Selfish Reason number 1:
David Bowie the artist we love will never release another song. The general unwashed public (or anyone for that mater) will never again hear an original David Bowie song. His distinctive voice will not reach us again through the airwaves with anything other than already released music. That makes me really sad. The world is a duller place for not having David Bowie the musician in it. We can no longer anticipate what he’ll do next or wonder what his next album will move in us. There is no next chapter, the David Bowie music book is closed.
Selfish Reason number 2:
I’m mourning the loss of the whole era which David Bowie represents to my life. The 80’s was the time when I was immersed in David Bowie. I was a rebel teenager with spiky hair, blazers with huge shoulder pads, rolled sleeves and tube skirts. Big eyeshadow and cigarettes were uber cool and so was David Bowie. I adored his sense of fashion, his steely cool poses, his smoldering silhouette, his definite and distinct dance choreography and his voice. He was the epitome of a modern man. David Bowie wrote my life’s sound track for 10 years. And then he released “Red Shoes’ which was the first time I understood him to have a political agenda and I adored him even more. Even though he took on so many personas over his career, to me he always authentic. He was making music because he had to not because he wanted to make money and he just happened to look damn cool doing it. When I learned he had passed away, a part of my life died as well. I was reminded of my own mortality and instantly felt a grief for the period of my life during which he was my idol. Yes, we (the general public) still have his music (which is all we’ve ever really had) but when I hear him sing now there is a nostalgic sadness which is about more than just the loss of my own spiky hair and shoulder pads. It’s about the loss of a real live human who influenced my life during a time of growing up. His music was a feature during my transition into adulthood and now that he’s gone I’m (rudely) reminded that that part of my life is gone as well. This makes me sad.
Selfish Reason number 3:
On top of all that I’m terribly upset that the world (the universe even) has lost an incredible artist who selflessly, shamelessly and relentlessly created. David Bowie was a brilliant example of the creative process in action. As he has said himself, he was a collector of personalities with a persistent curiosity for the world and for people. He loved life and participated in every facet of it that he could and then reflected his experiences in his art.
He had the rare gift of being able to lose the 'I' in himself and take the position of conscious observer i.e.: go beyond his own ego and let go of his own construction of himself to become so many different people which allowed him to create from so many different angles. Most of us are too scared to let go of ourselves. He never let one construct of himself be stronger than another and for that reason he became fascinating and authentic and unpredictably beautiful. His life was a creative process.
His gender fluidity is well documented, but what about his personality fluidity and his social fluidity? What about his musical and artistic fluidity? He expressed emotions through the lyrics of his songs, but also through every beat of music, every pause, every intonation. He expressed himself through with moving images (music videos) and had a brilliant understanding of the power of the visual image (think of strong poses, and distinctive dance moves). He explored different music genres, instruments, voices and was insatiably curious.
I don’t see him now as an idol, but as an incredible artist who has relentlessly created in a world that doesn’t value creative arts. As an artist he boldly said “I’m different, I don’t know where or how I fit into this world, but I am going to create anyway”. He never knew where he was going to next but had the courage to enter the creative process with mindful presence and in doing so created a space for the genius to emerge. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.
Most people fill every space in their minds with self doubts i.e.: “what if they don’t like it?”, “who do I think I am?” or with business i.e.: “I don’t have time”, “ I need the money ”, or with addictions or obsessions or dullness, or fear. There are so many, many, many thoughts, feelings or emotions that can stop us all from creating what we’d like to create.
David Bowie found a way to clear all those thoughts, remained present and stepped boldly into the creative process, with trust. This is a place that many artists strive to get to and he not only went there time and time again, but he LIVED inside the creative process. From the time David Jones created David Bowie to the release of Black Star his entire life was a stage show. In an early interview he said he never wanted to be a singer, we wanted to write musicals. He wrote songs for musicals in the hope that someone would use them in their show. No-one did, so he was forced to sing his own songs.
In actual fact David Jones used David Bowie to write a life long, colourful, flamboyant, musical show. The whole world became his stage and he understood that we are all just players in the show. From the birth of Ziggy Stardust to the death of BlackStar, he orchestrated every act.
David Bowie showed me a different way to live but also a different way to express your life through art, a different way to approach life and most recently a different way to die. He went out with a grand finale, Blackstar and created right up until the very end.
With his work there was no gap between the artist and the artwork. He was the art. He was so much more than just a musician, his whole being was a work of art.
In a world that undervalues the creative arts we need more David Bowies. Our young adolescents need varied examples of how to live a creative life. We all need to see more pioneers in the world of the arts.
And please someone out there make a musical of his life? He’s already written it for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment