The Pathogen Nursery

 by Shaun Lawton     (written for the Oscillating Oculus in his own words, without AI). 

   Arthur Blair could not have foreseen the actual consequences of the world he seeded. Though instrumental in providing the necessary fertilizer for autocratic dynasties the world over to subsidize their ultimate power over a hapless humanity, Arthur was quite convinced he'd done a bit of good for the future of the world. 

   Mr. Blair was a writer, you see. He came from a lower-upper-middle class English family, raised in a British territory at the start of the twentieth century in an eastern state of India. The middle child sired in between two sisters, with five years in between them, Arthur dreamed of being a famous author someday. 

   As a child he wrote poetry after the fashion of his idol, William Blake. Little did he suspect the seething cauldron of infectious agents at work, suspended throughout every nodal point of the human race, germinating with potential at every crook and turn, during the time of his upbringing. 

   Had he anticipated this morass of fermentation and suspected how it would eventually come to fruition historically over the next few decades of his life, he may very well have seriously considered abandoning his little book project, and forthwith undertaken another profession altogether. 

   Alas, during this particular burgeoning moment of the human species, following in the footsteps of the likes of H.G. Wells was considered a noble endeavor by many. Young Arthur studiously wrote in his journal every day, intent on capturing the vision which danced behind his eyes. 

    How could the young Mr. Blair have considered the ultimate consequences of attempting to warn the world of the disheartening direction their legislature and internal affairs seemed to be working themselves toward? 

   At the time of the writing of his final and most famous novel, a period during the late forties which culminated his career as an author and put the golden capstone on his dream of becoming a famous writer, precious few individuals were in a position to contemplate the complete and adverse effects of such a critical work. 

   The human beings of Earth were embroiled in their second world war. Propaganda on all sides of the war effort was generated in pamphlets, newspapers, and on the radio.  The truth was that no one alive–much less the gifted and starry eyed Arthur–at that time in history could have possibly foreseen the long term consequences of any of their ongoing activities. 

   Such is the near sightedness of our species throughout our daily trials and tribulations. Whether we be professor or sergeant, doctor or critic, farmer or lawyer, working with our fingers stained dark brown by the land, or typing on matte black plastic keyboards with immaculately manicured hands, or middle-aged dropouts, philosophy students, retail clerks or gardeners. 

   What we're all in the process of engendering remains a far greater sum than its millions of remotely oblivious parts could ever dream.  But young Arthur dreamed harder than anyone around him.  He could see just where the machinery of the state was leading the human race.  It wasn't a pretty sight, and he'd be damned if he didn't write about it. 

   Or maybe, we'd be damned if he did.  

    

   

 

 

  

The Politics of Fear and the Erosion of Democracy

by roving reporter Shaun Lawton  (written with minimal AI support under reporter's direction)

Poster design by Indika Entertainment Advertising 

Fair use, wikipedia.org/w/index.php 

    What we are experiencing in the United States is not simply disagreement, nor even ordinary political polarization, but a systematic distortion of shared reality. In an environment shaped by algorithmic amplification—documented starkly in The Social Dilemma—fragments of information are stripped of context, magnified beyond proportion, and redistributed as symbolic proof of moral failure on the opposing side. 

    This process is driven less by ignorance than by motivated reasoning and confirmation bias: we do not evaluate facts neutrally, but select and exaggerate those that protect our identities. Cognitive dissonance then seals the lens in place, ensuring that contradiction is felt as attack rather than correction.

    The result is a form of epistemic tribalism in which truth itself fractures along group lines. Each political camp peers through a differently ground lens—one that sharpens threats, blurs nuance, and bends reality toward pre-chosen conclusions. 

     Context collapse ensures that a sentence, image, or headline can no longer be understood within its original frame; instead, it is refracted outward, acquiring new meaning as it passes through partisan filters. 

    What might once have been a point of debate becomes proof of existential danger, and disagreement hardens into affective polarization—an emotional divide rooted not in policy, but in mutual distrust.  And the standoff between the two camps, liberal and conservative, democrat and republican, becomes set and solidified.  

     The Oscillating Oculus exists to examine this distortion, at the point where perception becomes belief. If we are to repair a shared civic reality, we must first recognize the lenses through which we look—how they are shaped, who profits from their curvature, and why we so rarely question the clarity of our own view. 

     Until we do, we will continue to mistake magnified fragments for the whole picture, arguing not over what is true, but over which version of reality is permitted to exist. That's not the USA any of us signed up for.   

     We don't need to ask our parents about this.  All we need to do is ask ourselves.  Do we really want to sit back behind the safety of our screens while our great, diversified country gets ripped apart, while the rest of the world begins hedging their bets?  Perhaps we should ask ourselves, just what percentage of American voters do We, the Online, actually represent? 

      One thing remains clear, despite the gross distortion of our reality we get from viewing things from being on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, etc.  And that's the fact that our nonvoting contingency grew to roughly 36% in 2024 (from about 34% in 2020).  In 2016, it was at the unacceptably high rate of at least 40%.  

     We at this digital daily digest urge every American to not just vote, but to cut through the thickening cynicism and get as many other young people to exercise their civic duty and vote, as well.  This great, unyielding LENS through which many of us are filtering our information from here online cannot care one way or the other.  

     It's up to us, human beings, the people of this country, to bring that nonvoting contingency to below 30% in an effort to bring our country back, where we can continue setting aside our differences and governing without fear for the wide variety of people we have sworn in to being our fellow American citizens.  

     Remember the warning FDR gave us, all those years ago, after we got out of the Great Depression: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Fear is now being weaponized to excuse lawlessness. Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned in 1933 that fear itself was the enemy, and his response was pragmatic reform—not socialism. That reality is now denied by much of the modern conservative and MAGA movement.

     As true and loyal patriotic Americans, what are we going to do now to ensure our administration follows the rule of law to keep every American safe, and resume running things in solidarity with all our allied nations in the world?  It's time we sat down with ourselves and our loved ones and reexamine our individual roles in living up to our civic duty.  And  #VOTE. 

Click below to read 

The Pathogen Nursery

a flash faction tale

by Shaun Lawton

available on the

Oscillating Oculus 

Pneuma Onus Paroxysm

by  Shaun Lawton (roving reporter for the Oscillating Oculus). 

  *This article was written expressly without the use of AI, and in the author's own chosen words.

  It's a new year and everything's so messed up, it seems as if there's no way to even begin to convey the amplitude of it all. Allow me to give it a shot, anyhow.  It's on a scale overwhelming our ability to register how much we'd have to invest in preparing for it.  I mean, let's face it, we're still dealing with the fallout from our former lives, which in my case, spilled over here out west of the Mississippi twenty-five years ago, when I rebooted my life after my first marriage fell apart, and I decided to follow a calling to head out west, to Salt Lake City, in the year 2000.

