vale the great dog pan

part dog part god
visitor from the dog star 
the dog who fell to earth
the diamond dog
taoist sage and salty old sea dog
loved dog
beloved dog it's the end of an era, 
i sail alone
and you wait for me in a better place.

a celebration of david bowie, or a david bowie celebration. sydney opera house, bowies backing musicians from all periods select five cities around the world and without any rehearsals offer a few lucky people the chance to hear them play to their comrade and leader one last time. 
he was there, you could feel it, we invoked his spirit, the packed audience on their feet for the whole three hours, dancing, crying, and yeah celebrating the last great icon. lot of joy in the house. a lot.
mike garson told us a story, he and david were in japan and met an old zen monk. the monk said that world religions were meaningless as the message had been lost through their corruption and now it was up to artists. mike garson said, we are here to heal and heal with you. celebrate david and  then they played an amazing gig, three hours. i danced sang along and watched, having somehow managed to buy the last seat left, right at the back, in the corner where i had plenty of room to enjoy, fashion, boys keep swinging, sorrow, aladdin sane, lady grinning soul, where are we now, fame, win, golden years, five years, changes, life on mars and space oddity, loving the alien, boys keep swinging, stay, wild is the wind, rebel, diamond dogs, heroes, suffragette city, under pressure, moonage daydream, sound and vision, life on mars, ziggy, starman, china girl, let's dance and the rest....

a celebration. 

rain falls, seaside town in summer, plants on the side of the street  rejoicing. i'm driving along in the module through time. i watch a few rainforests pass by, some strange buildings rise and fall like the tidal movements, temporary things come and go, chromosomes mutate strange evolutionary dead ends slip through the cracks, escape from the prison planet, religions are born. 
more news from nowhere. 
static eats the airways, i see strange scenes outside the mind mine, a slippery shaman like reptile with temptation lullabies offering me some sexy knowledge but i'm immune to the 21st century blues, got my immunity aura mojo working. serpentine and crystalline time, don't mix in the particle accelerator with out some kind of fall out. i see creature features slide through cracks in the skies, a misfit population hiding undercover like chameleon sleeper agents waiting for their cue, brains washed and hung out to dry by authority...man.
big flaming birds fall from the sun, ignition and fire, a burning desire just to have one more day. yeah i'm witnessing butterflies, ah it's all to much, beauty is tragic, but only if it's true. 
nuclear and atomic, spirit and demonic, it's a clock stopping era, the suicidal monopolies their truth, it's not for sale baby but everything has a price. i'll take a life for a life, so sayeth the great sayer. oh baby i ain't soothing you with promises or kind words, romantic fucking lies or mysterious truths. 
elephantine, airborne mermaid shapes bloom from mushroom and vine. gigantic insect devastate cities that appear like a future tokyo, all neon and over population, hack shops, body mod specialists and cut price gene slicers making deals with desperation. 
for a moment i think about picking up a dolphins sonar but if i leave the module i'm bound by psychics to join the linear flow and i could never return to the module.
i sit back and close my eyes, there's only so much time a man can live in.

BOWIE IN BERLIN - CONCERT

Bowie in Berlin from Göteborgs Symfoniker on Vimeo.

the furnace starts early, i've had a sleepless night, air to hot, my ceiling fan is on the high speed but it's fighting a loosing battle as it can't even cut through the air it's like thick liquid sky. all i can do is lay there in the dark breathing shallow breaths and trying to stay alive. even my blood flow is sluggish, synapses just refuse to fire. thoughts can't even be bothered to be born so they lay there melted down to some half formulated idea. around 5am i get up, clean my teeth, i sit down and watch the sun, and half hour later as it pierces the day the heat begins to burn. i drive down the road, the car is the coolest place and my body enjoys the reprieve. 
on return to mission control i languish on my lounge like a worn out washed up hollywood scarlet and can't even be bothered to roll a spliff. my garden looks more yellow that green and my fish are hovering slowly, expending minus energy seems to be on all my beasts mind. 
i flick on the new tv, its much bigger than the one i paid for, there was some kind of mix up which worked in my favour. however it's far to big, i can't watch it for to long as it feels like i'm at the front row in a cinema, it's to immersive and for most tv that's a quality i think is unhealthy. however there are advantages. 
even the sound takes over the whole space, it dominates the room. 
i lay back and close my eyes, thinking of a different time. 
my business head flicks through some ideas but no single one cuts through, just write a random thought says. write and write and see what happens. so that's where i am at.

