Covid Island Discs

Day 69: We are the dead

OK given Helen is currently reading 1984 and since there is no discernible change in the Johnson government’s behaviour, I thought I would share two more songs from David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album before returning to my 21^st century theme. The second half of the album had three songs all dedicated to the dystopian novel 1984. I remember studying this novel for the HSC (yes back in 1984 in fact: I’m a very old git now) and we studied it alongside Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World”. I think Huxley’s book is a more accurate prediction of what would happen in the Western world up until what I will call the “post-truth” Trump era. However, the doublethink of 1984 certainly appears to be becoming more present in modern political discourse. One absolutely unforgettable scene in the book is when Winston Smith turns to his lover and says “We are the dead”. She replies “We are the dead”. Then the government speaker on the wall sounds to life saying: “You are the dead“. Freaky stuff which is captured well by Bowie in today’s Covid Island Disc.

But now
We’re today’s scrambled creatures, locked in tomorrow’s double feature
Heaven’s on the pillow, its silence competes with hell
It’s a twenty-four hour service, guaranteed to make you tell
And the streets are full of press men
Bent on getting hung and buried
And the legendary curtains are drawn ’round Baby Bankrupt
Who sucks you while you’re sleeping
It’s the theater of financiers
Count them, fifty ’round a table
White and dressed to kill
Oh caress yourself, my juicy
For my hands have all but withered
Oh dress yourself my urchin one, for I hear them on the stairs
Because of all we’ve seen, because of all we’ve said
We are the dead
We are the dead
We are the dead