David Bowie has broken his interview-free silence over the background of recent album The Next Day after author Rick Moody, writing for The Rumpus, asked him for "a work flow diagram" of the album, report Pitchfork.
What Bowie sent him back, notably with no accompanying explanation, was a long list of (fairly obtuse, at times) words that had presumably been tripping around his synapses while recording the LP.
Says Moody: "I wanted to understand the lexicon of The Next Day, and so I simply asked if he would provide this list of words about his album, assuming, like everyone else waving madly trying to get his attention, that there was not a chance in hell that I would get this list, because who the fuck am I, some novelist killing time writing occasionally about music, and yet astonishingly the list appeared, and it appeared without further comment, which is really excellent, and exactly in the spirit of this album".
Have a read of Moody’s full piece here, and take a look at the list of words below (double-spacing taken from Bowie’s original list, Moody adds):
Effigies
Indulgences
Anarchist
Violence
Chthonic
Intimidation
Vampyric
Pantheon
Succubus
Hostage
Transference
Identity
Mauer
Interface
Flitting
Isolation
Revenge
Osmosis
Crusade
Tyrant
Domination
Indifference
Miasma
Pressgang
Displaced
Flight
Resettlement
Funereal
Glide
Trace
Balkan
Burial
Reverse
Manipulate
Origin
Text
Traitor
Urban
Comeuppance
Tragic
Nerve
Mystification