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-JqH1M4Ya8 i watched this a few days ago, in anticipation of the new album. i liked the song (those mournful sax harmonies are a gorgeous touch), but i wasn't sure i knew what the video was saying. typical mind-bending bowie business, probably. now it all makes sense. he levitates from his hospital bed to get away from the death hiding beneath it. he finds the strength to keep dancing, to dream himself back to life, even while cancer eats away at everything, writing with a new furious energy. he knows time is short. it inspires and frightens him. he tries to say as much he can while he still can, tries to sing death away. and then the dream is over, and he's just gone. that final distorted guitar chord hits like a punch to the solar plexus now. what a way to say goodbye. who else could turn even their death into art? 160112 ... raze (deathbed ... hospital bed ... you know what i mean.) 160112 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I just watched this. I guess the devil under his bed got his cellphone, but he got freed from the shroud with the Coraline button-eyes and found the calligraphy pen. I loved that little riff where the pen runs off the table. Now I'm feeling emotional about that bit. Trust him to pack in sadness and playfulness in a poignant little image/sound combo. "Ain't that just like me," - that too. 160112 ... flowerock. I cried at work watching it. We played bowie all day, only the brittish tourists thanked us, one group of four got a little teary too... 160112 ... unhinged david bowie wanted to become a buddhist monk. trungpa rinpoche (the tibetan lama that founded the shambhala meditation centers in the west) told him he could better serve the world by staying in it as a musician. i haven't watched the video yet but it sounds a little like powha meditation to me. part of the tibetan teachings on dying, the bardo , the place in between life and death. the sadhana of mahamudra can also be practiced as a funeral liturgy. someone brought up that we should have done the sadhana last night for him because of his connection to trungpa rinpoche. tibetans practice funeral rituals for up to 49 days (i think) after the person dies so when the next sadhana happens in two weeks the seattle shambhala center is probably doing our sadhana practice as a funeral for david bowie. 160112 ... raze that's such a cool way to pay tribute. 160112 ... unhinged i finally watched this...i cried we ended up doing the next sadhana for him and the meditation was powerful; the meditation portion is altered slightly for the funeral liturgy where you are supposed to wish guidance and happiness for the deceased as they find their next life. my meditation had sweet sadness to it that night particular to thinking of the picture of him we had just burned. and that was before i even watched this video. what a brave man fearless 160210 what's it to you? who go blather from