#mea culpa I should have double-checked the book first

[victorluvsalice]

Valicer In The Dark -- Evolution Of A Bit About Horses

Me: [doing a post about worldbuilding in my Valicer In The Dark universe back in June 2023] Hmmm -- I don't remember off the top of my head whether or not there were any mention of horses in the actual Blades In The Dark book. You know what, rather than checking, I'm going to be funny, pull a Fallout, and declare them extinct in the world of the Shattered Isles! That way, if I ever have my VITD trio visit another universe, I can amuse myself by having them be like "...what's a horse?" whenever the topic comes up! :D I'm sure that, when I next reread Blades In The Dark, nothing will pop up to utterly ruin my bit! :D

Me: [rereads Blades In The Dark and discovers plenty of references to horses -- including, most importantly, the fact that the natives of the nation of Severos who don't live in the Imperial cities live in tribes on their ghost-hunting horses]

Me: D: My bit :(

[later on:]

My Brain: Hmmmm...okay Vic -- I have given this some thought, and the way I see it, we can go one of three ways. One -- we keep the bit, throw out that stuff in the book, and say that horses are extinct in your version of the Shattered Isles. Two -- we toss the bit, admit we were wrong, and that horses do exist, even if they're rare. Or three -- and I think this is the best option -- we modify the bit and say that horses are extinct in your Shattered Isles everywhere but Severos.

Me: Why are you so sure Option 3 is the best option?

My Brain: Because not only does it mean we don't have to completely chuck the bit -- it also opens up a story idea. There's a Severosi faction in the book -- The Silver Nails, remember? They want to get control of the heavily-haunted Lost District, and one of their assets is supposed to be their cavalry horses. What if, in your world, they're trying to smuggle in those horses, haven't succeeded yet because the animals keep dying en-route -- and when they do get a living horse successfully into the city, it escapes? And the Three Pillars happen to be nearby when it does, and have to help stop the damn thing before it causes too much damage or gets itself killed? That could be a cool score for them to complete, and gives you plenty of opportunities for them to be absolutely freaked out by this weird-looking creature that they previously assumed was just a type of goat all the while. Just total "?!?! That's a horse?!" the whole time.

Me: ...you're right, that is the best option.

So yes -- please accept my extremely-belated apologies about being wrong about a small thing in my worldbuilding post from over a year ago that probably none of you remember, and enjoy this updated post on the status of horses in my version of the Shattered Isles and Duskwall. XD I am actually quite looking forward to writing that story at some point -- I suspect it will be most chaotic.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #231: Up From the Depths!

May, 1983

So back to where we were before a detour in Annualsylvania.

Time for Roger Stern’s first issue where he can do his own thing and not have to tie up someone else’s story. Although he did a really good job tying up someone else’s story so I’m hype to see his other ideas.

And the cover is. Uh. Thor, She-Hulk, and Captain Marvel trying to beat up a tree? Yeah, take that, the Lorax.

More seriously, its just good that cover artists have gotten the note about her outfit.

We start this story when some uh swamp thing looking things march out of Chesapeake Bay just before dawn.

“They are not men... not yet.”

Huh.

The narration informs us that in addition to not being men... not yet, these figures don’t even have bones.

Then one of the things just squishes through a chain link fence.

Ah, the ol’ T2 maneuver. Good show.

The things sneak up on a hilariously yellow-suited SHIELD agent, hold him down and knock him out.

One of the things turns into the guy they just grabbed.

Whoever: “No help is needed, Agent Farber. Farber... yes, that’s your name... my name now. The master was right. Farber’s surface memories are mine.”

Then New Farber sets off on Farber’s patrol route.

What a perplexing happening.

Several hours later, now for something completely different.

The Avengers, plus former members Vision, Scarlet Witch, Wonder Man, and Beast have gathered together at Meadowglen Memorial Gardens to... well...

Vision: “We have gathered here this day to pay our final respects to a former ally... a friend who gave her life trying to end the threat of Ultron. The robot Jocasta was never officially an Avenger. In truth, we barely knew her. What joys she held, what pain she felt, we can but guess. That is our failure... that is our loss. Now, we can only remember her gallantry, and mourn.”

=(

She was too beautiful for this world.

Also, I know you already did the mea culpa on it, Vizh, but you personally barely knew her because you blew her off whenever she tried to socialize with you.

And the Avengers barely knew her because they constantly forgot that she was there.

Yeah, you admitted its your failure but I really want to make it clear what a big failure it was. You goons.

So what happened? Well, in Marvel Two-in-One #92-93... Jocasta pays a visit to the Fantastic Four and complains that the Avengers used and discarded her (which is half right but she actually ran away before they could reveal they wanted her to officially stay on as a substitute Avenger because they didn’t bother to mention it to her ahead of time).

She started living in alleys because society didn’t accept her. But she started having malfunctions that caused her a lot of pain so she came to seek Mr. Fantastic’s aid.

Overnight, Jocasta starts having nightmares about Ultron.

The following morning, Insurance Worker Aaron Stack meets with the Thing and decides to follow him around when Thing mentions he has to go deal with a lady robot. Because Aaron Stack.

Jocasta goes to the factory where Ultron was trapped in adamantium and frees him because Ultron hid a program in her brain to compel her to resurrect him. He tries to make her his bride again and she’s like ‘ew no’ again.

The Thing and Aaron Stack show up and Thing ends up mind controlled by Ultron who uses him to attack Aaron Stack.

Aaron Stack manages to get away with Jocasta. While repairing his Battle Damage, Aaron asks Jocasta why she doesn’t just call in the Avengers and she basically goes ‘i had a very dramatic exit and i’m not ruining it.’

The two robots go and confront Ultron again. Jocasta winds up wrestling with Ultron over a power cannon and it goes off blasting them both but specifically blasting Jocasta in half and not blasting Ultron in half.

Aaron Stack manages to defeat Ultron by reaching down his throat and ripping out his power supply.

... It feels like Aaron Stack does that kind of thing a lot.

Anyway, that’s how Jocasta died. And that’s why I’m sad.

The various Avengers and former Avengers all have their own thoughts during the heads bowed moment of silence.

Cap is just thinking about how many people he’s known have fallen in battle. Captain Marvel and She-Hulk feel the loss despite never meeting Jocasta. Thor wonders whether there might be room in Valhalla for her, despite being a robot. Hawkeye manages not to say anything disrespectful at all “for once.” Wasp is feeling like she lost a sister she’d never known. Really should have spent time with her. Granted, Jocasta felt weird about hanging out with you. Wonder Man thinks about the time that he died because everything reminds that guy of the fact that he died once. Beast feels like he’s been to too many funerals lately. Huh, did all the Defenders die already? And Vision is an inscrutable bastard even to the narration. Rude.

When the Avengers and co break up into smaller groups for chit chat, Beast asks Cap where the heck Iron Man is?

Cap(tain America, ‘natch) can only say that they left word for him about the service but that something must have come up.

Where the heck is Iron Man? His absence has been a plot point for several issues now.

LATER at 10 o’clock, Nick Fury, director of SHIELD, is in a helicopter with President Ronald Reagan on their way to inspect a SHIELD base where the agents are hilariously yellow-suited.

But when they get out of the helicopter, all the agents point their guns at the president.

Aw hey! And here I thought SHIELD sucked!

Okay, okay, okay. Its probably a gooey swamp plot, for some reason.

Also, Nick swears. I’m telling.

Five minutes later, at Avengers Mansion, the Avengers assemble for their regular meeting.

Except Iron Man hasn’t shown up.

As he hasn’t shown up for many meetings.

Cap wants to wait a couple more minutes because he’s just suuuuuure that he’ll be here any minute.

Poor, Cap.

Because right when Jan is going to start the meeting, they get a call on the priority phone.

Its Iron Man!

Wasp: “Iron Man! We’ve been trying to contact you for weeks! Where have you been?!? What happened? Are you all right?”

Iron Man: “Huh? Oh, yeah... I’m fine. But there’s been a lot of hassles here lately... at Stark International, I mean. The boss... Mr. Stark’s been going through a lot of changes, and he’ll be needing my help on more of a full-time basis for the time being. What I’m trying to say is... I have to quit the Avengers.”

This causes no small amount of consternation.

Cap even grabs the phone from Jan and tells Iron Man that they need him and that if there’s anything wrong, the Avengers can help.

Iron Man just says hey you guys are pros you can get along without me bye.

And then he hangs up as Thor is asking for his turn to talk.

Geez, what a weird call from Iron Man!

So whats the deal?

Here’s the deal.

Remember how Tony wasn’t looking so great last time he showed up in the book? Was kind of manic and unshaven?

Over in the Iron Man book, Obadiah Stane has been gaslighting Tony. Leaving bottles of whiskey out for him. Getting Indries Moomji to seduce Tony and then dump him. Hypnotizing a bunch of businessmen at a meeting to shout gibberish at Tony for some reason.

Presumably on top of all the nonsense going on in Avengers like the stress over what happened to Hank and with Jan, Tony falls off the wagon and starts drinking again.

He gets so drunk he starts flying around in the Iron Man armor, smashing every liquor billboard, which is funny if alarming. Deep in the bottle, Tony reveals to Rhodey that he’s Iron Man and then passes out.

Rhodey puts on the Iron Man armor and fights the villain de jour. Afterward, Tony refuses to take the armor back and leaves it in Rhodey’s care before going off to go be drunk some more.

So now Rhodey is Iron Man. Pretty exciting news for fans of Rhodey! It also means we’re getting closer to Secret Wars because Rhodey was the Iron Man in that story.

But, alas, for Tony Stark fans. Especially after having his identity revealed to Cap and Wasp, opening up a whole new dynamic among the Avengers.

Rhodey quits the Avengers because he doesn’t feel comfortable pretending to be the same Iron Man among them and doesn’t feel that he should reveal that the man inside the armor changed out of respect for Tony’s secrets.

Sooo. Yeah. Iron Man is off the team. Geez.

Stunned by this but doing her job as chairwoman, Wasp announces that the first order of business for their meeting is to fill the vacancy in the roster.

Who will it beeeeeeeeee?? -remembers the Starfox tease from last issue- Oh god no.

Meanwhile over at scene change, a scene changes.

10:15 AM, back to the SHIELD base.

Hilariously orange-suited Jasper Sitwell clasps his hands like a villain and announces that he’s holding the president ransom for...

ONE BILLION DOLLARS

President Reagan: “A billion dollars!! Good lord, man! Be reasonable! The federal budget can’t take that much added strain!”

They’ve already spent so much on the Iran-Contra affair.

Wait... -checks wikipedia- Oh okay, yeah it started in 1981 so this dig is historically justified.

Nick Fury, despite all the guns pointed at Reagan, decides to tackle Sitwell. All while thinking that base commandering this base was just too much pressure for poor Sitwell and clearly he snapped under the strain.

But then Sitwell grabs Fury mid-leap and slams him into the wall.

Nick Fury: “You... you’re not Sitwell!”

Not Sitwell: “No, but I’m a very good double, aren’t I? My men have replaced every single agent on this base! Now, are you ready to notify the proper authorities?”

So seconds later, Fury makes a broadcast to the White House situation room.

Nick Fury: “I... have some bad news, Pete. The boss an’ me are prisoners here.”

BUT! The person who got the message realizes that Bad News Pete is actually Agent Gyrich’s codename.

Which cracks me up.

And since Agent Gyrich is SOMEHOW still the Avengers liaison, despite the fact that they all hate him and refuse to deal with him in person, this is a code from Fury to call the Avengers.

So Henry Peter Gyrich calls the Avengers and tells them what’s going on and before you know it, the Quinjet is flying out of the mansion.

Apparently the launch bay is in the third floor now because the wall just swings open and the Quinjet flies out.

Neat.

On the flight over, Cap, She-Hulk, Thor, and Wasp try to strategize.

Try. Because they know where all the artillery emplacements are but without knowing where the President is being held, they don’t dare make a move.

Hey, Avengers, maybe you don’t have to be bad enough dudes to rescue the president from swamp monsters?

But since that’s not an option, the Avengers decide to wait until they hear from their advance scout.

Also, She-Hulk and Hawkeye are still bickering despite coming to a new understanding of each other recently. Peace was never an option?

So who is the advance scout? Captain Marvel, of course!

This is pretty rad, actually.

She can just turn to x-rays and invisibly zoom through the base going through all the walls she likes.

 Like, yeah, once its known that Captain Marvel is on the Avengers, I bet you can expect villain liars to suddenly start having radiation and energy detectors because of this precise sort of thing, but its neat that this is one of the things Captain Marvel brings to the table.

While zooming around, Captain Marvel also finds a sealed chamber full of gas where all the real SHIELD agents are conked out.

And the most heavily guarded room where she finds Nick Fury and a snoozing president.

Moments later, Captain Marvel nyooms back to the Quinjet as it passes Wilmington, Delaware to deliver her report.

Hawkeye: “Whew! She flew there, searched the place, and got back here before we’d flown much more’n a hundred miles! That’s some kinda fast!”

