So much has been and will be written about David Bowie now
that he has died. I’m reading it all in the hope that I will get
to know even more about the man who sang back in 2013 about “the moment you
know, you know, you know” in the song Where
Are We Now. I have pondered that line over and over, and each time I hear
it, my feeling is that he was talking about that moment when you know that you
are mortal; that moment when every fiber of your being knows that you are aware
of that knowledge—that one day your life will end. That is how I interpreted
the song, as an elegy for the fragility, the transience, the unfathomable ending of life,
and for the knowledge that time cannot be stopped and that there is nothing we
can do to prevent death. It comes to us all. It could have been that he was
growing older, as we all are, and that he had regrets. Thoughts of our own
mortality are not unnatural. We go on living all the same, in our paradoxical lives
where we discuss in earnest what type of couch we may buy tomorrow at the same
time that we realize that it does not really matter in the long run what type of couch we buy. But we do it anyway. Living each day to its fullest requires that we understand that mortality
is our ultimate outcome. What makes Bowie exceptional is that he pursued those
thoughts as far as he was able. He explored the idea of mortality and of dying.
He visualized death. You cannot hear and watch Blackstar and not be totally undone by it, by its bravery,
feelings, anxiety, fear, imagery, and darkness. He was afraid, he was vulnerable, and he
shared that. He did not shy away from a difficult, almost taboo subject. But he
did it his way, through his art, and it was genuine and heartfelt.
I could not then, and cannot now, listen to Where Are We Now without crying. Because
even then, it seems to me that Bowie was exploring the juxtaposition of life
and death in daily life.
‘As long as there's sun
As long as there's sun
As long as there's rain
As long as there's rain
As long as there's fire
As long as there's fire
As long as there's me
As long as there's you’.
Life was worth living because the sun shone, the rain
fell, the fire burned, and loved ones were in his life. As long as there was a
spark of life in him, and love between him and others, there was a reason to go
on, to fight (illness perhaps), to create, to be. He did not want to die. I
want to think that if anyone will be able to tell us what the afterlife will be
like, it will be him. After all, he told us what it was like to know that he
was dying through his music and his lyrics. I am not sure how he will manage to
let us know about the new world he has come to, just that I think he will.
David Bowie was my first meeting with the strange, the
exceptional, the out-of-the ordinary, and the other-worldly. There was a
seriousness about every piece of art he created. He believed in his art and in
his ability to communicate his visions to us. Hearing him for the first time
when I was a teenager made me feel less alone, less alienated, and less strange
than I normally felt at that time. I felt like I ‘fit’ when I heard his music.
I am thankful that I met his world when I did, because I got to experience some
strange and wonderful rides through that world—Space Oddity, Ashes to Ashes, Heroes, TVC15, Changes, and Rebel Rebel, to name just a few of my
favorites songs. Who else could write a song (Space Oddity) about a spaceman trapped in outer space with no hope
of return, and get you to feel for that character? It did not matter whether
that character was literal or figurative; you felt for him all the same. Bowie was
the perfect choice for the main character in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth, a film that drew me in and would not let
me go for a long time afterward. I dragged my sister and a few of my friends to
that film, and ended up being the only one who liked it and who wanted to
discuss it afterward. I wanted to share the sorrow I felt about his alien
character not being able to return to his home where his family waits for him,
a dying planet without water. As a young adult starting out on the long journey
that is life, it was a terrible feeling to contemplate that he would never
return to them. That thought was hard to bear. David Bowie seemed to understand the dualities of human existence, love and lack of love (isolation/alienation), joining the party and standing outside looking in, joy and sorrow, strength and frailty, health and sickness, and in that sense he was very much like
his character in The Man Who Fell to
Earth. But unlike Mr. Newton in that film, I believe that
he has now returned home.
