Ponderings on 'Lessons in Time Travel: Intersections with the Star Man'

Photo of graffiti by the remains of the memorial outside David Bowie's SoHo apartment
by Troy Chambers, originally published on Eris Magazine

Ponderings on 'Lessons in Time Travel: Intersections with the Star Man', an article by Katelan Foisy featuring Troy Chambers, on Eris Magazine's website (go read the article. read it. go!):

There is a teetering point between honor and worship, and both are possible with any loved or despised figure. "Do not seek the holy man, seek what he sought" is a route toward honor; the map is not the territory (with apologies to  Korzybski and Baudrillard).

Katelan Foisy and Troy Chambers' exploration of Bowie evokes this sense of honor- to delve into the mysteries, to explore the intersections that then become possibilities/wombs of something deeper only when we recognize them, these rifts in time and space and mind where subjective and objective blur into each other. 

Katelan, citing William S. Burroughs, "describes an... intersection... [as] a piece of writing, art, sound, or music that reminds you of something you or someone else has created and amplifies it." This interplay between memory and experience can lead to a depth of presence, and the surface mimicry of the same (forcibly creating moments, creating opportunities) can still lead to more presence- I find this fascinating. That even the aping of this depth-practice can provide the same opportunities (not that it *will*, but it *can*). That our memories and emotions are necessarily interlinked- we of course create memory by engaging in it- the more times we remember something, it is proposed, we actually increase the disparity between the first experience and the recall of it. For we add all of our intersections together, bringing impressions of every moment that reminds us of the first moment, those moments we were forced to recall it, and those subtler scents of our daily goings-on while remembering. What a messy, wonderful thing this is, this 'memory'.

Link this to music, that soundtrack both by chance and choice we impose upon our experience; "I was listening to this song when....", vs. "I played this song", as the passive and active tag-team our awareness. MacLuhan enters the field here, for the pondering of all electronic media as abstractions becomes imperative to examine what is then possible. 

For Troy, who has had a lifelong fascination and appreciation with/for Bowie, it is interesting watching the parsing of the moment. If Bowie's characters, his masques, until now are all fallen (as Troy describes), it is most interesting to see the Black Star on the ascendant, considering what stars are still to rise, slouching towards new Bethlehems... 

Much to think about. And the two of them are always so beautiful.

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hypperreal. The territory no longer preceeds the map, nor does it survive it. It is never the less the map that proceeds the territory - precession of simulacra- that engenders the territory. -Baudrillard, 1994, Simulacra and Simulation

Where are we now?/ Where are we now?/ The moment you know/ You know, you know - David Bowie, 'Where are we now?' from The Next Day