Drinking some respect Monica juice, Hawkeye?

Captain Marvel reports that Fury and the president are being held in the base commander’s quarters, behind a six inch steel door and four armed men and that the real SHIELD agents are all unconscious in a chamber on the other side of the complex.

This information is enough for Cap(tain America) to start formulating a strategy.

But meanwhile, in a submarine in the bottom of the bay. Its a mysterious figure in a silly outfit who is the one who is behind the doppleganging swamp men.

He receives a report from Simuloid-One aka Not Sitwell who reports that the ultimatum was delivered to the White House and that if they don’t receive a reply in an hour, the president will be killed.

Mysterious Mastermind: “Excellent! If the ransom is delivered, I will have riches enough to work miracles! And if not -- America will be placed in a state of chaos which I will easily turn to my advantage! Either way, I win!”

Simuloid-One agrees that things couldn’t look brighter.

-ominous thunder-

Hee.

Thor is great for irony.

Outside the SHIELD base, Thor stands atop the Quinjet, looking not at all to scale, and destroys radar towers and gun emplacements.

Good thing Tony is missing so he doesn’t have to pay for any of this later.

Actually, is this going to wind up being much cheaper than paying the one billion ransom?

Because when the Quinjet lands, She-Hulk just tears open the ground at Cap’s insistence to reveal the central underground corridor. That’s gonna cost a pretty penny.

Thor stays above ground to finish beating up people and also tanks (although he’s already knocked out half of the fake SHIELD agents on the surface) and the rest of the Avengers slip into the base.

The Avengers split up per Cap’s strategy. She-Hulk and Cap go one direction, Hawkeye and Wasp in the other.

No sooner than they split the party, Cap and She-Hulk are bogged down in a group of the fake SHIELD agents in hilarious yellow suits.

Cap: “Heads up, She-Hulk -- we have company!”

She-Hulk: “Like I said before, no problem! I just wish we weren’t in such a hurry -- so I could take the time to enjoy this more! This is the best workout I’ve had in weeks!”

She-Hulk is fun.

Over with Team Wasp and also Hawkeye, Hawkeye holds off a different gang of swampmenfakeagents as Wasp slips out through a vent to get reinforcements.

Meanwhile, on Team Monica, Monica shows up where Nick Fury is taking off his belt and Reagan is taking a nap. Her part in Cap’s plan is to help Fury guard the president.

Meanwhile but back in New York, a rocket lands at Avengers Mansion.

Since the Avengers have a security at least good enough to detect that, an alarm goes off and Jarvis runs outside with a frying pan to bludgeon whoever it is.

Good hustle, Jarvis.

But its Starfox.

Hit him anyway, Jarvis.

Starfox: “I beg your pardon. I suppose I should have radioed ahead, but I wanted to surprise my old comrades. You must be Jarvis... Thor spoke of you. I am Eros of Titan. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

Jarvis: “Eros? Why... yes. You were allied with the Avengers against Thanos!”

Starfox: “Ah, I thought my fame might have preceded me. Are the Avengers about?”

Jarvis: “I... I’m afraid not, sir. They’re engaged in a most important mission.”

Starfox: “Really? Where?”

Jarvis: “I’m not at liberty to discuss -- !”

Starfox: “Oh, come on! You can tell me!”

Jarvis: “W-well...”

Starfox! You’d better not be using your space charisma on Jarvis! He is an angel!

Back at the plot in Maryland, Thor, Cap(tain America), She-Hulk- and Hawkeye have somehow managed to end up broadly in the same place fighting the combined two groups of fake agents.

And considering its the Avengers hitting them, they’re not going down.

She-Hulk is hitting them and they keep getting up for more!

That’s alarming and impressive.

But... Hawkeye shoots a blast arrow too close to some of the fake agents and one of them loses an arm.

But this isn’t the modern age. That’d be too graphic.

Its only wood.

Its described as brittle wood but again: they were taking hits from She-Hulk.

And based on one of the wood agents getting stuck in a loop, Captain America decides that they’re not only not men, they’re also not even sentient.

I don’t know that matches with what we’ve seen from these simuloids in terms of holding conversation and apparently having personalities. But I guess its only virtual.

But now that the Avengers know their enemies aren’t human and aren’t people, they don’t have to hold back.

They just sort of. Start dismantling the wood men and breaking them to bits so they can’t get back up.

If it weren’t wood, it would be pretty brutal!

Back at the submarine and the secret mastermind, the secret mastermind isn’t pleased that the Avengers are overrunning the base when there’s only six of them and nearly a thousand wood men.

Not Sitwell: “The odds would seem to be in our favor by your calculations, master, but their power is such that -- !”

Secret Mastermind: “Silence! Do not speak to the Plant-Man of power! Mine was the genius that gave the semblance of life to unthinking plant tissue! There can be no greater power than that! Avengers or no Avengers, I will not be thwarted!”

He tells Not Sitwell to dispatch all other simuloids and for Not Sitwell to see to the president and Nick Fury himself.

And since Plant-Man is fairly fed up being made to look the fool by people like the Avengers, he’s not going to take the loss gracefully. And he has a special weapon to crush all opposition and he’s gonna use it!

So! Plantman!

A Mega Man robot master?

No, no. Its Samuel Smithers. Also that wood man we saw in jail last issue. But that was clearly a decoy. How sneaky.

Plantman was originally a Human Torch villain who was a botanist who invented a ray gun that controls and animates plant life.

Much like every other Human Torch Strange Tales villain, I can’t take this man too seriously. He was a grown man who devoted his life trying to bully a teenager.

Also, he joined Nebulon’s cult for a while. So. Even less respect.

His costume also doesn’t scream ‘i control plants.’ He just looks like a doofus.

Anyway, in section C, Hawkeye and Wasp have found the chamber where the real agents of SHIELD are being kept sedated. Wasp finds the air circulation controls and vents the gas.

She sends Hawkeye to go back up Cap and sees to the rousing agents herself.

First things first, she tells them to get undressed.

Dammit, Jan! Time and place!

Jokes aside, I feel like this is a shirts vs skins thing.

What with all the identical people in yellow suits and face obscuring helmets and goggles.

In section B, Not Sitwell is following Plantman’s orders. He takes the elevator from the base communications center to the CO’s office.

Which opens right in front of the CO’s office for some reason.

That just seems like its asking for trouble. Like the CO falling down an open elevator shaft because the elevator just opens right in the floor!

Who designed this base!

What happens if you take the elevator up right when someone is leaving the office and they trod on your head! This is why elevators aren’t located in the middle of the floor!

Anyway, Not Sitwell tells the door guards to cover him while he eliminates the prisoners.

