One of my local public television stations (WLIW-New York) is currently re-running the original British version of the cop-drama Life On Mars (there was recently a US version on ABC, but I never saw it). It’s about a contemporary young police detective in Manchester, England, who has a car accident and “wakes up” back in 1973. Has he gone mad? Is he dead or in a coma? Or has he actually gone back in time? He doesn’t know which. So, while being tormented by sounds and visions from his past (in the future…), he tries to make the best of it in the `70s, coping with crooked, violent cops who don’t play by the rules and who are severely hampered by a lack of high technology. The show is very trippy. It’s very good. And the first song on its soundtrack is David Bowie’s 1973 hit Life On Mars, which is also trippy and good, even though I have no idea what it’s about.
And I like the series a lot, in part because it’s star, John Simm, is very appealing, but more because I, too, feel like a displaced person, lost in time, transported back and forth among the past, present and future, horrified and amused by the culture and events around me.
As of an hour ago in Egypt (3:00 a.m. their time), the massive crowd in Tahrir Square, Cairo, were beyond themselves with anger and despair, wondering what part of “Leave now!” Mubarek doesn’t understand (actually, just won’t accept). They’re calling for 20 million Egyptians to protest in the streets nationwide tomorrow, and wouldn’t it be an amazing thing if that happened? Those in Tahrir Square are talking about storming the palace – storming the palace, for godsakes, in 2011. It feels medieval and futuristic at the same time.
Back in the USA, the Puritans in Congress are doing everything they can (once again and apparently ever more) to make abortion essentially illegal once again and trying to slash funds for family planning and sex education. Meanwhile, three men from Indiana have created an iphone app for Catholic confession (“Forgive me, Father, for I have linked,” quipped Maureen Dowd in today’s New York Times); a grandmother and her boyfriend in New York were discovered to have been keeping their granddaughter locked in a bathroom for the last four years; a nurse in Minnesota took a pre-op patient’s pain pills away (she’s addicted to them), then told him to “man up” when he squirmed and moaned during surgery; a school bus matron beat up an autistic kid; a hooker who had become a NYC school teacher is preparing her memoirs; a married Congressman has resigned over sending a beefcake photo to some love-seeking woman on Craig’s list; baseball’s spring training is about to begin (isn’t it February??); and many, many folks are getting ready for a romantic Valentine’s Day.
Watching the news has become like reading The National Enquirer when I was a kid, when its front page news was once about someone boiling a baby. Like I said, medieval and futuristic at the same time. I feel frightened and useless and sad. I’m worried and anxious all the time. Food prices are going up, and every time I go the market I feel like I’m making a major investment. We aren’t quite midway through the month, and I’m not sure I can afford to go shopping again before March. My hands and feet are cold. Sometimes my vision blurs. My skin is dry and the sky is falling. I miss the `70s, though I clearly remember not liking them while they were happening. But at least I could smoke a cigarette on a park bench, which I can no longer do in NYC (in case you’re wondering, I make my own, which is very cheap; I can’t afford ready-made cigarettes and soup). If there is life on Mars, I’d like to check it out.
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LIFE ON MARS
(music, lyrics and vocal by David Bowie)
– click here to see/hear video –
It’s a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause she's lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
It's on Amerika's tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
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