   Now here we all are during a time when the technolarity (I've decided to call it) is well into it's nth iteration, and I'd like to note the reality of it has nothing to do with any other scenario ever conceived by any human alive today.  It's beyond our grasp in a way that very few among us could even consider preparing for it in a manner that would seem sound, considering the implications hidden from our understanding in the quantum realm, and everything else going on in our daily lives we're forced to confront and process.  Yet isn't that the game we relish, the ultimate whodunit, poring over the clues to our existence?  Well, at least speaking for myself, it doesn't exactly keep me up at night, but it keeps me going. 

     One of the great mysteries we all face concerns itself over the peculiar and often overlooked fact that assigning blame to anyone for something they've done against us may ultimately amount to folly, and here's why I say this.  We fail to consider the platform upon which we all play our roles, including those we feel are the ones to blame for any given circumstance which affects us negatively. For example, if a boss were to fire you, and it was true they did it to railroad you off the team in order to replace you with someone they could pay less, for example, yes that would appear to be sufficient cause on their behalf by which you could justifiably blame them.  But what if I were to suggest that it may not be so simple as that? 

   Let me try to explain what I mean. The world isn't new, and no matter how much of the latest ceramic and cable facades may have been recently manufactured and layered underneath us, in the forms of our new homes and streets and grocery stores and shopping malls, the primeval earthmatter yet lies underneath, and all around; a vast proto-magnetic generator of forces that remain quite beyond our comprehension. Suffice it to say, the channeling power of our planet tranceives seismic voltages and vibrations tremoring throughout its core and crust, sending waves across Poseidon's kingdom and flashing networks of lightning into a new dawn of this terribly advanced age of techno-sorcery.  

   The truth isn't just limited to the fact that there may be other, greater parties responsible for factors which influence our bosses to summarily dismiss us, or whatever the case may be; no, not at all.  There's a greater perspective and observation of nature itself which shifts our point of view.  It's not the lion's quality alone that drives it to prey upon the zebras and gazelles, it includes a set of greater factors that play into the scenario, an incomprehensible backdrop far from those stray, individual mammals grazing and preying along the tundra, under our brilliant shining star, still dazzling through the mantle of the sky overhead.  There remains a vast system, so inexplicable and cauldronic in scope and organization, of such a supramagnetic and hyperelectric gravitational structure that the very intricacy of its interwoven and counter-shifting parts interpenetrating in unexpected domino effects that operate like intermeshing zippers, in a constant evolution, adapting to shifting conditions which change form while interlacing components morph into different shapes.  

   These forces affect every dynamic we can think of, including the wind and sea-spray and the global configuration of intermixed wildflower pollens, mycelial networks feeding on the decomposition of forest loam and the constant exchange of chemicals and energy going on within our biodome, to name a mere fraction of the slightest percentage representing the thriving ecological diversity of life on Earth, a continuum wholly linked in a succession of fractalized gears which creates side effects still rippling from forces that way down here on this section of the evolutionary chain, we consider to be physical laws we don't as of yet fully understand, like gravity and time and outer space, and many more interrelated concepts such as these we yet remain uninformed about, including the ones partly responsible for the things that might go wrong in our lives, and cause us, in a moment of reactionary weakness, to point the blame at individuals which appear to be responsible, when in reality, there could just as easily be a greater combination of forces at work, unbeknownst to us, which for all we know,  render events to fall apart for everyone, (including that boss that let you go), a significant difference remaining, that we each exist in our own respective micromoments of time, separate from one another in a way we can barely begin to imagine, by microinstants which due to their temporarily having lined up into synchronicity, invariably trick us into assuming we're occupying the same exact place & time, when we're in point of fact separated by worlds apart, across the vast face of time itself, and in reality only briefly exchanging our mutual presence with one another, while the whole universe continues on its grand, counterintuitively orderly scale of time that as far as we've been able to determine, eventually expires in galactic  periodicities tantamount to our own, and that of every one else alive here caught up in this grand continuum along with us, somewhere adjacent to our wake, just ahead, beside, or before us, as we all fly on together, each separately, and out into the parallel chevrons of disintegrating memory that represent the avatars of our existence.  

  This is only my way of saying that maybe, just perhaps, when we think to ourselves and our situation, and are being honest when we tell others about the misfortune that befell us, how we lost our job when everything was going so well, for so long, I am beginning to think we tend to forget that every train will have run its course.  This metaphor doesn't work because of the train, it's the train that works because of the metaphor.  We didn't just lose our job because so-and-so simply had it out for us, or since they were your boss meaning it's their fault, not at all. It shouldn't be relegated to that simplistic interpretation, which remains at heart a selfish one.  There's always a greater picture we aren't factoring all variables into.  For example, perhaps someone higher up had ordered your boss to let you go; see what I mean?  It's not worth taking even a tame guess as to what motivated anyone to do anything, because when you get right down to it, people are acting in a manner quite beyond their control, when you think about it long enough. Perhaps this begins to explain why it's been said to not judge, lest we be judged. 

   Why do we wake up each new morning and start yet another day all over again? The moral of this lesson remains simple and straightforward enough.  Since this life we're all born into brings about calamity for everyone on occasion, every now and again, rendering each of us just waiting to see when our turn comes back up, the true test that lies before us yet, is how will each one of us deal with it? That's all that really matters when you get down to it, because since everything seems to revolve around the timing (and the timing of the timing, mind you) we can only feel a sort of terrified gratitude when it's our turn, to have the matter at hand having run its course, or as Tom Waits once alluded to, after our having loved something until the wheels fell off, as they must do and will do for every last one of us.  

   The subject of this essay has had very little to do with death, which itself remains another subject we're all bound to, altogether.  No; in this case I am referring to and writing about life. It's life itself which exists as a much greater accumulation of the totality of eternity's essence, now coming back around again in a cumulative approach, for yet another spin along the circuit breaker of existence, which keeps the current moment going, on its celestial light-ride into and beyond infinity, for all we know.  In other words, if there's anyone to blame whatsoever, I think it would behoove each and every individual one of us to realize that it should be relegated strictly to ourselves, who are the ones that often falter and fail to initiate the necessary action to pick ourselves up and out of the ditch we were knocked into, and accomplish the particular tasks and goals needed to get back up on our feet and carry on.  It seems to me that the only ones in the world who qualify to receive any proper blame (if blame were to be handed out) should be every human being born into it, for not picking themselves back up and getting on with it.  We've all stepped or rolled into this arena together, the global stage. The main difference being that we have done so, each and every last person in existence, at a different and unique sliver of time buried in the echelons of microsections discretely growing into macrocosms, eventually to reverberate with the fading echo of their song, our song, a symphony of echoes that diminishes forever until it may be faintly heard to rise again, in another time and place, increasing in volume by such gradual degrees that a sufficient passage of the eons of time again reach a crescendo of instrumental fury, and so on and so forth. 