Inside the CO office, Nick Fury has finished taking off his belt.

So much undressing in this issue!

Okay, but seriously. Apparently, just in case of a situation exactly like this where he’s disarmed, Nick wears a belt that he can convert into a slingshot. Including an explosive pellet that could blow down a steel door.

That’s thinking ahead!

To a weird degree. Hopefully its a stable explosive and won’t go off in case anyone ever kicks him in the dick.

Anyway, he never ever gets a chance to use it because Cap(tain America) and She-Hulk beat up the guards and Not Sitwell and came in to help rescue Fury and the president. And they give him Not Sitwell’s gun so there’s no reason for Nick to ever use his belt explosive.

It be like that sometimes.

Then there’s a K-BAM that shakes the base so Cap(tain America) sends Cap(tain Marvel) and She(-Hulk) to investigate while he stays with Fury to protect the president.

Meanwhile, the president the Reagan wakes up from his nap. This isn’t important but this is the characterization the comic is going with. Sleepy Reagan.

Captain Marvel zooms off at literal light speed with She-Hulk telling her not to hog all of the action.

But then She-Hulk finds Hawkeye who has been pinned under some collapsed ceiling after that K-BAM. She(-Hulk) helps him out but his leg has been broken.

Then a bunch of shirtless people run in to She-Hulk’s alarm.

But its okay! Its the people Jan had get shirtless! And it was, probably, for shirt vs skins reasons!

Wasp tells She-Hulk that they’ve cleared out most of the fake agents and that they’ll keep an eye on Hawkeye, so She-Hulk should find out whats going on topside.

She-Hulk: “Holee -- ! What the devil is that?!”

Turns out that whats going on topside iiiiiiiiis

A giant-sized man-thing?

No, no. But definitely some kind of large... swamp... thing.

It apparently stomped out of the bay, according to a bolt of electricity. Who is Captain Marvel. Who also reports that the giant-sized swamp thing is pretty resistant to electricity.

Which makes sense. Vegetation isn’t a great conductor, is it?

She-Hulk: “The only thing a monster that big understands is strength!”

Then she runs at it Leeroy Jenkins style and gets stomped.

So thaaaaaaaat explains that cover. Good to know, good to know.

She-Hulk is strong enough to start lifting the foot off of her and Thor makes it even easier by smashing the monster in the leg, making ti topple to the ground.

Then Captain Marvel basically turns into a laser and bounces all over the monster, carving bits off.

Problem: This thing works under Sorcerer’s Apprentice rules.

Every piece chopped off becomes an angry tree man.

Those are some angry Ents.

Which unfortunately puts the Avengers right back where they started vis having a small army of angry wood men they have to beat up.

... Son of a damn is the giant-sized swamp thing an asteroids monster? You beat him into smaller monsters and have to beat those into monsters too small to be a threat anymore?

Dammit, Plantman!

She-Hulk points out the obvious that Captain Marvel can just set all the wood men on fire.

Which she does. She just starts emitting infrared radiation until a miniature, ambulatory forest fire starts.

Plantman: “This can’t be! They’re destroying my mightiest creation! What next?”

What next is that a rocket hits the giant-sized swamp thing in the face, destroying it.

Annnnd out pops Starfox.

Trading one problem for another.

Ha ha.

Ok, maybe he’s not actually so bad. We’ll see.

With the giant-sized swamp thing destroyed, Plantman flees the scene in his submarine. Luckily smart enough to not have shown his face so the Avengers don’t know he was involved.

Order is restored to the base and all the agents put their shirts back on, presumably to Jan’s chagrin.

President Reagan is grandfatherly or whatever and instead of complaining about this laughably massive security breach, just raises SHIELD’s budget so they can plug this swamp slime hole in their security.

And I’m surrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre SHIELD will never have massive security breaches everrrrrrrrrrrrrr again.

Then again, he slept through most of the story so I’m sure he has no idea what happened.

And apparently Captain Marvel was moved from trainee to full, active Avenger at some point between issues.

Everyone pats her back and tells her that she did a good job, which she did do.

Starfox slides into the conversation and also adds his congratulations, slightly flirtily.

Captain Marvel is like holy shit an alien. What are you doing on Earth?

Starfox: “Why, I should think it’s obvious! I’ve come to join the Avengers!”

Everyone: “WHAT?!”

Hawkeye: -facepalm- Oh, no!

Womp, womp!

Heh. I’m amused that the Avengers have a similar reaction to me about this guy showing up to join the team.

So as Stern’s first issue not completing someone else’s story? Very good job, Stern. This was fun.

The characters were used effectively. The plot was fresh. Hawkeye’s leg got broken.

You’re doing a really good job!

Follow @essential-avengers�� because together we can make fun of Starfox much more effectively. Also like and reblog to let me do I’m doing a good job.

[chrismurman]

Exectives Don’t Think We Are ‘Doing Agile Right’

I can still remember the pit in my stomach when Steve Jobs tried to quiet the complaints of the newly launched iPhone 4 (the first I ever owned). The smartphone giant came out with a brand new design of the device, which included a new radio antenna. Instead of doing a mea culpa (which came later, of course), Jobs responded with a line that would launch a thousand memes:

“You’re not holding it right.”

We laughed at it then. It’s still funny today.

Regardless of the industry, though, we all have our own version of the phrase. With conference season in full swing, I can guarantee a similar phrase will be repeated in conversations:

“That’s not Agile. You aren’t doing it right.”

Was reminded of this while reading a recent white paper released by UK consultancy 6point6. Included in the paper are the results of a survey of 300 US and UK CIOs. The numbers do not paint a pretty picture of Agile IT delivery, at least from the executive perspective.

Over half of CIOs regard Agile development as “discredited” (53%).

Three-quarters (75%) are no longer prepared to defend it.

Almost three-quarters (73%) of CIOs think Agile IT has now become an industry in its own right.

Half (50%) say they now think of Agile as “an IT fad”.

At first glance, those numbers shouldn’t surprise many of us. Many of today’s IT executives don’t have the day-to-day interaction with their teams. Agile transformation and coaching are just the latest in a long line of consultants at their door knocking for business.

They also don’t care how they get work delivered. Just that it does and often that’s the only success metric. If you combine that with the recent State of Agile survey, productivity is the only metric that probably matters. The line that did stick out to me was this:

“In many ways, Agile was a reaction against the very forces that are now testing its limits.”

What are these forces? Can we look at these currents stated in the survey and explore the concept of improving how we work with executives?

CIOs expect quick wins. Really quick.

