Hidden Track 2: Starman by David Bowie
Facing the Great Unknown with the courage of Ripley, the moxie of Ziggy, and the backing of an amazing crew
My dad taught me every epic journey deserves a great soundtrack. My PalliMed Mixtape is the story of my Palliative Medicine Fellowship year, told in 15 songs.
Do you recognize this jacket?
(source: ebay)
This jacket rules. This is the jacket worn by the fictional crew of the commercial towing vehicle The Nostromo in the year 2122. The crew signed up for a job with the Weyland-Yutani corporation to return 20,000,000 tons of mineral ore to Earth. Unfortunately, they ended up fighting an Alien instead.
Alien is the first R-rated movie my dad let me watch with him. Strike that. He didn’t let me watch it with him—he insisted on it. Why? Because it’s incredible. It’s a masterpiece of lived-in, gritty, space horror, a story of an unsuspecting heroine, Ripley, rising to confront an impossible situation. Director Ridley Scott establishes and maintains the movie’s eerie tone perfectly from the opening scene to the very end, and very cleverly, to build suspense, he almost never shows us the titular alien.
I recently watched this movie with my boys. Not our first foray into R-Rated movies together (a few Schwarzenegger titles took precedence), but pretty close to the front of the line. The movie is just as powerful today as it was when I saw it in the 1980s—maybe even more so as its lack of digital effects stands in glorious analog contrast to the CGI-bloat of the superhero movie era. My sons loved Alien, and called the characters in this movie “space truckers”—an apt descriptor. These characters are just everyday folks doing their job suddenly faced with an extraordinary situation.
Alien was released into the world in 1979, and so was I, making me a proud member of Generation X. I barely made the cut. Ten months later and I’d have been a Millenial! I must have known that I had almost missed out on being a part of something great, as I was always looking up to those Gen Xers who had gone before me—my older sisters, my older cousins, older kids at school—to help define “cool” and “important” for me. Always looking back, rarely looking forward, wanting to make sure I hadn’t missed out on anything significant.
The Alien movies were definitely cool and important. I knew that without asking. Ronald, a recent patient of mine, knew that, too. I did not know Ronald long, but I got the sense that he was the kind of Gen Xer I would have looked up to. He and his friends exuded a confidence and a coolness to which I still aspire. Ripley-battling-aliens levels of cool. John-Cusack-holding-a-boombox-over-his-head levels of cool. Bowie-on-the-back-of-this-album levels of cool.
There’s a Starman waiting in the sky / He’d like to come and meet us / But he thinks he’d blow our mind.
Ronald and his friends blew my mind, and I imagine they will blow yours as well. I didn’t know Ronald loved Bowie when I set out to write about him using a Bowie song, but his friends tell me he would love this song choice. I don’t know which Bowie songs Ronald loved most, but my favorite David Bowie songs all have to do with outer space.
Space Oddity hypnotizes me with its haunting simplicity and its conversational empathy for the song’s doomed spaceman: “Ground control to Major Tom...” I hurt and fear for Major Tom every time I near the end of the song as ground control loses him somewhere in the desolate void of space. This may be a hot take, and I mean no disrespect, but I think Space Oddity is a far better song about the loneliness and terror of space than Elton John’s Rocket Man.
Another Bowie space classic, Ziggy Stardust, comes at us with a very different energy. It’s got moxie. Ziggy is irresistible and cocksure. The opening guitar riff alone has enough swagger to knock me over every time. It’s also just fun and wacky--who doesn’t like hearing about Ziggy’s screwed-down hairdo and the spiders from Mars?
Starman, though, is my favorite. It’s the innocence, excitement, and wonder that win me over with this one. I love imagining the young friends in the song as they encounter a Starman from out of this world—so curious, so hopeful. I suggest the Starman in this song could actually be a metaphor for anything wonderful—new yet somehow familiar, exciting and maybe even a little dangerous, but ultimately benevolent and good. Bowie intentionally wrote the chorus to Starman to be very catchy and uplifting, in the style of Somewhere Over The Rainbow, and would often sing Dorothy’s lyrics while performing Starman live. This song is special. This is the song for Ronald.
I met Ronald at the hospice house early on a Tuesday morning. I could hear the music coming from his room before the nurses even had a chance to warn me about it.
Didn't know what time it was / The lights were low, oh, oh / I leaned back on my radio, oh, oh / Some cat was layin' down some rock 'n' roll lotta soul, he said
Ronald was a writer, a traveler, a fun, kind, all-around good guy. He was the “glue”, as it turns out, for an amazing group of friends. They stuck with each other through thick and thin. Over the last seven years, these friends had walked with Ronald through his long journey since being diagnosed with throat cancer. Way too young to be leaving this world, Ronald now faced the final stages. No more curative treatments were available, and he was getting sicker. A couple of days before I met him he had called his friends and said he could no longer control his symptoms at home. He needed help.
