Wednesday morning, I went into surgery to have an infection drained - a somewhat solo mission if ever there has been one - a little freaked out but, thankfully, significantly drugged up. Heh, as if there's any other way to go into surgery.
When I woke up, after asking what is apparently a standard question - When do we get started? - the band in my head slammed into "Lady Stardust." I didn't hum it, or try to remember the words. I heard the song.
"And he was all right/The band was altogether/Yes he was alright/The song went on forever/Yes, he was awful nice/Really quite out of sight..."
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust being the first Bowie album to obsess me, over and over, as I imagine it has millions of others, it's not surprising that the song popped into my head at all.
The song is about Ziggy hitting the big time. This is when he hits the stage and the audience gets it, despite his outlandishness and own brand of art - his ascension. The music is a bit dreamy and comforting, a scene fit for the high, good times of that part of the album and for the high, weird times of coming out of surgery.
The night before, I had begged my wife to bring my iPod to the hospital when she came by. I threw it on the nightstand and didn't touch it, at least partially because I assumed I'd need a full charge on it the next day. I also had a feeling that something would pop into my head because it always does.
When I came out of surgery, after the line of visitors ended and the nurses gave me the strongest of painkillers I'd have during my stay, when I knew I wouldn't pass out, I lunged for the iPod and spun immediately to Bowie's name, that album and "Lady Stardust." I listened to it twice - it was the first sound I wanted to pump through the headphones into my drug-rocked brain - and then again when I listened through to the entire album.
Whatever my body needed that brought that song to me, in a moment of being swirlingly lost, it must have found it. I've listened to the song at least a dozen more times since Wednesday trying to figure it out and what I keep coming back to is that there is something to be said for stepping out from behind the curtain and getting (back) on stage.
I'm pretty sure I can live with that.
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