Blackstar
I’ve never been the biggest David Bowie fan. His more mainstream and accessible songs, sure. The awe-inspiring genius of the open-chord riff in “Rebel Rebel,” the effortless cool of “Modern Love,” the howling pain in “Heroes”—genius songs each. His more avant-garde work, his jazzy digressions and artsy pretensions left me behind. I am a simple man. I like a 4×4 beat and some major chord progressions.
I also don’t know much about Bowie as a human being. After the shock and awe of his passing faded, there have of course been a plethora of backlash pieces, concerning his interactions with underage groupies in the 1970s. I never knew that. I don’t care how many drugs were involved or what year it was, any grown man who has sex with an underage girl is shitbag, and that complicates my impression of Bowie.
As does Blackstar, his final album, apparently written and released not only in the full knowledge of his coming death due to liver cancer, but as an artistic comment on it.
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Recently, Nick Mamatas, who I’ve met once and who has published me a few times, posted links to heartbreaking stories about writers who committed suicide. The latter I had read years before, the former was recent. They’re both tales of desperation, of people who have slowly given up on their dreams, become hopelessly tangled in the endless bullshit life rains down on all of us. Life is, after all, death; everyone we know slowly succumbs, and everything we do is tainted with the knowledge of its transience. Some people handle this, sheltered by loved ones, friends, a vibrant social life. Some of us lose that shelter, or never have it.
Oh, I’m lucky. And yet despite my good fortune, I can see myself in those stories. How easy would it be to slowly lose people? To find yourself alone, truly alone? Easier than we think. Easier than I think. It happens so slowly and subtly and then so quickly and suddenly. And money and fame is no certain bulwark against it; Harper Lee has both and I suspect she is lonelier than ever.
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Blackstar is Bowie’s final album, and it’s pretty clear he planned it and the surrounding publicity—the photographs and videos and the design of the physical album and the liner notes et al—to be a funeral card. A final performance. The lyrics of some of the songs seem to clearly reference the cancer that was killing him and his awareness of a legacy.
That’s amazing. To think that for a year and a half he labored under the doom of his rebellious cells and produced something that was designed to be his swan song. I find myself wondering if he scheduled his death as well, coming as it did so close to the release of the album. The discipline is impressive, and even if David Bowie wept and begged at the last moments, it doesn’t take away from his achievement. Whether Bowie was a good man or not, whether he committed crimes or was a secret asshole, he faced the one thing we all face in the end and he used it for fuel. He created something from it, and turned his own demise into a Moment.
I despair of ever having that kind of discipline, or creativity. When informed of my own death—assuming I get more warning than a shouted “Hey!” or a sudden sense of gravity having turned against me—I’ll likely wallow in self-pity and booze for a long time and then watch a lot of Netflix and then die, bewildered and irritated.
I won’t release a Blackstar, I don’t think. And that’s kind of sad, yes?
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I’m obsessed with legacy. I don’t really believe in an afterlife, so much of my motivation to publish and self-publish is to leave a slime trail behind me. I have a strong suspicion I have just been outclassed.
Did you catch that Springsteen covered “Rebel Rebel” at a concert last week? I think Rolling Stone magazine linked it on Twitter.
I’ve liked A LOT of David Bowie songs my entire life, but I didn’t know. See, they happened in the middle of radio sets, and in the 80’s (even now) they weren’t necessarily so diligent about identifications. Or I wasn’t paying attention because I just wanted “Werewolves of London” to be on and didn’t know radio didn’t work the same way as TV. So I found out, literally within the last 5 or 6 months, that there’s a lot of Bowie I adore. And then this.
I know nothing of his personal life either. I tend not to look into that with artists, because really, I care about their music or their books, not if I want to have a beer with them.
And I think you really nailed it. Black Star is his swan song. He knew, and he did it, and it’s marvelous (well, I’ve only listened through it once. I’m not sure I Have new favorites yet). And legacy is something we as writers worry about, when confronted with life and death, when confronting whether we’re published or not. When looking at the fragility of the future.
…… Saw him 5 times. Starting with Ziggy Stardust.
Here’s a thought? You can still be a dick. But? Have a BLACKSTAR waiting in the wings for us to remember you by …..