I had to phone someone, so I picked on you / Hey, that's far out, so you heard him too!
His friends raced to his side, got him to the hospital, continuously advocated for him while there, and ultimately got him admitted to the hospice house where his symptoms could be more easily managed. Now they were going to see to it that Ronald went out not with a whimper, but with a bang.
I walked into Ronald’s room that Tuesday morning and found not a solemn vigil, but a rocking party. What seemed like no fewer than ten people greeted me. Music played loudly over the TV, a playlist of Ronald’s favorite songs. Scattered around the room, colorful photos of Ronald and his crew in crazy costumes told the story of these close connections that had lasted for so many years. Ronald, comfortable at last, slept with the head of his bed halfway up. He responded a little that day when I examined him, but mostly he rested. His mother hugged me, so thankful to see her son so well cared for by our hospice nurses, and the band of Gen X buddies asked me for an update.
“Y’all tell me! He looks like he’s doing pretty well right now, resting, looks very comfortable, right? And here you all are celebrating with him. I’m guessing he would have wanted that, huh?” They agreed emphatically. They were doing exactly what their friend wanted—playing music, laughing, telling stories. He wouldn’t want his friends to be sad and mopey. That wasn’t their style.
He told me / Let the children lose it / Let the children use it / Let all the children boogie
I looked around the room again, and that’s when I noticed, draped over a chair next to Ronald’s bed, the single coolest article of clothing I have ever seen—a replica Nostromo jacket, just like the crew wore in Alien.
“Whoa…a Nostromo jacket? Is that Ronald’s? That’s so cool!” The friends were pleased that I recognized it, and I felt my Gen X cred tick up a few notches. They told me how much he loved Alien, and how that jacket was his favorite garment. I examined Ronald again and went over his meds and his plan.
As I stood at the foot of the bed facing the assembled congregation, his mother at my side, I felt a bit like a pastor offering a benediction. “Thank you all so much for being here. This disease is not what anyone would want. But I am so thankful that you are here with Ronald as he faces it. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a groups of friends quite like this. Ronald looks very peaceful. Y’all just let us know if he looks uncomfortable or needs anything.” The rest of the day continued similarly.
Then the loud sound did seem to fade / Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase
The next morning the nurses reported that Ronald had taken a turn for the worse overnight—he was no longer responding at all, his breathing had become irregular. I walked into the room and found the same crew still hanging with Ronald. A bit more somber, but still generally upbeat. They knew his death was imminent, they knew he was close—just minutes or hours left now. They knew that this is how Ronald would want it—music playing, friends laughing and smiling and telling old stories together as they surrounded his bed.
There was one major difference to the scene this second morning—Ronald, dying in bed, was now wearing his Nostromo jacket.
(https://alienseries.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/aliencast.jpg)
Of course he was. He was Ripley. He was Ziggy freaking Stardust. He was going out in style. His friends had put the jacket on him for this final leg of his journey into the great unknown. He had wanted that. There’s a certain dignity and strength that comes when one accepts that death is coming, understands that there is nothing that can be done to stop it or even slow it, and that sometimes, just facing it bravely is the best thing one can do. Wearing that jacket to face death was just about the coolest thing I have ever seen. I will never stop being moved when thinking about the bravery, the resolution, the camaraderie of this man and his friends.
He died a few hours later, Nostromo jacket still on, friends still at his side.
Like Ripley’s story in Alien, Ronald’s is the story of a hero and his mates rising to meet an impossible and unexpected situation. A story of defiance and friendship to the end. The commitment of his friends to be with him at his side to the end is a testament to the kind of friend Ronald had been. I know that Roland’s passing left a hole that his crew will never fully be able to repair, but from what I learned of them in just those two days caring for Ronald, they’re a resilient bunch, and I know they’ll find ways to keep moving forward.
In the song, Starman, the narrator and his friend wonder if they can interact with this visitor from another dimension:
Look out your window, I can see his light / If we can sparkle he may land tonight
I know that Ronald’s friends would give anything to have him back, just to interact one more time. As far out as it may sound, I like to imagine that even now, somewhere over the rainbow, there’s a Starman waiting in the sky for them. And going forward, as this group of friends finds ways to sparkle, I hope they will get little glimpses of their Starman’s light. And I hope it blows their minds.
There’s a Starman waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us / But he thinks he'd blow our minds / There's a Starman waiting in the sky / He's told us not to blow it / 'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile / He told me / Let the children lose it / Let the children use it / Let all the children boogie
Tell me Crash Cart Campfire friends:
Do you ever think about how you would want to go out? Have you told the ones who love you most?
What is your favorite David Bowie song?
What’s on your mixtape?