Many mourners have cited Bowie's ability to endlessly reinvent himself as what was most precious about him--we lost not one David Bowie but many (though I doubt we'll similarly mourn Madonna). His chameleon-like changeability was inspiring to every Queer kid who ever sought to forge a new identity--which is also an apt description of every teenager ever. I do agree that changeability is part of his appeal (though Queen is who most helped me navigate my own teenage identity crisis), but that still doesn't explain exactly why his death hit me so hard.
Other mourners have pointed to how he still felt vital in a manner that no one else of his generation does anymore. The Rolling Stones were already a parody of themselves before I was even born; Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan still record, yes, but they tour primarily behind the classics.
By contrast, when Blackstar debuted 2 days before his death, the reviews were trying to place it within the context of his larger oeuvre, which albums it sounded like, built off of, what new directions it was pushing in. People were still talking about what he might do next, as though he still mattered, which is not something we do with, say, a new Paul McCartney album (who, though I'm sure I'll be sad when he passes too, nonetheless I doubt it will hit me, for he hasn't recorded anything of note since Michael Jackson was still Black--which is another death that didn't hit me). That explanation felt warmer, and it was at this point that I finally decided it was high time to hear Blackstar for myself.
[I love that this video grants us one last Major Tom reference for the road!]
What can I say? I haven't heard an album this gorgeous in a long time. It sounds classically-old and cutting-edge new, all at once, fusing together Jazz and EDM in a manner that I've never heard before, that I found myself dancing to, wild, passionate, and free, in spite of myself, within my room. It has a sense of wonder about it, it hints at infinite possibilities--like only one who is already at the doorstep of eternity can hint at--with an assurance that such things are still possible.
As I've related before, just last Spring, I was lamenting with an old friend about how the perennial experience of our early-20s--that of discovering a gorgeous new album that transports you outside yourself--was one neither of us had enjoyed in awhile. Indeed, we worried that we would never have that experience again, that maybe we couldn't again (studies have shown most folks don't get into anymore new music post age 34). Maybe, sadly, we had finally outgrown the possibility of having that experience with new music, as our brains slowly calcified into old age.
But now here I am having that transportive experience, in 2016--and what's more, it is not some long-lost classic from a bygone time, nor is it by some young artist before all their fresh ideas petered out, but by a 69 year old, literally on his deathbed, 25 albums into a long career, someone who had every right to just rest on his laurels, rich and fat and old, and churn out one last quick cash-in.
And I think that that's what most struck me about Bowie, and why I felt his death so acutely--not for what he represented to all the frightened kids out there, but to all the frightened adults! For what is it that most scares us about the aging process? That our bodies will give out? That we won't save enough for retirement? I offer that on top of all that, what most scares us most about ageing is that we will finally cease to grow--that at some point our current political opinions are the only ones we'll ever have; that our current wardrobe is all we'll ever wear; that our current musical collection is all we'll ever listen to; that our current reading level is all we'll ever read at.
Some people, too many people, are comfortable with that stasis, and that's fine; but I for one quietly fear that from here on out it will only be a struggle to keep expanding my artistic palette, that every innovative idea I had in my 20s will be the last ones I ever have, that any attempts to keep up with the times will only come off as desperate, that I will settle into middle-age respectability far too comfortably and predictably.
But lo, here is David Bowie, a man who never ceased to be innovative! And don't speak to me of your insipid "innovative" businessmen who only know how to create new ways to exploit workers (as though there were anything novel about that), I'm talking about someone who actually does something new! He did not resist the ageing process, forever and pathetically trying to grasp after some long lost youth, but instead used his age to explore new ways of feeling, of thinking, of being!
Even when some of his artistic experiments failed (again, see the '80s--ye gods, the '80s...), still he never ceased to experiment--and what's more, he did it to the very end, on his own terms! 18-odd months ago, when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he chose to "curate his own death," to rage against the passing of the light, to dispense with every maudlin impulse and stare his own impending mortality square in the face, and what's more, to make something genuinely beautiful and new from it!
How few artists do that, how few get to do that! It's the promise to grow old gracefully, that one can still choose to be vital, creative, free, and daring, right to the very end, that David Bowie represented. Men like that are far too rare, and hence we feel their loss all the more profoundly when they are taken from us. He's a blackstar (the transitional state between a collapsed star and a singularity), and even better, he invites us to be blackstars too--for we will all be on the doorstep of eternity swifter than we suspect, as well.
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