Time May Change Me

Time changes all of us.  As time would have it, David Bowie changed some of the lyrics to tonight’s song…over time.  Slightly, but, changed still.  Lots of songwriters do this, to make their music more meaningful and evolutionary, to reach today’s audience.  A word or phrase, here or there.  But, a change that only a student of their music might notice.  It’s their music, so they can do with it whatever they wish.

I saw Bowie play at The Forum in Los Angeles, sometime in the 70’s.  I don’t know what year.  I do remember well, though, the feel of that concert.  I remember thinking I had just seen a renaissance man, someone who had recreated himself from the musician I had originally followed, into the celebrity, the showman he became.  He reminded me of Liberace (ya gotta go back a ways for that reference).  He had the same flare for glamour and extravagance.  I loved that concert, in that enormous venue, in the company of people (I always went to concerts with friends, or my brother and his friends) I don’t even recall these many years later.

Parents see their children change every day.  Who they were yesterday at bedtime, is different (even slightly) than who they are at the dawning of each morning’s rising sun.  Such is life, such is time, such is change.

We’ve watched our children change over the years.  We’ve seen them in periods of revival, of rebirth.  Dave and I have often talked about the changes, and honored our kids’ choices - because they were and are the musicians of their lives.  Their lives are their music, so they can do with it whatever they wish.

Owen thought Bowie was a true artist.  He loved watching old videos of the various incarnations of Bowie’s career.  I remember watching a benefit concert on television with Owen (it may have been after 9/11), when Bowie sang.  Whatever the occasion, I recall talking with Owen about that concert I saw back in the 70’s, and who David Bowie was at the time of the concert we watched together - and how time and the simple, natural act of aging softens most of us. 

Owen’s death has not softened me.  At this still-early stage of grief, I feel like a big slab of concrete, unwilling to change my lyrics.  I want to hold onto them in my original handwriting.  Perhaps, with time, I’ll feel a need to change my lyrics to suit my audience.  Right now, I’m holding on, I’m grasping at my pre-conceived notions of how I thought it would all turn out.  It didn’t.  So, I’m considering the fact that time has changed me.  And, if time has changed me (is there even a question here?), then, my lyrics may soften someday in the future.  I don’t know when, and I don’t know how.  I don’t know much of anything. 

In tonight’s YouTube video of Bowie’s song, Changes,  he sings, “…just wanted to be a better man, time may change me, but I can’t chase time.”  I can’t find this exact version anywhere on the web.  I think his original lyrics were, “…just gonna have to be a different man…”

Maybe it’s nothing with which I should concern myself, the change in lyrics from a “different man” to a “better man” but for some reason, it  makes sense in the context of this post.  Who would even notice, except someone who is searching for meaning, for beauty?  I don’t know.  Do you? 

Song for the night:  Changes, David Bowie (does anyone know the name of the pianist? he’s pretty freakin’ awesome)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QSTfaQytLEU&feature=related

~ by Linda on January 26, 2008.