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| "something happened on the day he died..." |
Most of the time when I "get into" something, my obsession usually lasts around a year before I mine everything I can out of a subject and am ready to move on. The only exception to this rule (until now) has been Harry Potter. David has been going strong for just over two years, and I believe that is because of how he entered into my life and will continue to influence it until I die.
So in honour of this sad, sad day, here is a longer version of how exactly I got into Bowie, and how an interest turned into a passion, which turned into a life-changing inspiration and aspiration:
When I first got into his music, it was November of 2015. I had heard of him before in the vaguest sense of "general pop culture knowledge" like anyone else. But one night I decided to watch Labyrinth. I had been meaning to watch it for a long time, as many people I followed on Tumblr that liked the same television shows/films that I liked, also seemed to like that movie. When I watched it the first time, I was decidedly uninterested in everything except for Jareth. I wanted to know more about him, who portrayed him, and why so many people seemed to think he was devastatingly attractive (I admit, I wasn't swayed at the time by popular opinion).
Naturally, I began looking up "David Bowie" on YouTube and Spotify. I listened to a few of his "Top Songs", but only recognized "Under Pressure" (which was how I originally knew of him, since Queen was a part of my childhood), and "Changes" (from Shrek 2 of all places). Otherwise, I hadn't heard a single song by him. And honestly, a lot of his Top Hits weren't really that interesting to me.
However, I persevered. I wanted to get to know more about Jareth (and become a part of the Labyrinth fandom), but as he was a fictional character, I settled for finding out more about David Bowie. I started to go through his albums on Spotify, based solely on the title and cover design, as I began my quest to listen to every single song.
Two weeks after I had watched Labyrinth, I had already made it through a significant portion of his discography and had made a Facebook post listing my first impressions of his work:
So after a giant rampage through a significant amount of his discography, here are my "Top 5 Favourite Bowie Albums":It's funny to me to see how much my initial impressions have changed, especially when I look at what I wrote in response to Ziggy Stardust not being in my (then) Top Five:
1) Heroes
Best Song: Heroes or Beauty and the Beast
2) Station to Station
Best Song: Stay or Golden Years
3) Let's Dance
Best Song: Modern Love, China Girl, or Let's Dance
4) Pin-Ups
Best Song: Rosalyn or See Emily Play
5) Diamond Dogs
Best Song: 1984/Dodo
I agree that Ziggy is absolute genius, but it failed to make my top 5 because the musical style just wasn't my preference. In comparison, these other albums clearly influenced artists that I enjoy in other decades. But really, there isn't such a thing as a BAD Bowie album from the 70s/80s. Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, and Young Americans are all excellent as well.However, then I still had "New Bowie" to devour. Unfortunately, because I never do anything by halves, I quickly finished all of his discography shortly after he died. After all, when I was getting into him, everyone was still excited that a new album would be released in only a few short weeks. "New Bowie" was guaranteed, not something to savour. If I had known I wouldn't get any new Bowie in the future, perhaps I would've relished the journey a little more. Although I did wait a few weeks before I listened to his last album after realising that it was the last "new" Bowie I would ever have. (For those curious, it was Earthling (1997)).
As a side note, after spending (literally) hundreds of hours poring over his work, and years of intense study, I can safely say that my rankings have changed. Now, my Top 5 would be:
1) Station to Station
Best Song: Golden Years
2) The Next Day
Best Song: The Next Day
3) Hunky Dory
Best Song: Queen Bitch
4) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
Best Song: Rock 'n' Roll Suicide
5) Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)
Best Song: Teenage Wildlife
However, before his death, I also consumed what is now my favourite film, The Man Who Fell to Earth. The "other" Bowie fan staple to Labyrinth, I decided to watch it late at night while I waited for my laundry to finish. However, I wasn't prepared for what it was: a work of soul-crushingly deep, intricate, meaningful, intellectual high cinema. I had thought it would just be a fun "sci-fi film" where Bowie played an alien, similar to Labyrinth. How wrong I was. I couldn't go to sleep. I felt like I had just drowned in one of the most profound works of art I had ever encountered. Later, I found out it was one of the very first films admitted into the Criterion Collection, and now I've seen the movie multiple times (and I own a copy of it myself).