i have a dr, he's a tall chinese chap straight out of william burroughs, i call him dr. lee but he he may be called something else. dr. chang perhaps, the receptionists all think i'm crazy.
'there is no dr. lee here, you mean dr. chang.'
'to me he is dr. lee.'
'take a seat mr. mission.'
'it's just captain, no mr. or mission.'
i get the look that says, 'he needs a different type of dr.'
well it's been a long time since i seen a dr whom i trust and dr. lee is my man, he looks like he's got the keys to the medicine cabinet and helping himself, he's got the shakes and speaks in a raspy oriental tongue. needles everywhere, syringes and pills spilling out over his desk. the book of change lays open on a side table.
he has very thin lips and narrow eyes, black eyes pinned like a nasty chemist. he sits down and suddenly looks like a preying mantis. i love this guy, a strange fantasy pops inside my head as he chops up a couple lines of bug powder dust and offers me a medical tube. 
in reality i have to tell him about some issues for a sick note.
he presses a keyboard which is hidden under the cluttered desk and a printer kicks in, then he hands me some straws to pick, i'm directed to pick six. 'ask question,' he says.
'am i in good health for work?'
he arranges them on the floor and consults his book, he shows me but it's in chinese pictogram. 'hexagram 22,captain, says you are now in form not function, the environment is not one of depth, you are appreciated for image not essence. you perfectly fill a roll, no one sees the genuine you. still, you are being listened to and watched. use this influence to further your goals as much as possible, even if you don't understand you can connect with a few isolated hearts.' 
he smiles and read's last line, 'relax, enjoy attention.' 
'what's hexagram 22 called? i ask.
'pi or in english grace, you feel better now?'
  

step out of the shower into the furnace, my skin seems encased in a layer of second skin, an invisible ultra thin sweat suit. i can feel my body slime through the thick viscous air in mission control. 
if you have never been to the tropics then you couldn't appreciate this oppressive heat, personally i love it, the way my reptilian brain just wants to find the most attractive girl in the room and get naked under the fan. pull her into some sensual twilight sultry contortion of pleasure until our bodies meld into one wet slime covered slug like slow moving love making creature. the heat pumps through my atoms, blood on the slow boil. 
i wake up under the fan alone, it's night, still ridiculously hot. somethings wrong, the fan no longer rotates. i check the time, it's midnight, i must have drifted off.
i look out at the street, all lights are off, i check my bedside lamp, there's no power. the temperature is rising. 
i wander along with my super slimline flashlight, it's a high performance  swizz army knife of a flashlight, perfect for any extreme situation, any dark environment.
my body moves so slowly in the heat, i avoid the towers of books and  a few cd's on the floor, make my way down into the studio where i look out at the garden. 
pitch black outside save for the slither of moonlight that casts peculiar shadows across the garden, particularly at my palms. there are some strange clouds up there, very dark with splinters of light. a crack in the sky.
my body is dripping in sweat, it's pouring from me, ridiculous. i don't know what to do with myself so i sit down and watch the night pass by. 
it's far to hot to fall asleep, i can just about breath. there's no longer a sensual feeling in the air, in fact i feel somewhat nervous. i run a self diagnostic, yeah, breathing is about all i can manage. i peer outside into the night, the terrible oppressive atmosphere, the heavy presence of things in our world being just slightly out of whack. it begins to 'clunk' in as i look deeper into the night
something moves across the night, a silhouette. involuntary i take a step backwards into total darkness. am i hiding?
i can't keep my eyes from looking at the long inhuman shapes that flutter by, in and through the black skies pass terrible shadow like feathered bodies. my brain so slow to understand, synapses misfire and make the wrong calculations, these are no angels. in that alien heat i tremble as a cold shiver starts along my spine. 

