The news of David Bowie’s death this past week was so unsettling and surreal. As a friend said, if Bowie can die, what hope is there for the rest of us? I was truly desolate: For some reason, even though he was a very enigmatic man, he seemed more accessible than other English musicians I’ve loved like Eric Clapton or Richard Thompson (not to mention Keith R and loads of others).
And though it seemed there was no way our paths would ever cross, we did both live in NY and I saw him in the bookstore from time to time. And at Dean & DeLuca, buying oranges…I read an interview in which he talked about going to the local department store every week when he was a teenager to see what records had come in —he worked there for a bit to get the discount. It was a big store (Morley’s?) that sold clothes, carpets and refrigerators but also stereo equipment, turntables parts and he had to go up to the top floor (or something like that). My friends and I used to do that in New York, too, at Macy’s and Korvette’s and other long-gone emporia, before cassette tapes and cds. It was so exciting to buy an LP, bring it home, practically memorize the liner notes and play it over and over again. Filling the house, the dorm, the apartment…and to hear David Bowie talk about doing that too was such a delight.
I thought he was just the most fascinating and beautiful person — part of his allure was that he was always shifting and transforming — himself, his look, his sound. And practically everything people got used to got turned inside out — his being one way and then it would be over and a new look or sound would begin. Being a lifelong fan girl, I was found him utterly captivating and endlessly mesmerizing. And so English. He said, “I have done just about everything that it’s possible to do.” Oh gosh, can you imagine? Being able to say that? Can you see why I was so enthralled?
And this musician and writer was so smart and articulate. He went to the marvelous Ravensbourne College of Design and said he really felt most comfortable as a painter — when he was going through the equivalent of writer’s block as a musician, then he drew, painted, sculpted and designed wallpaper….
He seemed really loyal, too — throughout all the vicissitudes and “changes,” he worked with his manager, Tony Visconti, for more than 45 years and together they truly changed up music constantly — blues, rock, bebop, jazz. And David was so prescient about the music industry, having been dropped by Virgin, signed to a short contact with Sony and then on his own. In 2002 he said, “I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way…the absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it…music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.” (I wonder if he ever met or wrote to Steve Jobs…)
David was mysterious, thin, smoking his Marlboro Lights, always changing. Like Picasso (he talked about Picasso a lot, too. More on this next time, btw). He studied Buddhism for awhile and said that it stayed with him. “The idea of transience, and that there is nothing to hold on to pragmatically; that we do at some point or another have to let go of that which we consider most dear to us, because it’s a very short life.”
One of my favorite songs ever was called Cygnet Committee — here is a refrain:
“I bless you madly, sadly as I tie my shoes
I love you badly, just in time, at times, I guess
Because of you I need to rest
Because it’s you that sets the test
“And I want to believe
That a light’s shining through
Somehow…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKMSgZo9c8s
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So from this fan girl, who will always marvel at this elusive gentleman who continually reinvented himself and all he did: I found it enchanting that he said more than 40 years ago, “I definitely like being a star. It’s the only thing that I can do that doesn’t bore me.”
Here’s something I love to rewatch — he was invited to give the commencement address at Berklee College of Music — and I think it is utterly charming.
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