This was a film that began to give form to inklings and concepts that I had yet to put into words. My thoughts on media and how its influenced our culture, an intentional quest for Truth and how to go about it in the middle of suffering, how to have community and connection with another in the midst of feeling isolated and alienated, how money, sex, and alcohol relate to the soul, how to understand loss and love. All of these things (and more) were addressed in the film. Clearly, it was perfect for Bowie, as he was just as concerned with these same questions in his own art (as I would go on to prove). In fact, it was this film that solidified Station to Station as my all-time favourite Bowie album, as Bowie wrote the album while filming the movie, and the thematic premises of both are intertextual.
Not to mention this film was the first time I understood why Bowie was considered a sex symbol. For some reason, the androgynous Ziggy Stardust and Goblin King didn't appeal to me as much as the cold, calculating, but still devastatingly attractive and well-dressed Thomas Jerome Newton (and later Bowie's character of The Thin White Duke). I had gone from a casual interest in understanding his character of Jareth to a full-on obsession. Only this time, it was with the enigmatic character of David Bowie.
I was lying in bed, almost asleep, this night two years ago when my mother messaged me that Bowie had died. I was listening to Young Americans, although I don't remember what song was playing, precisely, the moment I heard. It took me a long time to be able to listen to that album again, although as soon as I heard the news I immediately switched over to ★.
After his death, I was inconsolable. His passing struck too many similarities for me to feel comfortable. He died of cancer, leaving behind his wife and children, and I didn't have to pretend to feel empathy for his then-fifteen-year-old daughter. It was (and still is) memory rather than fantasy when I imagine what Bowie's final moments were, surrounded by his family, as I remember the day my father passed surrounded by my mother and me.
It was now more critical than ever to me to understand his work. I had never been so enthralled, so obsessed with something to have the source die just as my passion was beginning to blossom. It felt too cruel and too sudden. Before Bowie, either I was fascinated by someone that had been long gone or by something that was still alive and well (and living in Paris with Jacques Brel). The only other time I was caught in the nebulous, transitional space of pre-during-post death was found in my relationship with my father. All of this is something I'm still bitter about to this day, as I wish I had developed a passion for Bowie sooner, that I could have enjoyed him longer while he was alive, and that I could still have hope for new music, or perhaps even to run into him on the street one day. Or perhaps I would've felt the loss all the more keenly if I had.
At the same time as Bowie's death, I was under immense pressure to start shooting my senior thesis, "Star Sailor", before going into my final semester of junior year. It was around this time that my passion for film started to decline even more rapidly. I had begun questioning my devotion to film at the end of my sophomore year, but as my obsession with Bowie and music exponentially increased in 2016 as my passion for film decreased proportionately.
Not only that, but I had a particularly hard semester at university that spring, as Dr. Wright had left and I was under Dr. Aijian's mentorship. Although I also wonder if it was perhaps God's providence, as Dr. Aijian allowed me to simply do a project on David Bowie (and who he is) when she saw how distressed my mental state was. This would replace my semester paper for my honours society, meaning that it had to be a minimum of forty hours work outside of class. I know under Dr. Wright I would've never done a project like this, so in some way I felt like the Lord was validating my passion for Bowie.
Imagine, if you will, spending hundreds of hours working on a project of this magnitude. How could this not simply intensify my love and knowledge for Bowie? It was the equivalent of my university thesis (if "Star Sailor" didn't exist).
For my project, I decided that I wanted to analyse all of his songs and put together proof for why all of his work was about loneliness, isolation, some kind of spiritual search, and looking for a way into communicating with other people. This was inspired by a verbatim remark by the man himself in an unaired 60 Minutes interview. And so I did. I still have my project locked away on my own bookshelf. It's entirely handwritten except for a few crucial pieces of summary analysis (much to the chagrin of Ike, as he believes it will go up in flames any moment).
Spending so many hours watching countless interviews, dedicating the labour to understanding his work by hand, listening to hundreds of hours of songs on repeat, and choosing to go back again and again to his primary source material, has lead to both my insane amount of knowledge about Bowie's work, and my extremely strong opinions on it. By the end of my project, I felt like I knew him unlike anyone else I could know in real life.
After the completion of my spring semester, I knew I was firmly split down the middle in my passion for music (at least the history of it) and my passion for film. It was at this time that I decided to get to know Bowie on an even deeper level. I had started listening to his recommended albums and reading his recommended books. I felt as if I was dating him in an odd way. Indeed, I recommend spending time with the artistic creations, book recommendations, and album suggestions of someone you want to get to know. It's a whole new level of both understanding, community, and intimacy.