The average length of tenure for today’s CIO is 14 months, according to the survey. Granted, the paper does not list how many are fired and how many voluntarily leave. It does not give the exec much time to make an impact, though.

If the HBR articles and countless books promising quick wins of Agile are to be believed, this points to why companies are “buying Agile” for organizations.

Many of my friends might point to poor expectations of early evidence of transforming IT departments. Others could point to consultants selling Agile as a product (supported by the stats above). Either way, leadership can’t afford to give us time to rebuild their teams from scratch.

The call on change agents is to hit the ground with both feet running and start delivering value early.

Should we count “quick wins” as something to prioritize when kicking off a new effort? I wish the answer was “no” with all my heart. That’s just not the case most of the time. This supports the notion of developing proper success metrics early on with leadership to provide transparency. Curious what ways you have done this with your clients and companies.

Old school methods are not going away.

One could argue that the accelerated need for early success on agile teams might diminish the need for heavy-weight legacy methods. That’s just not the case, according to the survey. CIOs see Agile projects fail because of a lack of documentation (44%) and upfront planning (34%).

Turns out Waterfall is fighting its death harder than many of us thought.

These projects are not cheap. The paper stated the average cost of an IT Project is £8M (almost $10.3M). For that amount of money, leadership wants to know what exactly it’s buying. Combine that with the estimate that 12% of all projects completely fail, there is extreme nervousness over delivery methods.

Most of our agile colleagues can speak to the success working with teams on the ground level delivering working software. We take a backlog and we work it one story at a time.

Would executives see that as successful delivery? One could argue these stats say “no”.

Agile consultants are increasingly getting into boardrooms, which might help align the expectations around how much planning is “just enough”. The call on us appears to need to double down on this conversation.

Agile execution is just jazz hands without proper technical leadership.

The survey states 68% of CIOs agree that Agile teams require more Architects. This comes from a few areas where teams struggle to deliver true needs of the organization. Most backlogs tend to focus on new features first (35% of respondents said so) and leave the non-functional work for later in the project.

Also, 46% stated they felt Agile projects don’t function with any kind of strategic vision. Business and product leadership tend to focus on the big shiny items of value to show their bosses how well things are going on their teams.

This ignores the principle of business and teams talking every day and mutually agreeing on the highest priority items to tackle next.

Failing to prioritize items like security and performance earlier in the product lifecycle creates a ton more work later on. This is where concepts like thin-slicing of features can be a benefit.

Now, one might ask if allocating more archtects to these efforts will solve the problems. I’ve encountered many architects that can absolutely draw a new system and carve out methods of implementation. And yet, teams still struggle with delivery. This again could point to expectations of what benefit this actually provides.

Roadmaps need to speak to technical and business outcomes. Only then can agile teams build proper backlogs of value.

“From a leadership point of view, Agile is currently not in a good state.”

This line should send chills up and down the spines of our community. These are the folks signing checks for our efforts. If we can’t engage in leadership and encourage better ways of running Agile projects, we are truly doomed to becoming a fad.

Are we indeed “not doing Agile right”? You tell me.

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[believermag]

ELECTRIC BLUE

All photographs by the author.

Kim Wood on David Bowie

1.

There are roughly ten blocks between the theater where David Bowie watched rehearsals for Lazarus, and the studio where he recorded Blackstar. In his last years, we both lived between them, on opposite sides of Houston Street.

My side is the Bowery, known in real estate speak as NoHo (North of Houston). On the street where I live—a two-block stretch of 3rd Street known as Great Jones—is a chandeliered butcher shop occupying the spot where Basquiat worked, and died, of a heroin overdose. Twenty years before his time, Charlie Mingus’ heroin-addicted presence on this corridor is said to have birthed the term jonesing.

I’ve passed a decade in Brooklyn, but never before now lived in Manhattan and love being a downtown kid, stepping through the door and onto crowded streets, passing CBGBs—now a skinny pants boutique I’ve never entered—on my way to buy groceries, or borrowing books from a library branch housed in the one-time factory of Hawley & Hoops’ Chocolate Candy Cigars—that Bowie lived above, in a modern penthouse perched atop the turn of the century brick building.

For twenty-four months, barring the occasional trip to Central Park, I’ve lived below 14th Street and in this time Bowie loitered here too, sipping La Colombe’s double macchiato, fetching chicken and watercress sandwiches at Olive’s, or dinner supplies at Dean & DeLuca. One day I’d catch him on the street, I figured, hailing a cab or taking out the recycling in his flat cap and sunglasses, and when I did my well-worn New Yorker discretion would be jettisoned as I tried, and likely failed, not to cry.

I didn’t, of course, know that for most of the time we were neighbors David Bowie was dying. Today I walk the familiar stretch of blocks to his building, eyes tearing, I tell myself, from the frigid, bone-dry air. At the front entrance, a group of fans stand gutted, surrounded by news trucks, generators, vulturing reporters.

A growing pile of daisies, tulips, roses, daffodils leans against the wall, along with a few photographs, a pair of silver glitter heels, a Jesus candle with Ziggy Stardust face. Tucked here and there are handwritten notes: Look out your window, I can see his light and We are all stardust and Hot tramp, we love you so.

Everyone here, news crew aside, feels known somehow, the mood is gentle, polite, quiet. Too quiet, I realize, when someone plays “Life On Mars?” from a tinny smartphone speaker. As the closing strings swell, a woman turns to me to say through tears, “I love this song!” All I can do is nod, “I know!” and take comfort among fellow kooks.

A pair behind me wonders aloud about a “world without Bowie,” and while I know what they mean—the way some people feel like a force and invincible—you could argue we’ve been living in such a world for a long while. David Jones-ing.

2.

Three days earlier, on the night of Bowie’s 69th birthday, I danced in my kitchen to the foppish, falsetto, “‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore,” delighting in his rude lyrics and wild whooping. Later at a dinner hosted for the birthday of a friend, I commented on Bowie’s continuing fixation upon mortality, but also his energy, sly humor, return to form, exclaiming, not tentatively, “Bowie’s back!”

I was thrilled he’d finally slipped the ghost of what he called, “my Phil Collins years.”  In one of the endless interviews now flooding my screen in text and video, he explains, “I was performing in front of these huge stadium crowds and at that time I was thinking ‘what are these people doing here? Why did they come to see me? They should be seeing Phil Collins.’ And then that came back at me and I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ It’s a certain kind of mainstream that I’m just not comfortable in.”

Like the divisiveness of fat and skinny Elvis, there were those of us who fancied ourselves glittering, androgynous, apocalyptic half-beast hustlers who bought drugs, watched bands and jumped in the river holding hands, and there were others, contentedly jazzin’ for Blue Jean.

