News from Squire's Isle

This isn’t the thing I want to blog about today. Hopefully that will happen later. But this is just an observation about something that I wanted to share to the world at large (or the world that wanders across my blog) and an attempt to increase the number of people who come across my blog. This is also in honor of Bowie’s death which was almost exactly one year ago. RIP Starman.

It involves two David Bowie songs written 30 years apart – neither particularly well known – which I believe are connected. It makes both songs a little sadder, but also enriches the experience. The first is “Conversation Piece,” written in 1969. I prefer the later version that was included as a bonus track on the Heathen album. The middle verse is:

“I live above the grocer’s store
Owned by an Austrian
He often calls me down to eat
And he jokes about his broken English
Tries to be a friend to me
But for all my years of reading conversation
I stand without a word to say.”

The song is about the narrator’s depression and melancholy (which is one reason I like the newer version better… Bowie just sounds like someone who has been through hell because… well, he has.

The other song is “Algeria Touchshriek,” from the 1995 album Outside. This is a weird album, and the songs all have connective tissue between them. But this one in particular feels like it ties back the “Conversation Piece” from the point of view of the Austrian who owns the grocer’s store.

“I’m thinking of leasing the room above my shop
To a Mr. Walloff Domburg
A reject from the world wide Internet
He’s a broken man
I’m also a broken man
It would be nice to have company
We could have great conversations!”

The re-use of the word ‘broken’ and ‘conversation,’ the idea that “Mr Walloff Domburg” is a “reject” fits with the original song’s narrator saying ‘my essays lying scattered on the floor/fulfill their needs just by being there.” No one thinks about him, no one knows him, no one will remember him. He’s a broken man. And the idea that his grocer is another broken man who is just trying to reach out and maybe give him some peace just makes it even sadder when the narrator just walks away.

Anyway! This has been a pointless exercise in analyzing two songs by one of the greatest songwriters ever. And if this makes you check out either album or just the songs, then I’ll consider it time well spent.