When I took English 1B a couple of years ago our very first assignment was to write a paper on the song Space Oddity by David Bowie.
You know the one, where the first line is “Major Tom to ground control, Major Tom to ground control.”
We were supposed to analyze it and write what we thought David Bowie meant by the song. The obvious meaning you might jump to is that he was writing about the Apollo space missions to the moon. That’s not it. I wrote that David Bowie was writing about the culture of celebrity in America and that Major Tom was the ultimate celebrity charting an unknown course of fame and popularity. It sounded good.
Then I googled “the meaning of Space Oddity” and discovered I was wrong. Bowie was inspired to write the song after seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey while really, really stoned. Simple as that. I turned in my paper as it was because I thought it was cheating to look up the meaning and write a paper about it.
I got an A on my paper anyways.
that’s great man…my first literary achievment as about a third grader was writing a poem about the american flag. my teacher said my work was needed to be read at the gymnasium. I said I wouldn’t read it…she said she would read it but she never did. not disappointed…but I remember that…my best early work was a short story about the end of the world because of nuclear war in the united states…it was in the class yearbook.
It occurred to me now that maybe the teacher himself didn’t know the real reason why David Bowie wrote it. Or else why would he assign us to write about a song inspired by a pop star who saw a movie while he was really, really stoned, lol?
