There is a little shop of banal horrors in Cedar City, Utah that sells those creamy, folksy items once peddled by Martha Stewart and are now made in China and sold by Joanna Gaines and this store. Coffee mugs and sugar bowls with some insipid thing or another in a swirling script. My favorite was the honey pot with “EAT LOCAL” on the side. Made in China.
But other things in the store were made here in the USA. No merchandise, just the decoration and design. Consultants from California, I was told. The quote above the dressing rooms caught my eye immediately. “Oh, you pretty things” is the second track on Hunky Dory, a great David Bowie work.
What is disturbing is the marketers either did not know the dark meaning of the song or they bloody well DID know. The song is based on the concepts of Fredrich Nietzsche and Alistair Crowley (among other things). Bowie’s song is cautionary and prescient, for 1972, and the lyrics are spooky. It is also a fantastic demonstration of Bowie’s talent.
Alright, it is just a vacuous mistake, right? We see Bowie lyrics in ladies apparel all the time, no? …”Rebel, Rebel, buy this dress…”
These 50-year-old lyrics were a signal to those who might get it, namely the Boomer-age coastal clientele that now patrol Utah’s Interstate 15 from St. George to Provo. The signal is missed by the locals, who only work there. They can’t afford to shop there. They are likely Later Day Saints, unworldly, humble.
All the nightmares came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay
The gentrification signals continued. Raising my hair further was this fine quote from everyone’s favorite Marcusian Marxist, Angela Y. Davis. I think it was for sale.
“I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
Which includes killing people.
This is same Angela Y. Davis who armed the infamous Soledad brothers who took control of a courtroom, provoked a gunfight and murdered a judge. This is also the same Angela Davis who told Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that the victims of communism (specifically Czechoslovak prisoners) that “they deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison.” Davis was later acquitted of the Judge’s murder by an all white jury. Davis claims there is no justice in America. She retired emeritus from the University of California. She is rich, of course.
And all my wife wanted to do was buy some nice candles.