About “The Laughing Gnome”

The mythological spirits of the subterranean underworld held great symbolism for Psychiatrist Carl Jung, embodying the fertile juices of the unconsciousness with their capacity for wisdom; and he cautioned against dismissing them lightly. It is significant in this context that across the years Bowie creatively manifested his own subterranean creatures of the underworld, “hanging out with your dwarf men” on the mysterious ‘Bewlay Brothers’ (1971), “gnomes” and “dwarves” on the free association lyrics of ‘Little Wonder’ (1997).

Instinctually theatrical, Bowie’s expression of subliminal energies was not bounded by the intellectual self-constraint of Jung and his earliest creative work reveals a foreboding aspect around the unbounded Unconscious, ironically illustrated in his own Cabiri-esque encounter from the underworld in 1967’s whimsical ‘Laughing Gnome’. Followed home by a gnome, the narrator feeds and sends him off, only for him to weirdly reappear later with a doppelganger[xviii]. Co-opting these twins’ fertile creativity for financial gain, the young protagonist seems oblivious to the potentially subversive energies of unrestrained unconscious invasion and his ability to sanely co-exist with these uninvited entities now infesting his chimneystack [xix] (a now blocked interior vent) who taunt him,

… hee hee hee, I’m the laughing gnome, you can’t catch me,”

about their slippery ungraspable nature. Jung was not so naïve: