occasional dream, seven

The first David Bowie album I ever owned, a ‘best of' compilation called ChangesOne¸was given to me by a woman tutoring me in Hebrew for my Bar Mitzvah. As it turned out, my favorite track on the album was only a single and never appeared on a proper Bowie record. John, I’m Only Dancing sounded so weird and heady to me back then and hasn’t lost any of its satisfying edge over the years and decades. I especially dig the song’s sexual ambiguity. I initially thought DB was trying to reassure a buddy of his: ‘I’m not trying to horn in on your girl. I’m only dancing with her. She turns me on.’ As if this would ever calm a guy’s jealous anxiety and rage! But as my innocence morphed into increasing awareness of the myriad sexual identities available to us, it dawned on me that perhaps it’s David and John who are lovers, and David is telling John something like, ‘I’m only dancing with her. I’m not gonna fuck her, even though she turns me on.’ The song is actually quite brilliant in this respect. Sexual confusion as a metaphor for the onset of a slippery age in which all meaning gets deferred indefinitely, subverted in an infinite play of signification. Nothing is stable, but that’s ok as long as Rono’s guitar is bellowing in the background, filling you with pleasure and providing perfect accompaniment to an exploration of the unknown…