   This has been my treatise on personal accountability, to take responsibility for ourselves as individuals and quit pointing the fingers at others we think are to blame for doing us wrong. There's a whole teeming, wild world burgeoning out there, chock full of natural disasters and chain lightning sparking wildfires, brimming and overflowing with predatory packs of wolves and men, both scheming to no end to do what it takes to feed themselves and their own families. We should take the time to think how lucky we are that we made it this far. That we survived a global pandemic just five years ago, and that just one of the things we all share in common, remains the fact that we're all currently alive during this supernatural moment in time, amid a grandiose universe we can barely begin to wrap our minds around, much less comprehend.  That one common denominator I shouldn't have to remind anyone about remains the fact we are each and every single last one of us, defined as survivors. 

   If you made it this far, in life I mean, not just this article you're reading, it's because you are in control enough to have done so, and that can only mean one thing.  It's up to us to take full responsibility for getting our lives back on track, instead of choosing to wallow in the depths of despair after blaming anyone else for getting us there. Each new day that allows the sun to rise up in the morning heralds another opportunity coming our way.  Let's do our best to forgive those who wronged us, and take advantage of the time we still have, while we can, I always say.  And may your road forward lead you into the unexpected surprises this miracle of a life has yet in store for all of us.  

Read the next article: 

The Politics of Fear and the Erosion of Democracy

by Shaun Lawton only on the 

Oscillating Oculus 

a digital daily digest

Take A Good Hard Look In The Mirror

 by  Shaun Lawton  (a gonzo op-ed for today, written without the use of AI). 

         (photo provided courtesy of The Telegraph) 

 

    Rest in peace, Renee Nicole Good. American politics is just a big old reality TV game show to our current elected president, as if he doesn’t realize that politics is the only game in life where the stakes remain our livelihoods and very lives. The livelihood of the American people, and our lives ARE NOT A GAME to be played on a demented whim as if you were on some gambling binge in a dirty casino in Las Vegas.

But his supporters don’t seem to understand that. They’re like a pack of rabid howler monkeys, screaming from the peanut gallery, throwing popcorn and having the time of their lives, wearing 32 ounce plastic mugs on their heads as if they’re at the Superbowl.
If the rest of us don’t manage to get together on a drastic level and do something about it soon, this little game our forefathers started two-and-a-half centuries ago they called the United States of America will be OVER, . 

     

    This administration lied today, again. The current administration always lies. Our CEO appears to lie all the time. Pam Bondi lies. Straight through her teeth. 47 lied throughout his first term, and he's doubling down on lies here in his second one. Kristi Noem lied today, defending the rogue ICE agent who shot an innocent woman three times dead in her car, without compunction. Kristi Noem had the audacity to state Renee Good's actions in her vehicle were regarded as being "an act of domestic terrorism." This now appears to be fascism getting started, first by several phases, then it comes on quick. If she wasn't lying, then she was mistaken, and the next few days should clear this up. Meanwhile, our questionably elected leader still lies every day. This guy does not seem to care about you. He does not appear to care about me. From what I can see, Trump remains a distinct threat to the best interests of this country.  A lot of it has to do with incompetence.  I'm just here to learn as much as I can. So please, enlighten me.  Why can’t you supporters of his see what we're seeing, and hear what we're saying? Cutting through all the bull, how can you be led to believe in this apparently deranged wannabe president? Look at the plain evidence and get a sense of the big picture. Everyone's got issues but, this is crazy, it's gone too far. Chalk it off to our Social Dilemma, whatnot, with all the various closed-circuit media news outlets proliferating across the nation, and the hundreds of dumbfounded idiots swallowing it hook, line and sinker.   >.< 

    If you don’t stand in solidarity with Minneapolis and Chicago along with me and the majority of American citizens who are shocked and outraged at how cavalier this administration's representatives and constituents are being while taking the news of Renee Nicole Good having been summarily executed by an ICE immigrations and customs enforcement agent this morning, then what’s taking you so long to come to your senses? What’s it like to live in fear of immigrants, sworn in already or otherwise? Every person out there represents one of us.  Governor Tim Walz — a real man with more courage and integrity than all MAGA-hats put together — who served and still serves our country with honor and decency — takes action today against the fascist takeover of our once free country.  Now is the time for all hard working and decent, freedom loving real Americans to stand up and take our country back from this senile, demented old witless Russian asset, and just steer it back to standing tall once again with our allies around the globe, just when the world needs it most.

 

     If you're still rallying for this president, can you please explain it, in dummy language so we can understand, or don’t you even comprehend what the United States of America is really all about? Have you ever read the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, or our Declaration of Independence? Oh wait, you don’t like to read, or you can't, I forgot which. Why don’t y'all download the audiobooks from the public library, or something? I’ll wait. Can't stop thinking about those Liars. Lies, lies, lies. The president, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, all of 'em, liars propping up a faux-legacy whose expiration date was up five years ago, and he's really startin' to stink up the fridge, now. 

    There’s a reason we have well-trained officers in blue. There’s a reason our police serve to protect our communities without masks.  And that reason has nothing to do with our current administration’s illegal purging of our population. And those of you sitting behind the safety of your screens cheering them on, I pity you from the bottom of my heart. Without even realizing it, you are encouraging lawless bandits while they do their dirty work because you must live by, and for, nothing but fear.  Franklin D. Roosevelt famously stated "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," back in March of 1933, urging the American public to overcome their fear from the Great Depression, and that's what introduced good old fashioned democratic socialism into our nation, which could more accurately be described as  progressive reform with strong federal involvement in economic recovery and social welfare.  But try to tell a certain demographic of uninformed Americans that, today, in particular conservatives and Republicans and MAGA supporters, all somehow roped in to the whole televangelical mess.   

    If you're reading this, and are a gung-ho, MAGA hat wearing American, you are the craven, and represent everything this country is against. You're a hypocrite, plain and simple. Or you've been unwittingly led into a cult, and deserve to either be rescued, or find your way out of it, like quick. Otherwise, y'all come across hard like some uneducated, uninformed, selfish narrowminded hypocrites. Or you're too old, out of touch, or don't know any better, or know too much, while having been fed on a diet of false news and lies through WHATEVER TV, or wherever it is you get your information from, in whatever manner, in this corporate sponsored oligarchy growing more out of control every day while we live and breathe. It appears you will never come around to understanding how much more power and strength there is in love, tolerance and forgiveness, which is sort of ironic, I shouldn’t have to tell you. Yet here we are. Maybe you should sit down with yourselves and take a good, hard look in the mirror. Or don’t. It’s your own life, do what thou will. But don’t get all surprised when you’re denied forgiveness, there’s only so much we can take.  It's okay, after I take a few deep breaths and calm myself down, I realize your unadulterated sheer state of being uninformed ain't nothin' to really shake a stick at.  My lion's heart softens while I begin to consider pitying you all. Y'all with your big trucks dangling faux bull's balls from the trailer hitch, with your bumper stickers and feverish defense of the Second Amendment despite us now having fast forwarded civilization two hundred and thirty five years into the future, where things just aren't the same.  We all have guns now, so now what? That's not the issue, here, really, in a nation that only loves to appear how divided it is to offset our mutual disdain for one another? Of course it's the issue, and it's not the only one.  I don't have that much to say on the matter, as I remain as neutral as I can, amid the oncoming storm. 