When, in your Golden Years, your mentor of not only music but all things relevant—art, clothes, books, films—enters his Phil Collins Years, suddenly high-kicking in Reeboks and staring in Pepsi commercials, how not to feel betrayed?

I took it personally, coining the unforgiving term David Bowie Syndrome. As a burgeoning artist, I feared (a scaled-back version of) his creative arc with my whole heart—reaching the greatness of Bowie’s 1970s only to follow it up with Let’s Dance. To say nothing of Tin Machine. Like many old-school fans, I’d stopped tuning in to modern Bowie to keep my vintage Bowie flame flickering.

In my most youthfully caustic moment, I joked that Bowie’s personal Oblique Strategies deck—that famous stack of cards, creative prompts such as Ask your body, Abandon normal instruments, and Courage! allegedly used when Bowie and Brian Eno recorded Low and Heroes—should be made up of cards that all read, simply: Call Eno.

Unfair, untrue. Kindly allow this counterpoint mea culpa admission: I secretly love the ham-fisted, cringtastic video for Dancing in the Street.

3.

On the third day after Bowie’s death I step outside, wondering if I’ll still hear his presence hum. Just feet from my front door I’m greeted by his face gracing one of two large posters advertising Blackstar. Well hey there, Mr. Jones.

They’re wet with wheat paste and like a teenage fangirl I consider stealing one, but then notice a smaller poster hung next to them, featuring the Sesame Street characters peering out joyously, encouraging me to attend an event entitled… Let’s Dance!

I accept Bowie’s cosmic joke, had it coming I suppose, and briskly hoof it to Union Square where at the farmer’s market I find apples, apple cider, cider doughnuts and not much else. My gloveless fingertips smart as I pocket change and consider the possibility that the visitation was an invitation to dance through the sorrow. A bit maudlin perhaps, but then, so was Bowie.

When I return home the Blackstar posters are gone. In under an hour someone has pasted them over with clothing and gym ads—leaving all the posters on either side for the length of the street untouched. Like Steppenwolf's Magic Theater, the message—whatever it was—had appeared and just as quickly vanished.

My feet walk me to Bowie’s memorial, which has exploded in a heap of bouquets, black bobbing Prettiest Star balloons, cha-cha lines of platform heels, disco balls, eye shadow, quarts of milk, British flags, drawings and paintings of Bowie’s many incarnations, fuzzy spiders, bluebirds, boas, vinyl copies of David Live annotated Forever in thick silver marker.

A giant orange tissue paper flower hangs from a nearby tree, electric blue eye at its center, petals edged in lyrics: Give me your hands, because you’re wonderful! Let the children lose it, let the children use it, let all the children boogie.

Here and there are tucked personal notes: You taught me that weird = beautiful, and: When I was a teenager I wished I could check off “David Bowie” for both my gender and my race. I still do.

“Taking away all the theatrics…” Bowie said, “I’m a writer. The subject matter…boils down to a few songs, based around loneliness, isolation, spiritual search, and a looking for a way into communication with other people. And that’s about it—about all I’ve ever written about for forty years.”

Perhaps, then, my “Let’s Dance” visitation was an anti-message, a warning against wasting creative juju by pandering for cash. Of course, Bowie made not a dime (relatively, and thanks in large part to shifty management) from his artistic era I find most inspiring. The seed of the fortune that brought him financial security was that very song. So what then?

When I return home, Bowie’s spot on the wall has been papered over yet again, all white this time, as though to say, as he has when pressed to interpret his lyric’s meaning, “nothing further,” “you figure it out,” “space to let.”

4.

I rise before the sun, pull on bright turquoise tights and red clogs and walk the cobblestone of Lafayette Street in the dark. Collar up, breath ghosting, I feel as I secretly do in all such moments, like the cover of Low, or The Middle-Aged Lady Who Fell to Earth. Car headlights slide over me as I approach the memorial that is, it appears, being dismantled.

I quickly make the photograph I awoke imagining: my platforms meeting Bowie’s shore of flickering candles, cigarette butts, stray boa feathers, sea of glitter. Beside me a sweet lone man sorts out the dead flowers, shuffling handmade things to one side, candles to another, not tossing it all as I first suspected, but tidying up, preparing for another day.

What drew me into this frigid darkness, half dressed in pajamas? Perhaps a need to meet Bowie toe to toe, promise to honor the contract, all in, heart wide, funk to funky.

Put on my red shoes and dance the blues.

“I don’t think (the act of creation is) something that I enjoy a hundred percent. There are occasions when I really don’t want to write. It just seems that I have a physical need to do it...I really am writing for myself.”

Before Blackstar, the last time I know of Bowie creating under extreme duress is when making the album Station to Station—which coincidentally also opens with an epically long titular song wherein a man yelps from the darkness, singing with pride and pain about a fame that has isolated him beyond measure.

As the Thin White Duke, Bowie sings with bitter irony, It’s not the side effects of the cocaine! I’m thinking that it must be love! It’s well known that Bowie, living for a year (1975-1976) in his despised, self-chosen, wasteland of Los Angeles, had fallen victim to a kind of Method Writing, unable to escape in life the character he’d crafted to hide behind on stage.

Subsisting on a diet of cocaine, chili peppers and milk, he grew paranoid, hallucinating, allegedly dabbling in Black Magic and storing his jarred urine in his refrigerator. I was six years old at the time, living less than a mile from Cherokee Studios where Station to Station was in session, and smudging my mother’s brand new Young Americans vinyl with powdered sugar fingerprints.

He said of the following album, Low, “It was a dangerous period for me. I was at the end of my tether physically and emotionally and had serious doubts about my sanity. But I get a sense of real optimism through the veils of despair from Low. I can hear myself really struggling to get well.”  

It’s the pale, shimmering hope that makes Low my favorite of all of Bowie’s offerings, but for Station to Station’s Duke of Disillusion it’s too late—for hate, gratitude, any emotion. It’s not, however, too late to lay himself bare in the work: there’s no reach for sanity, just a man collapsing while still directing, as the camera rolls.

Blackstar has been called a gift, and on “Dollar Days,” a song that describes his effort to communicate in the face of death, Bowie breaks the fourth wall to address this directly: Don’t think for just one second I’ve forgotten you/I’m trying to/I’m dying to(o).

I believe as an artist he had no choice, no other way to confront his circumstance other than to talk himself through it, put it in the work.

The profound generosity of Blackstar, and a vast swath of Bowie’s creative output, is that in this most intimate conversation with death, god, time, himself, we’ve been invited to listen in.

5.