Reading the same books that Bowie enjoyed were not only pleasing in their own right (I have yet to read a bad recommendation from him), but also immensely satisfying to think that he and I both enjoyed the same words on a page. I felt like we were connected across time and space. The same could be said in the knowledge that I listened to the same notes that inspired and enthralled a titan of music itself. Not only that, but I felt like I had a window into his mind. Particularly in sharing our mutual passion for reading, as his favourite books illuminated his art, to me, more than anything short of interviewing the man himself could do. (Here, I also feel obligated to add that Bowie introduced me to some of the most defining works of my adult life: Lolita, On the Road, and A Confederacy of Dunces.)
By the time I had started my final year at university, I was beginning to seriously consider what I would do after graduation. I had already moved into my own apartment in Los Angeles with my sister. I had a car, a steady income at a part-time job, established a good community of friends and family, and had all the means to begin a life in California. All I needed was a good internship.
Unfortunately, I also found myself terribly disinterested in the idea. I began looking elsewhere. California was an amazing place to go to university, and I loved my friends and family, but I had yet to find a church to go to, and I was becoming disillusioned with the culture. I didn't like how superficial Los Angeles felt, and Bowie seemed to both influence and confirm my opinion.
He considered it to be a place with a toadying culture that gave one a god-complex if they weren't careful. He also almost died on the streets before moving on to Berlin. Of course, later he met his wife Iman in the Golden State, and his son also currently resides there, but the sunshine still wasn't to his liking.
I myself only considered staying in Los Angeles as long as I was interested in The Industry, as it's called in LA, since film is the only industry which has so ravaged the city under its influence. And I realised I wasn't as interested in film as I thought I was. I think Bowie put it best when he remarked, on an inquiry about his intermittent acting career:
It’s purely decorative for me. It’s just fun. It’s not something I seriously entertained as an ambition. I find it really boring, all that hanging around, people talking about what films they’ve just finished or they’re going to be doing: the whole thing revolves around the industry. Zzzzzz…you think: Christ, can’t we talk about anything else except movies?At the same time, I had begun thinking back to my dream (since I was seven years old) of moving to London. When I had originally moved to Los Angeles, I hadn't planned on staying, and I had only seriously entertained the thought of staying during my sophomore/part-of my junior years of university. Now that I had come to the realisation that film (and more importantly, film culture) wasn't everything I wanted, I began to look elsewhere.
However, London was expensive and difficult to reside in without a visa to study or work abroad. Moreover, because I had to still finish an internship, I wanted to make sure to stay at least in the country until graduation. But fortunately, I would finish my Torrey education by the end of my senior fall, so I didn't have to stay in California. It was at this time I started looking towards the art, literature, music, and culture that Bowie himself had been so enamoured with, located in the one and only New York City.
I had just visited the place in January of 2015 with Manar. At the time, I had thought it would be a great city for my sister, but I firmly wanted to stay in Los Angeles. How ironic it would be that less than three years later we would completely switch our minds (and locations).
And, coincidentally, I later realised I had been in town the same dates as Bowie's birthday (and death day). I like to imagine that I passed him on the street during my adventures with Manar, never aware of his presence, although, of course, the chances of such an encounter would have been nearly impossible. But it's a comforting thought that I like to indulge myself in when I become melancholy at the thought I will never meet him.
Thus, with my newfound passion for Bowie (and 1950s Americana, because if you love Bowie that's a side-passion you also begin to share), I decided to further investigate the city that he once characterised thusly:
There are certain cities - London, LA, Paris - where I don’t have a good time. I have a great time here: [he and his wife Iman] can go where we want, eat what we want, walk out with our child, go to the park, ride the subway, do the things that any other family does … In London it’s more excitable and becomes more event-oriented, but here the recognition is almost at a community level. It’s like, ‘Hi Dave, how ya doing!’ It’s a very friendly thing over here”My decision made, I decided to pursue an internship either in film or music in Los Angeles or New York City. By the time I had started my last semester of university, I had secured an internship at a music management company in West Hollywood. Although I had also applied to many excellent film production companies, I found that I was uninterested in them. Only Bowie, and anything related to him, could hold my interest for long. I know that was a potentially dangerous decision, as my track record with obsessions show that they wane after a year or so. But I have never been very good at doing anything other than following what I am interested in. One could also say "following my heart", although it could also be laziness as I accepted the first offer I received.