    But for some reason, I ain’t even worried about Civil War, it’ll go over like an expired pack of Ladyfingers purchased in the Clearance isle at Kroger’s and go off like duds on a rainy Fourth of July that’s been cancelled anyhow. It’ll discharge like a few wet farts in a kid’s dirty diaper tossed into a dumpster outside a strip mall in Louisiana, it’ll make Hurricane Katrina look like the Battle of Alcatraz, Hell—I’m willing to bet that if it began tonight, sparked off by the murderous halfwit employed by ICE in Minnesota today, and drag on for eight-and-a-half months, 98% of the suburban neighborhoods across America won’t even notice, in particular on the Fourth of July, when unaffected families make more of a ruckus with their illegal fireworks purchased over the border than the few bedraggled goons all fired up for Trump could muster. I’m not trying to make light of it, I’m just saying this president’s support is not real — it’s a feigned shit-show 3-Ring Circus Clown Act of shitty real life Villains out of a Batman cartoon, and they’re running their train on absent rails, sailing over a cliff like out of a Warner Bros cartoon, caricatures of convicts in their striped prison pajamas, trying to run off with all our money and the thing I find rather funny is no one seems to care.  

     There was once upon a time when your average, every day American seemed to understand one simple tenet of our life under this red, white and blue flag which represents freedom for all, united under a government with a rule by law and operated for the people, by the people, who have all been sworn in from every disparate nation on Earth.  And that plain idea centered on everything our forefathers fought and died for, that their children and grandchildren and all the generations since then who did the same in the Civil War, WWI, and WWII, who shed their blood and gave their lives, as the rightwing love to say, and bravely died for our country so you and I can enjoy the freedom that our Constitution and Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights protects, with equality for every one, even those displaced, tired, and poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse washed up to our teeming shore, where we once pledged as good Samaritans to take them all in, and welcome the homeless, the tempest-tossed, to us, here in the USA, the land of the free, where we would all lift our lamps beside our golden door, embracing one and all to join us.  The tenet I refer to was the idea that if these once near unanimously agreed upon values weren't applicable to a single individual, they would then be quite lost to us.  I remember.  I remember that time clearly, in my head, when we still had enough integrity to uphold our values in service of one single individual human being.  I can't even remember what the saying was. If we can't reach out to help one person, or bother to think about saving them, what can we in truth be expected to do for others? While there's always something we can do for ourselves. Let's remember one person. 

    Let that one single person be Renee Nicole Good.  Why not let us commemorate her memory on this day, when her life was needlessly taken away, for no reason at all but to serve this crass and unnecessary crusade established on a whim by a charlatan who does not represent the interests of our expansive and diversified population of good, hard working true blue collar citizens who believe in nothing less than being innocent until proven guilty.  Let her be remembered and let justice be served in the following days.  It's time for the majority of our able citizens to flood our congressmen and women's phone calls and emails demanding they stop supporting this unhinged administration from doing any more damage to our reputation as a once well respected and trusted country among our allies throughout the world.  Let's rise up with a unified voice and just make the madness stop.  Otherwise I need a deeper and broader context, to make things a bit more clear.

    You may never know how deep it can get, or how long its been buried. Things have a way of surprising us, and from where I sit these days, it's so hard to tell since I'm trapped in my own closed-circuit version of Hell, what often seems to becoming my home. Oh no, say it ain't so.  Little game over, so overblown.  Only of our potential can nothing be known,  for it remains ever  yet to be reached, by definition.  We can agree to disagree on a single condition. Freedom. Let me sing, let freedom ring, it'll be alright. There are no differences to set aside, enjoy the ride, if you can, I say, if you can just stay tuned to what’s really going on, here. 

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Oscillating Oculus 

 

JANUARY 6. NEVER FORGET.

In remembrance of eight American citizens who lost their lives
as a result of the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack:

  

Brian D. Sicknick — U.S. Capitol Police Officer
Died on January 7, 2021, the day after responding to the Capitol attack. He collapsed after engaging with rioters and later died following multiple strokes. His death was officially ruled natural causes, but authorities and major news organizations have consistently linked it to his actions during the attack.

Howard Charles Liebengood — U.S. Capitol Police Officer
A veteran officer who responded to the January 6 attack and died by suicide on January 9, 2021. His family and department cited the trauma of the events as a contributing factor.

Jeffrey L. Smith — Metropolitan Police Department Officer
Responded to the Capitol attack and suffered injuries during confrontations with rioters. He died by suicide on January 15, 2021. A later ruling determined his death was directly caused by injuries sustained during the attack.

Kyle Hendrik DeFreytag — Metropolitan Police Department Officer
Responded to the January 6 attack and died by suicide in July 2021. His death has been publicly linked by colleagues and family to the trauma of that day.

Gunther Paul Hashida — Metropolitan Police Department Officer
Responded to the January 6 attack and died by suicide in July 2021. His death has been widely reported as connected to the psychological toll of the events. 

Ashli Babbitt — Civilian
Fatally shot by a U.S. Capitol Police officer while attempting to breach a barricaded doorway inside the Capitol during the attack.

Rosanne Boyland — Civilian
Collapsed and died during the riot near the Capitol. The District of Columbia medical examiner ruled her death an accidental overdose.

Kevin Greeson — Civilian
Died of a heart attack on Capitol grounds during the January 6 attack.

Benjamin Phillips — Civilian
Died of coronary artery disease during the events at the Capitol on January 6.

U.S. flag at half-mast over the U.S. Capitol; public domain (via Wikimedia Commons). 

Image reflects official mourning at the Capitol following the death of Officer Brian Sicknick.  

Source Note:
The names and descriptions above are based on contemporaneous and archival reporting by Reuters and the Associated Press, as well as official statements from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department, and the District of Columbia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. 

When Canada Steps Up, and the World Watches

 by roving reporter Shaun Lawton (written with AI support under reporter’s direction)

 

   Some shifts happen with headlines and sirens, while some happen quietly, in budget lines and pledges. Canada’s latest move is the second kind — but its echo is loud.

   In June 2025, Canada announced it would hit NATO’s 2 % defense spending target this year — years ahead of schedule — and then go further, embracing a new alliance investment pledge pushing military and infrastructure spending even higher by 2035. (reuters.com)

   For a country long criticized as a laggard in NATO budgets, the move is startling. For allies living in global unease, it is reassuring. For others — perhaps Washington — it is quietly pointed.

