Five Years
Track n° 1 of the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

As always, David tells a story.
Here he speaks about the death of the earth.
No, not today, not tomorrow: in five years. About how people react to the news. It’s not a hoax: you can tell because the news presenter has a face wet with tears. In the town square at the market, people are jostling. Mothers are sobbing.
You realize, without having known it before, that you need others, everyone else, but you freeze, or you lose your mind.
A policeman kneels before a priest. A soldier stares at his reflection in the wheel of a Cadillac. A girl beats children almost to death.
And then my favorite line.
David seems to see you as you cheerfully drink a cold milkshake in an ice cream parlor, as if nothing is happening. Smiling. Happy. You pose.
And he watches you and says: I don’t think you knew you were in this song (live he almost always says: in my song).
I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour, drinking milk shakes cold and long...
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, don’t think you knew you were in this song...
There... David talks to the characters, and he makes us feel both inside and outside the story being told.
One of his many miracles.