Seven Years in Tibet

I fell in love with this song off the "EART HL I NG" album, I don't know why just something about it really attracts me (probably the chugging rhythm and wailing finish really). I believe it was written about the continued strife in Tibet.

He appears to follow this song up in "Hours" on the last track...but that's a tenuous link at best.

"Are you OK? You've been shot in the head And I'm holding your brains The old woman said"

Maybe the best songtextline ever.

It's about the seeming futility of belief in a higher being or afterlife-based paradigm.
The first phrase is the man experiencing his own death and seeing nothing but himself dying; there is no afterlife. When I listened to a long, long time ago I imagined that the second phrase was, as the reference to the autobiographical book above says, that this man is climbing, making an Ascent to find separation (as is assumedly was found in Bowie's own practice of meditation and yoga and referenced in other songs on this album). The album cover has Bowie standing with his back to the viewer in an A-frame pose with the Union Jack lines in his coat further emphasizing this letter...I hope you follow the symbolism so far as to how it relates to the lyrics. "Turn to question the mountain / Why pigs can fly / It's nothing at all," seems to be saying that even in this non-theist paradigm there is no escape or comfort or redemption gained from attaining what is implied by going "beyond the yoga zone" and the "frail form" ("is drifting" like snow, "old snow", like ashes). The phrase "why pigs can fly, it's nothing at all," seems to be a recognition that this "enlightenment" offers nothing...he climbed the mountain to reach "heights" that "pigs" have reached without the same effort/mindfulness/practice.
And of course, "I praise to you, nothing ever falls away" is the man's reaction to the failure of prayer and belief. When I say "man" in the above writing I speak of the character in the lyrics and not Bowie but some years prior he had written "Loving the Alien" which both in lyrics and imagery (in the video) deal with similar issues of prayer and meditation based paradigms.

"I hope you follow the symbolism so far as to how it relates to the lyrics." The peak of the mountain/"A" climbed is the head. I think what it means to say is that there is no higher authority than man himself; there is no God above and there is no "secret" gained at the top of the mountain...just a vantage point to look down from.

EACHOTHER, DAMNIT, EACHOTHER!

GAWD DON"T YOU PEOPLE UNDERSTAND IT"S NOT ABOUT DRUGS OR A BREAKUP???

"Seven Years in Tibet" is an autobiographical book. It details the travels of an Austrian member of the national socialist party who attempts to climb a mountain in the Himalayas. During the climb WWII starts and he happens upon some British troops who send him to a war prison. He eventually escapes and winds up in Tibet where he befriend the then child Dalai Lama. He experiences their peaceful Buddhist ways and realizes the shameful error of his past beliefs. After some time WWII ends and later Tibet is invaded by the Chinese, mirroring the cruelty of the Germans.

Off the top of my head, "Looking for Satellites" refers to people looking for other people, "satellites" over head... maybe this is what he's getting at in reference to finding a 'higher meaning".

It is based on the brain chemistry of sensory flooding and it is about irony. The most riddiculous suspension of belief while your real adventure might be sitting next to you while you are enraptured in this commercial rubbish. Bowie often composes songs while imagining himself in a cinema; the place most Westeners go to escape the madness of reality for a few hours. Look carefully at the lyrics - they don't make any sense unless you imagine yourself in a cinema with your dream partner that you are too scared to admit that you have just found your best chance at hapiness

See bowiesongs.wordpress.com/

Seven” also mentions both your parents and your brother…

They’re not necessarily my mother, father and brother; it was the nuclear unit thing. Obviously I am totally aware of how people read things into stuff like this. I’m quite sure that some silly cow will come along and say, (adopts silly cow voice) “Oh, that’s about Terry, his brother, and he was very disappointed about this girl back in 1969, whenever he got over her…” That sort of thing comes with the territory, and because I have been an elliptical writer, I think people have—quite rightly–gotten used to interpreting the lyrics in their own way. I am only the person the greatest number of people believe that I am.

Bowie, interview with David Quantick, Q, October 1999.

Silly cow voice: “I forgot what my father said…” he begins, then quickly has to remind himself he’s still forgotten it. “I forgot what my mother said, as we lay on your bed.” The same goes for his brother. Of course, it’s presumptuous and dully literal to argue that Bowie has to be referring to Haywood and Peggy Jones (the latter causing grief as far back as “Can’t Help Thinking About Me“) and Terry Burns here. Of course, he is, in a way. He knows, if you’re a deep fan or a lazy journalist, that the words may call up long-gone Haywood and Terry (well, your ideas of them, of these people whom you’ll never know). So he plays with it: the family as a set of blank faces; the song an orphan’s.

Peggy Jones would die in 2001; Haywood and Terry had been dead for years, or decades. Losing your parents is the last act of becoming an adult: it’s as though you look up one day to find there’s no roof on your house. The gods forgot they made me/so I forgot them, too. It’s one of Bowie’s most Gnostic lines. God’s forgotten that He made our world; the archon ruling in His place has forgotten that he isn’t God; people on the sad earth have forgotten to believe in any of them. The latter line’s tense is key. Bowie forgot them a while ago: is he regretting it now?