   The official story is familiar: the world is more dangerous. Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on. NATO’s eastern flank remains tense. The Arctic is no longer a thought exercise; it is a theater. Cyberattacks, undersea cables, and satellites now define modern deterrence. Canada, with vast territory and an embedded stake in NATO, cannot ignore any of it. (pm.gc.ca)

   All true. Yet incomplete.

   Because timing matters. And tone matters. And Canada’s timing — this leap forward — lands amid what many perceive as a gap in NATO leadership. The United States has offered mixed signals: affirmations of commitment punctuated with talk of cost, domestic priorities, and transactional alliances. Allies hear the nuance; they feel the wobble. (reuters.com)

   Canada heard differently. Canada decided: we will lead where someone else hesitates.

   The decision is concrete:

• 2 % GDP in defense spending this year — a leap from previous projections that wouldn’t reach it until 2032. (torontotoday.ca)

• Broader NATO investment pledge: pushing core defense and infrastructure spending toward 5 % by 2035. (nato.int)

• Leadership on the ground in Latvia and support for Ukrainian forces. (pm.gc.ca)

   This is not mere arithmetic. This is credibility, broadcast in dollars and policy.

   And here is the unspoken message: if the United States wavers, Canada will hold the line. It is not stepping away from the alliance. It is stepping in. Leading, in a moment when leadership is suddenly optional elsewhere.

   Yes, critics will note that defense spending competes with healthcare, housing, climate resilience. Debate should be had. A democracy thrives on such questions. But Canada’s move is not fear-mongering or posturing. It is responsibility — the quiet, expensive kind.

   Deterrence, after all, is a long game. Alliances do not fail because enemies strike. They fail when members doubt each other more than they fear the threat. And when smaller allies find themselves leading, history shows they do so because bigger ones have begun to hesitate.

   Canada’s decision is a message to the world and a warning to America: alliances cannot endure on wishful thinking. Peace costs something — attention, investment, resolve. Canada is paying that cost. Whether others will follow, or let doubt grow, is the question of the moment.

   Sometimes the most revealing acts of power are not demonstrations of force, but demonstrations of will. Canada just drew a line. The world, and especially Washington, would be wise to notice.

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 JANUARY 6.     NEVER FORGET.

---

Sources

• Reuters: Canada ramps up defense spending, meets NATO 2% early ➤ link

• Government of Canada: Canada joins NATO Defence Investment Pledge ➤ link

• NATO: Funding commitments overview ➤ link

• Toronto Today: Canada meets NATO 2% pledge ahead of schedule ➤ link

• Reuters: NATO summit statement on spending ➤ link

Disclaimer: AI, Integrity, and Our Commitment to Readers

 by roving reporter Shaun Lawton 

(written with AI support under reporter’s direction)

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The Next Day (Where Are We Now?)

review'd by yr roving reporter Shaun Lawton 

  (for the Oscillating Oculus) 

1. The Next Day. 

Right out of the cage this song snarls and shreds and builds intensity until the breaking point with db's vox assuring us "Here I am not quite dying, my body left to rot in a hollow tree, its branches throwing shadows on the gallows for me" and if you listen closely to the remaining lyrics about paper bodies and pain and diseases and purple-headed priests and the great line "they know God exists for the Devil told them so", it all adds up to one killer fucking track knocked out of the proverbial ballpark for me. Repeat listenings improve this and every last track on the album, I know because I can't stop listening to it.

2. Dirty Boys.
Then we segue into a unique sounding song for Bowie. This is a low down sleazy dirty saxophone dirge with remarkable guitar tones and angular rhythms. With lyrics about buying feather hats and stealing cricket bats and smashing windows, making noise, and running with dirty boys. . . what's not to fucking like?

3. The Stars (Are Out Tonight).
Another rocker knocked out of the park. 3 in a row? Hell we've barely scratched the surface of the new classic shit, and after listening to this one many times (it's a grower) I've determined this is the 1st 'classic' potential radio single with enough melodic catchiness and professional groovedom to please everybody. When he croons about Brigitte, Jack, Kate and Brad behind their sunglasses "gleaming like blackened sunshine" we are led to understand a brilliant poetic metaphor contrasting the celestial kingdom with Hollywood's and the public's overt glorification of celebrityhood ... a topic that no one knows better from personal experience than David Bowie.

4. Love is Lost.
A moody song that I've heard from more than one 20-something year old is their absolute favorite. Personally I can think of better tracks off this record but it pleases me to know that our younger generations adore this tune. I like it a lot myself because it's haunting and has a strange arrangement. Realize now that Bowie's lyrics throughout this album are nothing less than stellar. Beginning with these refrains "It's the darkest hour, you're twenty-two, the voice of youth, the hour of dread, the darkest hour and your voice is new, love is lost, lost is love, your country's new, your friends are new, your house and even your eyes are new, your maid is new and your accent too, but your fear is as old as the world" we are treated with more of the sharpest and incisive lyrics from Bowie's career, and that is saying something.

5. Where Are We Now?
I'll never forget hearing this song for the first time on db's b-day earlier this year, and sitting before my work computer utterly mesmerized by the equally brilliant video. I had to put up with the typical kneejerk bored reactionism from a host of dullards that this tune was "boring" or "melancholy" etc. and YEAH it's melancholy as all getout and I'll tell you right now it equals and sometimes surpasses my favorite tracks off the entire album. It is that good. The way it builds slowly to the epiphany of "As long as there's Sun, As long as there's Sun / As long as there's Rain, As long as there's Rain / As long as there's Fire, As long as there's Fire / As long as there's Me / As long as there's You" brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. Truly a phenomenal lead-in track which cleverly manages to defiantly refute the seething masses' apathy, I consider that move of first releasing this "downer" of a tune (which evolves into quite the opposite in fact ... much like the paradox of existence) as truly brilliant. A "check-mate" if you will right from the start. Where Are We Now? truly shines as one of David Bowie's greatest songs ever written, in my opinion.

6. Valentine's Day.
What can I say? Well there is no doubt David Bowie's got something to say. I will never tire of listening to this song for the remainder of my life ... perhaps it has something to do with the fact it's release coincides with the arrival of my newborn first son, with his "tiny face" and "scrawny hands" and "icy heart", (not to mention we almost named him Valentine, actually) ... or maybe it's merely the fact this is the best radio pop song David Bowie has recorded since . . . . I just don't know when. Easily since 1980's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) famous and everlasting track "Ashes To Ashes". I'm going to go ahead and dig into this song here for posterity, defending Bowie's lyrical intent and meaning behind it. With the subtle yet striking opening lines "Valentine told me who's to go / Feelings he's treasured most of all / The teachers and the football star" he sets up what in my rich experience of listening to rock music for the past 35 years is one of the most devastating critiques of American culture I've had the pleasure listening to. This song is my #1 choice for the next single and definitely my favorite in terms of sheer pop catchiness and melody. From the opening drum taps to the introductory guitar riff and on through to the glorious end, the song Valentine's Day may be the most profoundly stated song in the history of modern rock'n'roll to me. It is a very brave statement in defense of generations of kids bullied by our increasingly out of touch society's penchant towards encouraging the cultivation of rape culture and overt machismo. Never in my life have I been so moved by the intent behind the meaning of a song. Not only is it the catchiest pop song on the album, but that fact (along with the Yeah, yeah's of the backing chorus championing our titular hero) perfectly contrasts the dark underpinnings of the theme. Add this song to the growing list of shooter-songs (Boomtown Rats "I Don't Like Mondays," Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" and Korn's "Thoughtless" immediately leap to mind) and you have the unparalleled leader of the pack in my opinion. As far as I'm concerned, David Bowie has remarkably achieved the final word on this theme with his hit single Valentine's Day.

