“An Occasional Dream,” (1969)

During 2016, when I was posting my daily, year-losing tribute to Bowie, in which I wrote about a different song every day, I did not get to all Bowie songs.  Now that I’m once again doing daily content, I’m picking up where I left off.  I might revisit certain songs as well, but today I’m going to comment on one that I think I missed the first time, “An Occasional Dream,” off “the “Space Oddity” album.  

 “An Occasional Dream” is a sad but pretty song inspired by Bowie’s breakup with Hermoine Farthingale.  At least one other song on the album was inspired by her, and specifically the breakup, and that one is obvious— “Letter to Hermoine.”  For a time, Farthingale had taken on an almost mythic status among hardcore Bowie fans and biographers, however the idea that she was his secret muse has kind of faded over time, which is somewhat ironic given the topic of, “An Occasional Dream.” (Farthingale herself kept a low profile for years, but gave some interviews in 2019, I guess to set the record straight about some of the myths that had built up around her…maybe a topic for a separate post).

The topic in question is time itself.  As I have commented before, time, for Bowie, is threatening  and degenerative.  Bowie fears the passage of time as a reminder of his own mortality. Here, Bowie sings that he and (presumably Farthingale) “burnt one hundred days” before asserting that “time takes time to pass; and I still hold some ashes to me.”  

The reference to “ashes” is just one of many examples of words that Bowie returns to in future songs.  “Ashes to Ashes” is explicitly a sequel to the title track from this very album, but the concept of “ashes” is also linked to the sense of loss Bowie is trying to convey here.

He keeps returning to time— “I keep a photograph; it burns my wall with time; time.”  

Seen from a distance, the concept of time as expressed in this song contrasts with another of Bowie’s themes, the concept of space, as expressed in “Space Oddity” but throughout the expanse of Bowie’s career.  Space, for Bowie, is a place of stasis and retreat.  “Down in space, its always 1982,” Bowie laments in 2002’s, “Slip Away.”  The Starman, of “Starman,” is waiting in the sky.  He’s holding steady with benign intentions.  Time, on the other hand, from 1973’s, “Time,” is “waiting in the wings” to do “senseless things” like using “you and me” like a prostitute’s “trick” and ultimately kill us.  But Major Tom does not die in space.  He simply floats away.  He doesn’t seem to be in distress, at least until 1980’s “Ashes to Ashes,” which brings everything full-circle.  And then, he’s more a victim of time than space.  On and on it goes.

There are other ways “An Occasional Dream” stands in contrast to, “Space Oddity.”  This song is obviously very personal, whereas “Space Oddity” sets the mold for Bowie creating alter-egos to deliver a more distant message.  This song is small, “Space Oddity” is big— not only Bowie’s first hit, but to this day one of his most defining songs.  

Bowie never so much repudiated this song, but as far as I know he didn’t perform it after the early 1970s.  Still, its a nice song that fits in well on the album, arguably better than “Space Oddity” itself.