today was the first day i actually felt okay, like my energy was good. i think my reserves were depleted and although the surf recharged me it didn't really kick in till this morning when i jumped on the train and made my way into red eye to pick up some stuff i had ordered. two immaculate bowie boxes, although i have everything except one track, i sort of thought it would be nice to hear the remastered versions. i also picked up some cuban science fiction. then i quickly made my way home for an afternoon surf.
the beach was packed out, today being the last day of the holidays so every woman and her cat was down there soaking up the rays. i didn't like the look of the surf, big chop but when i went in i found myself engulfed by seaweed, it wrapped itself around my, getting everywhere. i tell you, there is not much worse, it feels so weird. i soon realised i was the only one in the water due to the amount of seaweed. every one else stayed on the shore. i was in there for under five minites and couldn't stand it any longer. 

captain mission has breakfast, a surf and an interesting conversation with a very intelligent redhead this morning, attractive to, and a sort of successful business woman type. she rolls up in a nice car all the way from sydney to see me. i must admit i've already had two coffee's and am in full rave mode so as soon as introductions are over i start, blah blah blah blah i go, like a talking robot waffling on about this and that, my rants take no prisoners, she looks somewhat bemused as i challenge her own thoughts, but then suddenly i withdraw, rant over. 
at the beach she stands out from the horde with her red hair and pale skin and i imagine we would look pretty odd together, a dark skinned fish man and a red headed wraith. the water is beautiful and the waves although not perfect make it interesting. i offer her my fin which like a trooper she tries.
on shore we talk about various yogi's and religions. dmt and ayahuscia and she perks up. my type of girl. 
it's a glorious day, sun shines down skies blue. she drives back home, and i return to mundane life and bake some muffins. 
it's a strange thing to contemplate, a relationship. do i really want one, if i did it would be with someone like her, interesting and self made. 

'om sri rama jaya rama jaya jaya rama.'

 'victory for the spiritual self.'

agent speedsexy thought projected her self into my day. it was quite peculiar at the time as i was driving along the freeway after getting away somewhat early from work. one moment i was changing lanes, the next she's telling me to overtake the cars in front. i give her a quick look and see she is deadly serious so i put my foot down.
agent speedsexy is not some one you mess with. 
she plays with my radio, turning off the talkback host and presses a few music stations, nothing catches her fancy so she's rummaging around opening hatches and concealed compartments until she finds a stack of cds. she flips through them seriously, and sticks on into the slot. 
'that's better.'
i smile, she has good taste in tunes.
'now mission, where you taking me?'
'i was going home, where would you like to go.'
'surprise me mission.'
i nod, my mind flicks through a serious of possibilities and arrives at the inevitable. i steer the car down the road, and take a turn off, 'this is the road less travelled. this is where we are going. you and me.'
we settle into some excellent driving conditions, no traffic, no signposts, no traffic lights or junctions, along a narrow coastal road and eventually follow it uphill to a lookout where the car comes to a rest. i leave the motor on and we look out at the ocean, waves breaking into the rocks and a few determined surfers catching waves.
we smoke a spilff, watch the sun sinking. then she turns and says, 'good call mission.'
i want to say something but it's to late. she's gone.

the spinning blade in my head works harder today than ever before, it is now a silver pole with it's multi bladed attachments slicing away, chopping at the remnants of stupid forms i cling to, occasionally something will just turn up and the blade automatically goes to work. it's far to powerful for me to even attempt to control, it just works and works, powered by some endless frictionless energy, perpetually aware independent of my own abilities. it does not work for me, but it works for me.