7. If You Can See Me.
And now we come to another well-played segue into a brooding, dark song filled with postmodern tension. Returning to his "Big Brother" roots with the eerie refrain "If you can see me / I can see you", this track is yet another masterful studio recording featuring great lyrics such as "I will take your lands and all that lays beneath, the dust of cold flowers, prison of dark ashes, I will slaughter your kind who descend from belief, I am the spirit of greed, a lord of theft, I'll burn all your books and the problems they make" . . .really a frightening tune (if you can manage to get your head inside it) even as it gets it's head inside you. By this point of the album, we are honestly scoring 7 out of 7 on the tracks list, and what makes it even better is the diversity of styles and sounds making each song unique, yet flowing into each other in a manner that only one who's mastered the art of conceptual rock albums could achieve.

8. I'd Rather Be High.
By this point in the album, the critical cynic in me is just dying to throw you readers out there a condemnation or two, just to appease your bitter little hearts. Unfortunately for the legion of mindless haters out there (yet joyously fortunate for the rest of us) I cannot offer a single droplet of disdain about this, the eighth track off The Next Day. I'd Rather Be High is as glorious an anti-war statement as I have ever heard, simply jam-packed with beautiful elements. We are looking at yet another catchy single easily as great as any other from this album, in fact whenever I listen to it I become so enraptured that I am immediately swept up in it to the point I believe with all my heart it is the best song, period. From the gorgeously endless wavy rhythm of the guitars to the incredible biting and beautiful lyrics, how could anyone with ears and a brain deny the power and majesty here? "I'd rather be high (I'd rather be high), I'd rather be flyyyyyying (I'd rather be flying), I'd rather be dead (or out of my head) than training these guns on those men in the sand, I'd rather be high ..." quite possibly amounts to the sentiment I sympathize the most with from the entire album. And just when you think this tune has shot it's load, you ain't heard nothing yet until you hear the sixty-six year old David Bowie croon with as much tricky passion as he's mustered in generations "I'm seventeen and my looks can prove it, I'm so afraid that I will lose it, I'd rather smoke and phone my ex be pleading for some teenage sex, yeah." See what he did there? Yet another example of his mastery of fiction into song. By shades and degrees Bowie reveals himself as a genuine author of fictional scenarios and invented protagonists via the medium of music. If this song is not a triumph, then I don't know what is. Tied with Valentine's Day as the perfect single for this day and age. To think the Thin White Duke yet speaks for today's teen generation during his ripening years is proof in the pudding for me that he is not fading gradually away; far from it. The decade he spent laying low has proven to be the wisest move the 70s superstar could possibly have made. By this point in the album, if you are not entirely convinced that David Bowie is at the peak of his powers as a genuine artist, then all I can think of to say is ... you're not paying attention. The underscoring theme of The Next Day is the ironic contrast between the lingering perception that his glory days (as Ziggy Stardust, etc.) are in the past, with the lingering implication that nothing could be further from the truth.

9. Boss Of Me.
Although it took me longer to appreciate this song fully, I do recall that the opening refrains grabbed me right away; "Tell me when you're sad, I wanna make it cool again, I know you're feeling bad, tell me when you're cool again." That little snippet caught my interest from the get-go, but it took longer to groove to what I now consider an awesome chorus "Who'd have ever thought of it, who'd have ever dreamed, that a small town girl like you would be the boss of me?" Bowie's sardonic lyrics never fail to amaze me, and of course it's the manner in which he sings them that lends them their particular twisted meaning. It may have taken a dozen listens to finally click, and now I can't get enough of this song. At this point the album is still clocking in at 100% . . . and I am amazed.

10. Dancing Out In Space.
Now we come to a real curve ball. (I'll admit to not liking this song too much the first few times I listened to it.) And I'll even admit that the first dozen or so times I listened to the album, there were a few tracks which reminded me of outtakes from his notoriously panned '87 (and cry) album Never Let Me Down. And to be honest ... this tenth track let me down, somewhat. But check this out. After hearing the song a few times, the bassline became so infectious, I could not deny it's inherent danceability, after repeat listenings, I became impressed by the thought that late-night clubs across metropolitan cities on Earth would be playing this new Bowie song to packed houses of dancing partygoers, and my indifference to it has now morphed into more of an appreciation. For one, there's no denying it's the snappiest song off the record for cryin' out loud! (I'm just not into snappy songs as much these days, since I stopped going to clubs years ago.) But I'll say this much, listening to Dancing Out In Space brings the old urge back and makes me dream of the good old days when we went clubbing and all the world was our oyster. If this song doesn't snap you out of your trance, I guess you're better off dead.

11. How Does The Grass Grow?
Blood blood blood ... that's how. Now we return to the more serious and brooding side of the album, after having been given some super nice breaks during the last three songs. Featuring one of the most chilling lines in recent memory, "Would you still love me if the clocks could go backwards? The girls would fill with blood and the grass would be green again. Remember the dead, they were so great (some of them). Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ... Nya ya ya ya ya ya ya. Where do the boys lie? Mud, mud mud." Here we are eleven cuts deep into Bowie's twenty-fourth studio album, and we are gifted with yet another stunning song. By this point all I can do is shake my head with wonder. If I could talk to David I'd say that I missed him on the scene more than he'd ever know, "waiting with my red eyes and my stone heart". Well I can personally vouch that the ten year wait has been more than worthwhile.

12. You Will Set The World On Fire.
At long last, here it is. The single track off The Next Day that I honestly don't care for too much. Sure, its got an easy throwaway catchiness to it, but that's exactly why it quickly wears itself thin, for me. (This song comes as closest to sounding like an alternate take from Never Let Me Down. It is perhaps the song which best exemplifies what the cynical side of us most likely expected from Bowie at this late stage of his career.)

