David Bowie: "Conversation Piece" Highlight

Okay okay, I know it's day 2 of postponing my fic, but this is an important highlight! It's been over two years since my in-depth study on (read: obsession with) David Bowie began, but I'm still constantly surprised at how, just when I'm unable to articulate something that I'm feeling, I find a perfect song by him that says it already.

Case in point, for the past twelve weeks, I have been unable to properly understand or convey what I've been feeling.  I've been up and down and all around on the emotional/mental/spiritual health spectrum.  I've felt weirdly lonely, frustrated, productive, apathetic, nostalgic, hopeful, and depressed both in turns and in multiple conflicting feelings all in one go.  I wasn't even sure how to express what I was feeling to myself.

But then last night I re-listened to Bowie's song "Conversation Piece".  Now, I can officially say not only have I gained a new appreciation for the work, but it's been officially elevated to my theme song for my time living in New York City.

LYRICS:
I took this walk to ease my mind
To find out what's gnawing at me
Wouldn't think to look at me
That I've spent a lot of time in education
It all seems so long ago 

I'm a thinker, not a talker
I've no-one to talk to, anyway
I can't see the road
For the rain in my eyes 

I live above the grocer's store
Owned by an Austrian
He often calls me down to eat
And he jokes about his broken English
Tries to be a friend to me 

But for all my years of reading conversation
I stand without a word to say
I can't see the bridge
For the rain in my eyes 

And the world is full of life
Full of folk who don't know me
And they walk in twos or threes or more
While the lamp that shines above the grocer's store
Investigates my face so rudely 

And my essays lying scattered on the floor
Fulfill their needs just by being there
And my hands shake, my head hurts, my voice sticks inside my throat
I'm invisible and dumb, and no-one will recall me
And I can't see the water
For the tears in my ey-y-yes

The song was officially released on the B-side of the 1970 single "The Prettiest Star", although it has several iterations floating around.  There's an early demo of an unknown date with an intro identical to "Starman", a second demo from April 1969, a final studio cut which was recorded during the David Bowie (1969) album sessions, a revived version with a gorgeous string arrangement and sung in a different octave was recorded during the abandoned Toy (2000) album sessions, and of course the remastered version on the Five Years (2015) compilation album. (Pegg) (O'Leary) (David Bowie News)

According to Kenneth Pitt (Bowie's manager in the late 1960s), he thought 'Conversation Piece' was "one of David's most underrated and little-known compositions". (Pegg)  And Mike Garson, Bowie's long-time piano player, characterised the piece as breathtaking, saying, "'Conversation Piece' is one of the most beautiful pieces David ever wrote. He recorded it in the sixties but we recorded it again in 2000. This song is so gorgeous. It's in my top 10 of David's songs."  Once again Bowie's genius is showcased in these reviews because for such high praise, the song actually has a fairly simple musical structure, which O'Leary characterises as:

...three meandering verses, three tight eight-bar choruses (half lyric, half wordless).  For the final verse, Bowie uses a standard trick and changes key, bumping all the chords up one step (so while the third line of the verse - for example, "he often calls me down to eat" - has been C/G, it's now D/G ("and they walk in twos and threes or more"), and so forth).  To further the sense that the singer is breaking down, the last verse extends into a faster-paced section with shorter sung phrases until collapsing into the final chorus. (O'Leary)

Additional inspirations are noted by Pegg when he writes, "...'Conversation Piece' did not spring fully-formed from David's brow: it echoes the bruised emotional landscape of Simon and Garfunkel's 'I Am A Rock', and it owes a clear debt to a track on Biff Rose's 1968 album The Thorn In Mrs Rose's Side, in which Rose takes a similarly self-absorbed walk into town - the song is called 'What's Gnawing At Me', a line poached by Bowie's lyric". (Pegg)

Now don't get me wrong, I've always loved this piece - it's simple, lovely, and contains the right amount of melancholy, clever imagery, and solipsism that characterises 1960s!Bowie.  But last night was the first time I finally understood what Bowie was trying to say, rather than admiring some nice wordplay like, "But for all my years of reading conversation/I stand without a word to say".  In The Complete David Bowie (2016), Pegg describes the piece as:

[an] overlooked and melancholy 1969 number [which] features a lovely melody and an emotive lyric addressing familiar Bowie topics of alienation and social exclusion.  The self-portrait of a misunderstood and unappreciated young writer struggling to achieve something worthwhile from his London bedsit ("I'm invisible and dumb, and no-one will recall me") acutely matches the image, suggested by many contemporary accounts, of David himself on the eve of his first success. 

As someone who also feels like a misunderstood and unappreciated young artist struggling to achieve something "worthwhile", with multiple job applications rejected, a sense of crippling loneliness, and feeling nowhere close to succeeding in my industry or post-college life, the song seemed to speak to my soul.

But I think O'Leary describes best why this song holds such powerful resonance for me, when he writes his personal reflection on the themes of the piece:

Most of all, [the song] captures well the curse of urban anonymity—its title is a cruel joke, the “conversation” only going on in the singer’s head. Once during a hard spell while living in NYC I spent a weekend almost entirely out of doors, going from shop to cafe to library, and realized at some point during it that I had talked to absolutely no one, except maybe to mutter thanks to a ticket-taker or cashier. The sense of moving among a great mass of people and feeling utterly invisible and isolated from them is almost addicting at first, and then it can just sink your soul. (O'Leary)

And perhaps it's also rather reassuring to think that these words, although written fifty years ago, seem to transcend time as they are still able to offer me a sense of camaraderie with Bowie since he was my age when he composed them.  To know I share the same frustration, melancholy, loneliness, (and certain amount of solipsism), as Bowie did when he was my age, makes me feel a little less frustrated, a little less lonely, and a little more hopeful.