What makes a good death? Bowie withdrew from the public in the last decade and was characteristically silent regarding his illness, in this tell-all age (that owes him not a little for its status quo “tolerance” of Chazes and Caitlyns). He was also, in his time post-diagnosis, compelled to make his most raw and exposing work in years, and between the play and album, likely spent a long part of each day in their pursuit, while presumably also tending to his needs as a father, husband, friend, man.

In Walter Tevis’ book The Man who Fell to Earth—the basis of Nicholas Roeg’s film that inspired Bowie’s production Lazarus—stranded, despondent space alien Thomas Jerome Newton records an album called The Visitor: we guarantee you won’t know the language, but you’ll wish you did! Seven out-of-this-world poems! Newton explains it’s a letter to his family and home planet that says, “Oh, goodbye, go to hell. Things of that sort.”

Bowie’s seven-song swansong, Blackstar, is rather more generous, and from a writer notorious for lyrical slipperiness, layered meanings, a cut-up technique (copped from Burroughs) that spawned lines about Cassius Clay and papier-mâché, its text is frequently plain-spoken and direct.

Even my favorite frolic sounds a combative calling down of his illness, time: Man, she punched me like a dude/Hold your mad hands, I cried/She stole my purse, with rattling speed/This is the war. It would not be the first time Bowie referred to Time as a “whore.” (see: Aladdin Sane.)

In the title video’s most vivid sections, Bowie becomes god—less vengeful than dismissive—singing, from heaven’s attic, a swaggering takedown of Bowie himself: You’re a flash in the pan, I’m the great I am. (From Exodus: And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.)

His button eyes in both videos suggest a puppet, and so the presence of a puppet master, but I don’t read these images as signs of deathbed conversion. Bowie was a spiritual seeker who borrowed magpie style—in this case from Egyptian, Kabalistic, Christian and Norse iconography—to create a language to give voice to his fears and dark entries.

“If you can accept—and it’s a big leap—that we live in absolute chaos, it doesn’t look like futility anymore. It only looks like futility if you believe in this bang up structure we’ve created called ‘God’.”

In his last gestures Bowie answered not God, but himself, regarding the way he’d lived, and in particular, as an artist. The pulse returns the prodigal sons suggests that the characters he inhabited—some regrettable, but not irredeemable—are with him as he assesses the intentions behind, and perceived short-comings of, his creative offerings: Seeing more and feeling less/Saying no but meaning yes/This is all I ever meant/That's the message that I sent/(but) I can’t give everything away.

In his almost unbearably haunting last video, it seems we’re finally invited to meet David Jones, or Bowie playing Jones. Jones the man lies in bed, clutching a blanket with those mortal, frightened hands. Nearby the writer manically, fretfully reaches for immortality, while Bowie the performer, dutifully dances to the end.

“There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing.”  “You present a darker picture for yourself to look at, and then reject it, all in the process of writing. I think that’s what’s left for me with music. Now I really find that I address things to myself. That’s what I do. If I hadn’t been able to write songs and sing them, it wouldn’t have mattered what I did. I really feel that. I had to do this.”

This morning I remembered where I'd seen the writer's austere, black and white striped costume before: the program for the 1976 Isolar tour, wherein Bowie self-consciously poses with a notebook or makes chalk drawings of the Kabbalah tree of life. Isolar is a made up word—and name of his current company—said to be comprised of isolation and solar.

I love this costume—a kind of artisan worker-bee uniform. There are satin kimono-sleeved ass-baring rompers for when its time to present the work, but when making it, roll up your revolutionary sleeves and get to it.

1976 saw the success of Station to Station, the premiere of The Man Who Fell to Earth and the recording of The Idiot and Low. It was not the most grounded time for Bowie personally (to understate it), but arguably his most vital creatively, and this nod to the continuum of creative spirit seems to suggest that the artist dies, but through the work, like Lazarus, rises again.

6.

So what, then, is a Blackstar? Perhaps a marked man, a sly reference to Elvis’ song of the same name whose lyrics include, Every man has a black star/A black star over his shoulder/And when a man sees his black star/He knows his time, his time has come.

Although Bowie did not, as rumored, write “Golden Years” for Elvis, he did find (somewhat bashful) significance in their shared birthdays, took pains to catch his concerts, had his white jumpsuit copied to wear while performing “Rock and Roll Suicide,” modeled his own costume in Christiane F after Elvis’ ensemble in Roustabout, and perhaps his Aladdin Sane red/electric blue lightening bolt was inspired by Elvis’ signature gold one. Which is to say, he likely knew of The King’s “Black Star.”

Blackstar could also suggest the theoretical transitional state between a collapsed star and a singularity—a state of infinite value in physics, a metaphor for immortality.

I’m not a gangstar/I’m not a film star/I’m not a popstar/I’m not a marvel star/I’m not a white star/I’m not a porn star/I’m not a wandering star/I’m a star’s star/I’m a blackstar.

“Sometimes I don’t feel as if I’m a person at all...I’m just a collection of other people’s ideas.”  Is Bowie simply claiming his right to throw off all mantles?

The car crash that is the documentary Cracked Actor opens with a reporter asking, “I just wonder if you get tired of being outrageous?” “I don’t think I’m outrageous at all,” Bowie throws back, miffed. The reporter persists, “Do you describe yourself as ordinary? What adjective would you use?” Bowie searches his brain for an appropriate response to the inane question and finally lands upon: “David Bowie.”

Or perhaps, as Isolar suggests, a Blackstar is someone hidden in plain sight. In an interview that seems more therapy session, with Mavis Nicolson in 1979, mostly drug-free and grounded Bowie speaks of the appeal of life in Berlin, whose physical wall seemed to mirror his psyche. Without referencing himself or the characters he’s inhabited, he describes an isolated figure who finds no home in the world, but instead creates “a micro world inside himself.”

When Nicolson suggests that as an artist Jones must keep himself from love, he rejects the idea outright, but when gently pressed about the demands of relationships in actual life and not “from afar,” he concedes, extending his arms before him like a shield, “No, love can’t get quite in my way, I shelter myself from it incredibly.”

The moment is so resonantly raw that the two break into manic humor, shifting to the story of his eye injury in a childhood fight over a girl, wherein he laughs and says, “I wasn’t even in love with her.”

In “Lazarus,” the dying Jones sings: everybody knows me now, and perhaps that is so, as much as it ever could be for a man who spent an artistic career in self-sustained exile.

And why shouldn’t David Jones have been—with the exception of a few deeply druggy years—free from the curse and blessing of being Bowie? What are we owed by our artists?

7.

Blue, blue, electric blue, that's the colour of my room.