13. You Feel So Lonely You Could Die.
If I had one question I could ask David about the meaning behind any one of the songs off The Next Day, it would undoubtedly be "Can you tell us if the song You Feel So Lonely You Could Die is based on a real person, and if so, who it is, please?" Here is the most grandiose ballad off the album, and it's a bittersweet symphony indeed. With powerful accusations such as "Hidden from your friends, stealing all they knew, lovers thrown in airless rooms, then vile rewards for you" and "But I’m gonna tell, yes I’ve gotta tell, gotta tell the things you’ve said when you’re talking in the dark and I’m gonna tell the things you’ve done when you’re walking through the park” and “there’ll come the assassin’s needle on a crowded train, I’ll bet you feel so lonely you could die” are powerful indictments indeed, but they merely pave the way for the climactic fury of “I can see you as a corpse hanging from a beam, I can read you like a book” all building towards the ultimately satisfying lyrical annihilation of whomever the subject of this inspired ballad is, “Oblivion shall own you, death alone shall love you, I hope you feel so lonely you could die.” Just … wow. This penultimate track surges back 110% and I can’t help if Bowie intentionally put the one throwaway track directly before it, perhaps for added psychological effect. If not, it sure ends up working that way for me.

14. Heat.
The album closes with this slow burner which also took me several listens to fully appreciate. In the end, that’s what I love about this album. Bowie has offered us a challenging listen with a sprinkling of poppy, easy-listening tunes scattered here and there, creating a dynamic and fully realized rock album, the likes of which I haven’t heard from him (much less from a lot of bands today) in many years. When he concludes the album with lines such as “My father ran the prison / I can only love you by hating him more / that’s not the truth, it’s too big a word / He believed that love is theft / love and whores / the theft of love / And I tell myself I don’t know who I am / My father ran the prison / my father ran the prison / But I am a seer / I am a liar / I am a seer / I am a liar” etc., us old school fans are reminded and the new ones are tipped-in that once again he is playing the role of author, here. He has created a brilliant fiction in writing The Next Day. And for me it has been the most engrossing and satisfying rock album of 2013.

In conclusion, 93% of this album (that's 13 out of 14 tracks kids) is the proof in the pudding, so to speak, that Bowie remains in tip-top form at the age of sixty-six, in the year 2013. How cool is that? To think that the proverbial Next Day (today) is in many ways even better than the glorified Olden Days of yore is as welcome a surprise as we could honestly expect. It took me listening to this album for at least a month before it all gelled together for me. You may hate it, love it, leave it or remain indifferent ... I don't care. As a long time appreciator of Bowie the mercurial songwriter, crooner, and uncrowned king of the alternative scene, I could not possibly be more pleased than I am with The Next Day. As solid an album as I could have dreamed. So let there be Another Day ... and the next ... and the next. I am confident he can continue to deliver good music for another several years to come. Yet I also expect he will retire with grace before he indeed may begin to fade away... And on that note, I also expect it's entirely possible this may be the last album. (I only say that because he could not possibly make a grander exit nor have produced a better Swan Song). Still ... Bowie is obviously genetically programmed for boundless energy and creativity. So if he asked me ... I say don't stop now, David! Hell, I'm getting older myself, so I won't even mind if he starts gradually fading away from this pinnacle in his extraordinary career. Generations of people have felt this way since I was in my teens, so I'm going to say it now … we love you, David.

Saying No But Meaning Yes, Bluebirds & Survival Sex

by Shaun A. Lawton    (This article first appeared in The Intestinal Fortitude, on April 18, 2018 -- it's the flagship article for my column, the original inception piece for The Oscillating Oculus.)

   What is Blackstar?  It's a 1960 song by Elvis Presley: “Every man has a black star, a black star over his shoulder, and when a man sees his black star, he knows his time, his time has come.” It turns out David Bowie and Elvis Presley not only share the same birthday (January 8) but they were also drinking buddies. So we have a pretty good idea why Bowie decided on the title Blackstar for his swan song.  Incidentally, the album's title is represented by the symbol of a black star, like this: ★ 

   I've been a fan for a few decades since a long-ago girlfriend turned me on to Bowie and the Velvet Underground, back in the early eighties. Since those halcyon days my obsession with their music has only grown and evolved to become an essential part of me.  As soon as I was able to, I placed my preorder for the limited clear vinyl edition of the album ★, which looks like this in its shrink-wrapped package:

   Strangely enough, when the album dropped on Friday, January 8, 2016 (Bowie's 69th birthday) my preorder had yet to arrive. I was really looking forward to listening to it on his birthday.  When that weekend drew to a close without the album arriving, I went to bed rather early on Sunday night, January 10 (without having heard the breaking news of Bowie's demise). 

   I'll never forget the text I received from my brother upon waking early Monday morning to go to work. It read: David Bowie has returned to the stars.  I kept reading it over and over, half disbelieving. It slowly dawned on me that...he was gone from our solar system.  I had zero interest in verifying this by searching online, at the moment.  All I needed was a cup of coffee. Where the fuck did Monday go? 

   Later that afternoon, upon returning home, I found the coveted package had arrived. There it was, leaning against my front doorstep.  Little did I know then that my first listen to the album ★ would end up bordering on a religious experience. One reason for this was the decision I made to wait until nighttime. I insisted we shut off every light source in the house. Everything went black. I lit a solitary candle in honor of David's passing. This would turn out to be an uncanny coincidence. (That's because during the opening ten-minute long title track, Bowie begins the album intoning “In the villa of Ormen, in the villa of Ormen, stands a solitary candle, ah-ah, ah-ah, in the center of it all, your eyes...”) 

   The mysterious beauty of the undulating candle flame casting distorted shadows about the living room complemented the music and helped send us who were listening into a trance. Whether you're already familiar with the album or have yet to hear it for the first time, I can't stress enough how rewarding it is to wait until nightfall, switch off all the lights in your home, and light one single candle before you push PLAY or let the diamond needle drop into the vinyl groove. The entire album will catapult you into an extraordinary audial experience, trust me.

   So what  is ★?  It's a post modern amalgamation of avant garde jazzmanship stirred into a potent rallying call for transgressive artistry worldwide. It's a dazzling shot fired from a sonic flare gun as a challenge to the trigger generations. All seven songs push the envelope of the commercial mainstream past the shattering point. Each one does so in its own way. Some by virtue of their musical conception and length. Others for their savage lyrical attacks which leave virtually no stone in our frigid culture unturned. A strategically dropped F-bomb in Girl Loves Me is just the tip of the iceberg, never mind that it's sung in Nadsat (more on this later). 

   Hearing it for the first time my senses were so sharpened I swear I thought I caught subtle cues and references all over the map, from hints at certain modern blind pariahs to allusions of lost jaded sirens.  “I was born upside down... I was born the wrong way round... We're all Blackstars... We're not new stars... We're not wandering stars... Man she punched me like a dude. 'Tis a pity she was a whore. 'Tis my fate I suppose. That was patrol. That was patrol. This is war. 'Tis a pity she was a whore... Man I'm so high it makes my brain whirl. Dropped my cellphone down below... Ain't that just like me.” 

