Starman

 

So: was Mary Evelyn Harju's studio at PAFA as much of an enchanted wonderland as I'm making it out to be? It was, for me. And she did wind up losing hold of it some time in 2002. While it lasted, it tuned into something about Mary I haven't investigated that much yet, even in Equations. As a stickler for visual appearances, let's have it duly noted that Mary was just as much of a glamor-puss as any other blonde bombshell. She didn't wear much make-up, but her appearance, on a day-to-day level, was still extremely important to her. More so, actually than was the case with Abby Heller-Burnham (or myself). That, ultimately, is what Mary would've seen in good old David Robert Jones, and why Ziggy Stardust was often displayed prominently in the studio. She liked glamour. Androgyny has never been my forte, conversely, but I was into Bowie on a songwriting level, and as rock theater. Bowie was big in Philly then. The Goths and the indie rockers all went for him. The association with space and the Otherness inhering was also big for us. Mary would've liked to experiment, and get dressed by Bowie himself, were he available then. And ZS qualifies as heavy-duty Zeitgeist shit for that time, that place. Bowie glamor could always translate as Mary glamor. Even as Miss H was patchy about rock, in general, and let a smattering of different kinds of music speak for her, without sticking to any one genre or cultural touchstone.