Unlock my body.

We begin with a song from one of Bowie's last albums before he took his mysterious break, before he released The Next Day in 2013. Rumors were circulating even then that he was on death's door. This track, A Better Future, some theorize as a conversation with God. Where are you? Why do you not take care of us when there are so many who suffer?

That is not what I think of when I listen to it. This refrain:

I demand a better future
Or I might just stop loving you

This could be the underclass insisting from the powerful a change in the present order. Ensemble Theatre made just such an allusion when they used this song to open their 2011 production of Waiting For Lefty.

Recently I have been reading the boy H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, which suggests a future in which the division of humans into Master and Servant have split the species in two, those small, soft, ignorant folk who play on the surface - the Eloi - and those who serves the machines below the surface of the earth that keep the Eloi alive, but also rise from the depths once a month, during the new moon, to slaughter and feast the surface beings. These are the Morlocks.

This in turn puts me in mind of the film Metropolis. Masters above, servants below. In this case the working classes rise up, led by a false prophet, and in the process of their rebellion succeed only in destroying their own homes. I could make a cheap political analogy ... and I guess I just did.

The boy heard O Superman for the first time the other day, and after brief consideration, he said it made him think of the pre-recorded, automatic voices found in Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains. His ability to free-associate across media rivals my own and I am so proud of him for that.

Distance: 3 miles
Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 39°
Climate: cool and bright
Weight: 164 lbs.
Mood: all right

2002 Playlist
A Better Future - David Bowie
Heavy Metal Drummer - Wilco
Emerge (Daft Punk Mix) - FischerSpooner
Breathe In - Frou Frou
Cry Me a River - Justin Timberlake
Straight Aces - Cornershop

Warmdown
Daybreaker - Beth Orton