The Bowie song that forever circles my brain describes a writer waiting for the muse, describing the loneliness and blessing of the electric blue of creation. Vishuddhi, or the electric blue throat chakra of Hindu tantra, is associated with the vocal cords, communication, creative expression, one’s inner-truth.

For sixteen months I lived in Berlin’s Schöneberg quarter, around the corner from 155 Hauptstrasse and the apartment that song was composed in and of. I’d pedal my bike past and nod to the ghost Bowie inside, still wondering and waiting for the gift of sound and vision.

It’s the seventh day since Bowie’s death, the final day of shiva I’ve sat beneath his window. I’ve never much understood funerals, always felt they were for a “living” that didn’t include me, but this has been different.

Over this week I’ve shared glances with occasional bleary-eyed oldsters coming or going from where I’m headed or have just been–there have been no young folk to speak of and no platform boots necessary to recognize the kooks.

Today, from a block away, I spy a pair of women making the pilgrimage. The taller of the two—who for one moment I mistake for Patti Smith—has Smith’s hair, a floor-length bright blue shearling coat and an armload of exquisite orange, flame-tipped roses.

Trailing my comrades I think of Smith’s line in Woolgathering when, upon being given a dandelion, she asks, “What could I wish for but my breath?”

At Bowie’s door the energy feels less personal, dissipating. After the roses-bearers depart, a lone woman and I stand shivering before the diminished pile of offerings framed by narrowed police barricades: plastic-wrapped bodega flowers and a few handmade items, the most prominent being a cigar box shrine with a Halloween Jack eye patch and what seems a bunch of random stuff tossed in. The woman plays “Starman” on her phone, and rather than poignant, it’s just sad.

A years later follow-up to his first solo release, “Major Tom,” “Starman” takes the isolation of planet earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do and turns it into an anthem where a cosmic DJ messiah tells us misfits not to blow it, ‘cause he thinks it’s all worthwhile.

The 1972 Top of the Pops performance famously featured Bowie’s flirty finger wagging at the viewer, and casually intimate embrace of Mick Ronson, which blew the minds of much of Britain and beyond and marked Bowie as a more than a one-hit wonder. I silently give thanks to many, including Bowie, not to live in a world where a rock and roll arm thrown over a shoulder can cause a stir.

Over the song’s fade out the woman shrugs and says something about bears—at least I think that’s what I hear. I smile and nod remotely, then realize she’s drawing my attention to the carefully rendered Ziggy Stardust teddy bear—complete with lightning bolt and guitar—hanging from the police steel.

This bear abrades me for no good reason. A few young women pass by on their way into American Apparel. “That was David Bowie’s house,” one says over her shoulder, and the other makes an “awww” sound like she might at the sight of a teddy bear, or the memorial of that musician guy that died the way people do—other people, older people. As they pause to take a selfie in front of Bowie’s memorial offerings I turn and nearly sprint downtown.

I learned in this week of Bowie Internet inundation that he trailed these streets too, often at dawn, in solitude, but right now I need Chinatown’s chaotic, smashing life. I’ll buy those killer clementine from that vendor on the corner, I think, and eggplant, scallion and ginger for supper.

I weave among cardboard boxes of dried silver fish and lotus root, tourists linked arm-in-arm in matching New York pom-pom hats, Chinese grandmas pushing plaid shopping carts in (Harold and) Maude braids. A man exits a hallway, arms loaded with red-ribboned funeral flowers. A chef in a paper hat leans against a wall, smoking beneath a pumpkin-sized, spinning dumpling.

Beneath crisscrossing wires strung with giant, glinting snowflakes, I warm my hands on a cup of milky tea and wonder when we’ll get winter’s first snow. Glancing up to cross Mott (the Hoople) Street, I wonder when the city’s details will cease to conjure Bowie.

I tuck dragon fruit into my sack, humming “Starman”—whose chorus melody is plainly lifted from The Wizard of Oz’s “Over the Rainbow.” Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly/Birds fly over the rainbow./Why then, oh, why can't I?

In performance, Bowie sometimes coyly sung a mash-up of these anthems of longing for belonging. On “Lazarus” he sings, seemingly of his death, This way or no way/You know, I’ll be free/Just like that bluebird/Now ain’t that just like me.

Blackstar begins by naming the Norse village of Ormen. In Norse mythology, the rainbow bridge that connects this world to that of the gods is Bifrost, which translates as tremulous way. Tremulous—as in trembling—as Bowie does so heart-wrenchingly as he backs into the armoire and out of this world.

When he heard the call, David Jones, who could walk the streets of Manhattan undetected, slipped over the rainbow and into his own imagination.

But with generosity and courage it seems he did not fully recognize, David Bowie spent his life pulling back the curtain on the Great Oz, showing the man, his frustration and fallibility, questioning art-making and then making it anyway.

I fear in the end he imagined himself “a very bad man but a very good wizard,” when in fact the opposite was true. The droves of people gathered at his front door and around the world may have found the masks fascinating, but only as much as the man, and heart, behind them.

I imagine catching David Jones wandering past shop windows plastered with red New Year monkeys, beneath golden, swaying lanterns. I would thank him for Ziggy Stardust, whose hair my mother copied and Scary Monsters, whose poster graced my eleven-year-old bedroom wall. I’d say thanks for Low and Hunky Dory, which got me through hard times. Thanks for The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Hunger, Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke. Thanks for Diamond Dogs, Heroes, Lodger, Station to Station. Thanks for creating a soundtrack for my life and the lives of my favorite people.

Thanks for being a fierce, literate libertine, giving permission when I so badly needed it and inspiration always. Thanks, from the strange kids, for saying, No love, you’re not alone! You’re wonderful!

On the afternoon of January 10th, in what I later learned were the last hours of Bowie’s life, a double rainbow drew me from my desk and to the window. It arced across the skyline and ended at the Empire State Building, so strikingly that fire fighters in the station across the street took to the emergency dispatch microphone to exclaim to the neighborhood, “There’s a rainbow!”

As the first snow falls over Chinatown’s back alleys, I think: rainbowie!

There’s a Starman, over the rainbow, way up high, and he told me—let the children lose it, let the children use it, let all the children boogie.

Kim Wood's writing has appeared in Out Magazine, McSweeney’s, Tin House's Open Bar, and on National Public Radio. She has received grants from the Jerome Foundation and is a MacDowell Colony fellow. She is working on a book, Advice to Adventurous Girls, based upon the unpublished archive of a 1920s motorcycle daredevil. Her documentary film on this subject has screened internationally in festivals and museums including Sundance and the Guggenheim, where it double-billed with an episode of ChiPs.