It seemed to be a perfect combination of the industry that Bowie himself had been a part of while still remaining in Los Angeles until graduation. However, once I had the idea to move to New York City, I couldn't help but keep thinking about it. I wanted to know what made Bowie call the city "home" after living all around the world. I wanted to know how my art would be changed if I I lived somewhere else (Bowie was a staunch advocate for how his location the type of art he created). I wanted to know if I could make it out on my own. I wanted to find a community where I could be known again like the one Bowie described. I wanted to try something bold and daring and interesting like Bowie did with his life and music. I wanted to embrace one of his most famous quotes:
If you feel safe in the area you're working in, you're not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting.So I decided to move to New York the summer after graduation. And I put a feasible plan in place so that I could do it. The rest as to that particular chapter of my life is, as they say, history. However, I will say that it has been extremely interesting to live my life in chapters similar to Bowie. Oregon will always be the place I associate with childhood, California the place with university, and now New York as the place I will always remember as the first years of my adult life.
It does make me sad to realise that the first reason I wanted to move to New York is no longer with us. I like going to his favourite places and pretending that I'm just waiting to run into him, casually, as I drink a cup of tea or look for a new book. If it ever really happened, I don't think I'd approach him (personal boundaries and all that), but to just glimpse the man responsible for shaping my first steps into adulthood would have meant the world to me.
And, as this account of my love-affair with everything that is David Bowie can attest to, it truly isn't a hyperbole to say that Bowie has influenced my character and adulthood just as much as Harry Potter did with my childhood. It is because of David that I originally thought to move to New York, that I discovered an interest in the music industry, and that I recommitted myself to becoming an artist just like him.
Which, speaking of that last point, anyone who has had a conversation with me longer than ten seconds, knows that all of my philosophy and advice as relates to being an artist, is essentially a mix of Bowie and Christianity. Although I readily admit to having a Bowie quote on hand rather than a verse of Scripture if someone asks for my opinion or advice about anything related to being an artist.
In fact, here's one now: "Any art form is like flying a plane which crashes in flames, you just get up and walk away from it, nobody is injured, you can afford to make mistakes, you can afford to do that kind of thing." [x]
My love for contemporary art is completely attributed to him (along with my friend Alex), and my interest in American art is also due completely to, ironically, this lovely Englishman. In fact, many of my current favourite art pieces are thanks to Bowie, and my wider knowledge of art history is completely attributed to him as well.
Although this idolisation of him as my artistic mentor has also caused, somewhat, a point of contention within myself. I recognize that I wish I could be an artist in the same way as Bowie, while at the same time also acknowledging that my strengths and passions lie elsewhere.
For instance, I've recently been contemplating that most of the artists I deeply respect give, roughly, the same advice when it comes to creating, or their process in creating, their work. All of them seem to emphasize discovery rather than calculated analysis, to be completely in tune with the emotional, feeling-side of what they want to create, invoke, and evoke. However, they de-emphasize having a plan for the extremely technical nuances of their work. In short, most of them say they "just do it" and they do "what feels right". As someone who is extremely analytical, this is rather frustrating for me. Just take Bowie's favourite recipe instructions as evidence for where I am at odds with his method of creation. I am more analytical, and I enjoy being so.
However, that doesn't mean I want a career precisely like Bowie's. I don't. I want my own career, although I don't mind it being heavily influenced and inspired by his great mark on history. And it also doesn't mean that Bowie and I are completely different individuals. I know that quite a few of our passions overlap. My passions for history, art, philosophy, psychology, film, music, literature, and other cultures are a perfect 1-to-1 correspondence with his.
And if all of this wasn't enough, Bowie also significantly formed my spiritual walk as an adult. Moving to New York City has been, for me, akin to his spiritual cleansing after leaving Los Angeles in the mid-70s. It has been here on the east coast that I have found an excellent church family once again, recommitted myself to my faith, found the determination to become spiritually healthier, and learned even more about myself than I did in college.
This, of course, relates to one particular aspect of Bowie I'm usually questioned about when I mention how Christian I believe his work to be, which is if I believe he was a Christian himself.
In terms of identifying with Christianity as a religion, I highly doubt Bowie would have ever truly affiliated himself with the church as an organized assembly. "The Next Day" music video proves that, if nothing else, and it's not hard to find various interviews/older work to support this view. (Although he does claim himself to be "Protestant" in this interview). However, in terms of the essence of Christianity, regarding its mystical, transcendental, and spiritual components, I wouldn't be surprised if Bowie was favoured by the Spirit.
Here, I emphasize the Spirit over the Christ part of the Godhead specifically because I think that Bowie was extremely in tune with the Spirit. His music has always held a shockingly rigorous framework underneath that completely aligns with the spiritual reality the Bible speaks of and that the best Christian figures knew.
