The Man Who Sold the World

Think it has to do with mental illness. Pretty sure. "Bowie’s brother was admitted to now defunct Cane Hill psychiatric hospital in South London and the experience heavily influenced 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World album with a drawing of the hospital appearing on the original sleeve art." From mindhacks.com/2016/01/13/where-are-we-now-david-bowie-and-psychosis/ It's very innocent, like a conversation or meeting between himself and another. There's some points to go through... I'll name a couple of things. "We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when. Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend." He happened to meet up with someone, perhaps one of his voices. It seems a very sweet, a non threatening voice. They spoke of "was and when," probably just going over the past and other thoughts that he had. He was surprised to meet with him again. "I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here We must have died along, a long long time ago" Sometimes people think of those with mental illness as already gone or suffering loss because of the illness that has taken their loved one. "Who knows? Not me. We never lost control." Pretty much assuring oneself that they're alright. They're just trying to make sense of things... "People with schizophrenia often experience the unnerving feeling that outside forces are controlling them. Other times they feel an illusory sense of power over uncontrollable events." From scientificamerican.com/article/schizophrenia-muddles-ones-sense-control/ That is how I view the song. Bowie looked up to his brother who had been diagnosed with the illness and was conscious of these things. Bowie's own commentary was this- "In the BBC Radio 1 special programme "ChangesNowBowie", broadcast on 8 January 1997, Bowie was interviewed by Mary Anne Hobbs and was asked about the song. Bowie commented: "I guess I wrote it because there was a part of myself that I was looking for. Maybe now that I feel more comfortable with the way that I live my life and my mental state (laughs) and my spiritual state whatever, maybe I feel there's some kind of unity now. That song for me always exemplified kind of how you feel when you're young, when you know that there's a piece of yourself that you haven't really put together yet. You have this great searching, this great need to find out who you really are." From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sold_the_World