   Here's an album crafted with certain crucial elements from classic records of the past. One twelve inch vinyl platter. Seven cuts from start to finish. I'm still marveling that Bowie managed to consecrate this album to eternity on his sixty-ninth birthday just two days before he died. I heard recently from someone that if you make it past your sixty-ninth, you gain another twelve years of life. So much for that bullshit. Major Tom has taken his exit through the Tannhauser Gate, leaving us all stranded behind shell-shocked, our tears lost in rain.  

   There's something too canny in the way everything lines up on this album. (Hold on, Side 1 just ended. I've got to go flip the record over now and listen to Side 2 again.) This new take of Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) is truly a jump forward into progressive fusion that blends and twists into a sinister symphony awash in creepy beats, stirring up a steady down-tempo rhythm, and flowing on in weird and inventive ways. The original version of this song (released the year before as a limited edition 10" on Record Store Day) is a modest exercise in sophisticated noir jazz, all shadows and fog and stringed instruments. On the album proper it sounds like rock'n'roll beamed in from outer space by a radio transmission from a distant exoplanet. 

   I could listen to the music on this album forever. Bowie's crooned narration on Sue borderlines on malevolent intent and blurs the murderous with a lovelorn longing I don't think I've ever heard elsewhere. When I first listened to the beginning of Girl Loves Me, I could not believe my ears. A song sung in Nadsat: how about that. Where the fuck did Monday go? Talk about horrorshow.

   So let's dive into the album and examine some of its subtext, shall we? The following is an overview of sides one and two, along with observations about the larger context of Bowie's ambition to be a playwright and his status as an actor. Hold my hand and I'll take you there. 

(Note how these symbols spell out B O W I E)

   The solemn, undulating tones from the music at the onset of the epic ten-minute title track from David Bowie's Swan Song ★ really propel the listener into the darker undercurrents of a futuristic world. A world which is apparently the ragged remnants of our own, before the last of its evidence is obliterated off the face of the Earth. Our enigmatic superstar carves out his final alluring persona, himself really, portrayed as both blind, stumbling pariah (“button-eyes”) and aging dark priest of the sect of a cult signified by the image of a black star embossed on the cover of their bible.

     In short, Bowie has pulled off the remarkably deft stunt of immortalizing himself in the eyes of popular culture by realizing his lifelong dream of writing a play to be performed on Broadway. That dream came to fruition with the play Lazarus, which ran from December 7, 2015 to December 20, 2016, and which garnered some very good reviews. That it would be loosely based after the persona he developed as an actor in the lead role filming Nicholas Roeg's film adaptation of Walter Tevis's science fiction novel The Man Who Fell To Earth was an unpredictable maneuver, as was casting Michael C. Hall (famous for playing the titular role of the serial-killer slaying DEXTER) in the lead part. I think it's safe to assume David knew he was already too old to play the role.

      Cutting to the chase, the real question remains: how good is this final studio album, actually? I'm all too happy (and still a little stunned) to say that I think it ranks among the greatest albums he ever released. It's hard to pin-point exactly why his band delivers a pitch perfect performance of all seven songs except by listening to it. Suffice it to say they find a way to balance contrasts for an alternately loose and tight execution, piloted by the sure expertise of the legendary frontman.

     ★ became the exceptional experimental followup to 2013's excellent return to form The Next Day, where David proved he was still the boss after a ten year absence from the scene. But with this followup, I do not believe its possible to overstate just how monumental an album Bowie has left us with to get lost in, endlessly and repeatedly, without tiring of it.

     This is an album which, on the one hand, hearkens back to the good old days, when records clocked in at about 42 minutes, and usually featured no more than nine songs (five on one side, four on the flip side) and on the other hand, manages to capture a post-modern sound far ahead of its time.  The album is like a study of extremes contrasted against one other. At just seven songs, the ten minute progressive intro (the Keystone track at the center of it all) frames this simple set of tunes into a seamless, loosely conceptual album.

     Back during the time when the Compact Disc format first allowed bands to put out albums over an hour long (often featuring sixteen tracks or more), db's album ★ achieves far more with what appears to be much less. Yet beneath its slickly produced surface, and after repeated listens, Bowie's final studio album proves itself to resonate richly with many unfolding rewards for the devoted listener. I think a lot of it has to do with his having allowed the musicians plenty of creative freedom in their jamming together. His faith in them exchanged for their faith in him amounts to a remarkable album that will stand the test of time.   

     The razor sharp lyrics here provide a constellation of meanings and are even presented graphically as such in the liner notes of the original LP, a beautiful example being the second track 'Tis A Pity She Was A Whore. These seven songs are aimed and fired with the deft precision of a human cupid, each one strikes the heart in its own way.

     I think it's safe to say Bowie has challenged a new generation of artists and rockers to greater heights of aspiration with these seven songs. Bowie released many albums in his time, setting successively higher standards of musicianship and lyrical content throughout his career. With this final record ★ he sets the bar impossibly high once again, and he dares us all to reach for it.

     Listening to the album for me is like being guided over twilit nocturnal waters on a sleek black ship and being taken away on a journey of discovery. The third track and popular lead-in single Lazarus has this effect on me. I picture a prow cutting through black water as it transports the listener across the first side of the record album, depositing us on the far shore of silence where we are forced to allow the implications of the lyrics to sink in.

     Flipping the record over to side 2 ushers in the strident and post-modern tones of the new version of Sue (or In a Season of Crime) which has significantly evolved since its initial incarnation. Here on the album proper, this spookily narrated murder mystery gets a proper overhaul into one of the album's heaviest and most progressive cuts.

     We then segue into Girl Loves Me, the song sung in Nadsat with an unforgettably catchy refrain. (Nadsat, which roughly translated means “teen-speak,” is the invented language of author Anthony Burgess for his visionary dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange.) 

     The penultimate track Dollar Days amounts to the perfect Bowie tune, casually delivered. It's nothing to see. It's nothing to me. I really do think one of the main reasons the album is so successful must be that Bowie wasn't domineering in the studio.  One gets the impression he just let his band mates play more or less how they wanted to. There is a greater degree of free-form jazz explored by the saxophones, for instance, than what we'd become accustomed to in past studio recordings. 

     The hauntingly familiar tones of the saxophone's signature lead-in to the final track immediately establish that this is it:  the final Bowie song; and it doesn't waste its time gathering everyone's attention to embark on this one last trip together sailing the wind-rippled and moon-licked waters of our late night excursion into the uncharted tropical reefs of the human soul.

     When the album is over, I can't help but feel left behind, since Major Tom took his Gemini Space Craft onward past the Morning Star without us. The Man Who Sold The World may not have been able to give everything away, but he certainly left us with a legacy to ponder over and enjoy, for the remainder of our short lives here on this planet.

     In short, David Bowie didn't just knock his final album out of the ballpark. He sent it skyrocketing from the solar system on its way to Lord knows which far away star, leaving us all behind here dumbstruck on Earth with a dawning realization.        We're Blackstars.   

        

Major Tom bids a fond farewell to us all.

photo by Jimmy King