The world in which we live..? Or an ode to David Bowie..?16 1 30/31 (9) 25 2 10

Do you ever reflect on the kind of world we live in? Which is to say I am not normally in the habit of doing just that. But reading or just finishing a short story one of the most horrendous pieces of writing it has ever been my good fortune, or should it be misfortune, to come across by the internationally acclaimed Japanese author Haruki Murakami I was prompted to construct the title to my blog this day..?

As I have said before I am not noted for being an avid reader of fiction which didn't begin in my life until my late teens and so whatever fiction I do read and I tend to be very careful with what I select, reading mainly for pleasure and my own edification, so this this Murakami tale entitled "Lieutenant Mamiya's Long Story" from "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" left a deep impression on me...

Another influence in the present case was an interview I saw 16 1 27 on YouTube between David Bowie and Guillaume Durand entitled "A Philosophical Conversation with David Bowie" published in 2012 when Bowie discusses his thoughts about the 20th century... "When man had thrown out god in the 19th century to become the gods of the 20th and leading to man's biggest and newest creation that of the atomic bomb with... the chaos that followed to which we still have to deal with..."

Most of the time in my life then is given over to my simple activities of living out my retirement within a nuclear family which embraces my wife's family largely based here in Scandinavia together with the remnants of my UK family together with our own closer-knit family of two sons their wives and each with two children: that and an ever smaller band of friends and acquaintances in the broader world at large...

Murakami’s Long Story dealt with horrendous scenes from WW ll when at the hands of the Mongols and a Soviet Russian Officer captured Japanese soldiers were subjected to torture and death in some cases: leaving the sole surviving soldier to live out the rest of his life from within an empty shell of his former self…

That then and the overall negativity described by Bowie for his music where he talks of himself not as mainstream but as an artist for much of the time alienated and begging the question ”Whither we go in the future..?” given the state of chaos he refers to in the above interview. But in an interview in which he concludes by saying “Perhaps we should just aspire to live for one day at a time..?”


Well I am late finishing another blog another day later but not without my continuing to wrestle with my title “The world in which we live..?” with dismal thoughts of war such as those of the distinguished Murakami, and the somewhat depressing philosophising of the late David Bowie about chaos in the aftermath of dropping 2 atomic bombs in the 20th century… but it did occur to me today that if not by the grace of god I am still here in the 21st century then I have to thank modern medicine which got such a boost during WW ll in terms of heart surgery for the first time coming into being… and in a later YouTube interview the Director Ivo Van Hove gave on the life of Bowie published January 12th 2016 two days after his death he describes the almost 1½ last years of his life when they collaborated on Bowie’s last album of songs and a musical, when Van Hove as one of the few who knew Bowie was dying from cancer, attests to Bowie’s prodigious talent for getting on with the job at hand right up to the release of the album in New York on his 69th birthday 2 days before he died putting on a brave face for his fans and then back stage engaging in a long conversation between the two of them about the next album they will collaborate on says much in my humble view to the effect that Bowie's earlier conclusion of taking life one day at time wasn’t too wide of the mark of what he was able to achieve by the end of his life..? leaving me to conclude my blog this day with the view : “Yes indeed, we all have much to ponder about the world in which we live…but if heart surgery was unknown before WW ll perhaps in 70 years from now cancers won't either take their toll to quite the same extent they do today, no longer claiming as many at the height of their powers..? Have a good day everyone as I hope you will join me in thinking the world is not only gloom and doom..?

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