Specifically, I have found that his work always treats the Spiritual as Truth, that there is something beyond our world, that his work uses a lot of religious icons, artefacts, and imagery (ie "Lazarus", "The Next Day", "God Bless the Girl", etc), and all of his thematic work, as previously stated, totally aligns with the same questions that Christianity aims to answer (ie Where does our spiritual search lead to? Is there a God? Why am I here? How can I seek meaningful relationships with another person? Does anyone understand me? Am I alone?). This is best evidenced in these lines from his excellent song, "Word on a Wing" (Station to Station, 1976), "Just because I believe, don't mean I don't think as well/Don't have to question everything /n heaven or hell".
For all of his philosophy about subjectivity, nihilism, and post-modern sensibilities, I think that as a true artist, one of the best, he couldn't escape the fact that Great Art always has a pulse on something of the Divine. As he once stated, "That's the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God - so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true... Hell, don't pose me that one."
Not to mention how Bowie himself always seemed to be shockingly in tune with the spiritual reality underlying culture - just take a look at Let's Dance, which is more than just a catchy, fun (and most commercially successful) album of Bowie's. It's actually all about using the concept of "dance", materialism, and superficial love as a means of escapism in a brutal new world (read: the 1980s) devoid of its spirituality.
So although I don't know if I would go so far as to say that Bowie put his faith and salvation into Jesus Christ (conceptualised as the modern day American Christian culture would describe Him), there is something undeniably and uncannily (true) Christian in all of his works. The spiritual essence of his pieces has always focused on God, whether it was a study in His sovereignty, His general relationship to us, or His existence.
Perhaps, if I had a gander at answering the question of how close Bowie was to Christianity, it would simply be that I believe he had a more eastern manifestation of the religion rather than the west. This is unsurprising as he had a love for non-western traditions and cultures. In fact, as a young man he trained to be a Buddhist, and reports indicated that he had his ashes spread in the Buddhist ceremony, (although he never truly claimed to be a part of any particular religious teachings or practices), and the spiritual side of Buddhism and Christianity do share a lot of similarities (although obviously not the exact same).
It is also interesting to consider that he wore his father's crucifix from the mid-1970s until, at the very least, the 2000s (after a certain point, when he became a "distinguished" gentleman, Bowie stopped wearing extremely low cut shirts so you can't tell if he's wearing a necklace). Although this could simply be honouring a family heirloom, I can't help but think that wearing such a strong symbol around his neck every day would still make someone like Bowie think about where it came from. And you only have to stop and look at what he read to see that there's no doubt he was well-versed in Christianity and its icons as it related to history and art.
(Also, there are weird little moments like when he prayed the Lord's Prayer during the middle of The Freddie Mercury Concert, and how he would usually say "God Bless" at the end of his concerts).
It is also thanks to him (hand-in-hand with Torrey) that I have become confident in asking questions about my faith. Now, I understand not only that it's okay to ask questions, but encouraged to ask questions about my faith. It's only when my faith fails to stand up to rigorous questioning and intellectual inquiries that I should become worried. Of course, part of that is knowing the right questions to ask, prayer for discernment, and intentionally going back to God, but the mentality of not being timid to ASK in the first place has been a huge part of growing my faith.
And finally, it is thanks to Bowie that I have found a way that I actually want to manifest my faith. Although I knew that film and faith were compatible (Biola's curriculum sees to that), it is thanks to Bowie that I finally understand how Art and Faith are more than just compatible - they're harmonious. To create the Greatest Art means to understand humanity, the soul itself, to bridge the gap between God and man. And now the greatest passion I have is to create art that glorifies God, that unites people in their souls, and that is simply good fun to partake in, just like what Bowie's work has given me.
And that's it. That is why his loss will not just be felt by the world at large (he was an artistic genius that shaped and defined culture no matter what decade), nor just by his family and friends (with whom my heart definitely goes out to today), but also personally, by me, on this sad sad day.
I felt like I knew Bowie on an extremely intimate level and that he knew me. His music somehow was able to express the deepest longings of my soul to be understood, ask the questions I didn't know how to pose about God, offer the community I craved when I felt deeply alone. In Bowie, I had found a confidant, mentor, and friend. (Not to mention a drop-dead gorgeous one at that).
As a result of all of this, I still tend to refer to Bowie with shifting tenses, sometimes referring to him as if he were still alive. But how could I not since, to me, he is - his music and work allow him to live on in my heart and soul as I celebrate his work and strive to be an artist at least half as incredible as he as I enter into the newest chapter of the rest of my life.
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