David Bowie: What I Listen to When I Feel "Low"

Bowie during his 1978 ISOLAR II Tour

I once read an amusing Tweet that was a response to the question: "What's your unhealthiest coping mechanism"? and the response was: "listening to depressing songs when I'm depressed to increase my depression".  However, I don't think that any of Bowie's work can ever be labelled as truly depressing.  There's too much warmth and vitality and hope imbued and infused within his music to be so one-dimensional.  As such, whenever I feel "low", I often find myself listening to his seminal 1977 album Low.  And since I was feeling "low" today after my first day at work, I decided to read my Bible and listen to Low (it's always my go-to when I'm feeling down due to its marvellous thematic work).

Low, like all of Bowie's excellent work, offers a message of understanding and encouragement.  Indeed, understanding the relationship between failure and encouragement is not something I thought I would be discovering this year.  However, I am finding that where ever I seek one, the other isn't far behind - along with a healthy dose of faith.  Who knew that praying for such a thing like failure would be so spiritually rewarding (and draining and dangerous and generally full of growth)? And Bowie's album epitomizes the complex relationship between these three things along with where a sense of isolation and doubt fit in the picture.

Moreover, the fact that Low engages in a more instrumental sound symbolizes how our souls groan for something which we do not know how to put into words - without understanding what it is we desire.  Yet like our ability to understand what Bowie is conveying through his "pure music", the Spirit understands what we yearn for that we are unable to put into words.  The album showcases a perfect balance between vocal and instrumental work in the same way we as humans are a balance between our vocal and rational side with our raw, unspoken emotional side.

Here, I look to Bowie's fantastic performance of the entirety of Low (albeit in a different order than on the album) at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2002 (which is thankfully posted in full on YouTube).

The conveyance of the grandeur of the spiritual can clearly be seen in "Warsawa" - easily one of the best Bowie works ever made (it's my favourite on the album and he frequently used it as a concert opener).  Majestic, cinematic, and unapologetically divine, the song not only shows the desolation of Poland but Bowie's own sense of desolation on his spiritual landscape.  The song brilliantly relates the majesty of one's own inner life against the backdrop of a stern spiritual reality also rooted outside oneself.  However, the type of reality it conveys is clearly alienated from any sense of companionship.

Another excellent track that develops this is "Subterraneans", the finale of the album which offers both an extremely cinematic and intensely personal sound.  The song would not be out of place during a pivotal scene for a film's protagonist as he undergoes a deep period of meditation and reflection.  It's at once as desolate and foreboding as it is yearning and beautiful.  It perfectly represents the "twilight zone" that Bowie attempted to create in his lyrics:

It has, again, that night-time quality where the real meets the unreal, and that’s an aspect of writing I’ve always admired in a lot of authors and pop writers is the ability to keep things on a surreal and real level so they have feet on earth and heads in heaven sort of thing. It’s a twilight state, I think, that one goes for.

These feelings of isolation and loneliness are rife throughout Low and interspersed between periods of divine solace and crushing depression.  Interestingly, being patient for Christ seems to be intimately linked with the sensation of isolation.  For instance, in "Sound and Vision" (a lovely euphemism I take to mean the inspiration and purpose to a creation [the vision] as well as the "nitty gritty" aspects of life [the sound]), Bowie interweaves these two concepts.  He is isolated in his "blue blue electric blue" room with "nothing to do", but it is revealed that his isolation is not purposeless or unconstructive.  Instead, he "sings" as he "waits" for "the gift of sound and vision".  Thus, isolation and introspection ("drifting into my solitude") are linked with constructive work and obedience to God ("singing") as faith and patience are simultaneously practised ("waiting for the gift of sound and vision").

However, true to form, Bowie examines isolation through a variety of lenses, including the sensation of longing for companionship.  In "Be My Wife" Bowie invokes the larger idea of what a wife symbolizes.  Perhaps one of the most straight-forwardly relatable songs on the album, he yearns for faithful companionship ("Share my life/Stay with me/Be my wife") to share his experiences with as he travels the world ("I've lived all over the world").  This symbolism can further be extrapolated if we consider the Biblical view of marriage, which is a union before God that offers some of us greater understanding and participation in Christ's unconditional and self-sacrificial love for us.  Thus, by Bowie pleading "be my wife", he further conveys our intense desire to be able to more fully realise and experience Christ's love for us.

This is also evidenced in "What in the World", which offers a sense of unapologetic isolation and paralysis from the sensation.  However, the one thing which stops the speaker from total paralysis is his desire for love ("I'm in the mood for your love").  It is this love that can be seen as both the girl's affections and God's love for us.  This is because the speaker desires love while in the midst of trying to make sense of "the real [him]".  The lack of positive identity outside his desire for love thus wonderfully maps onto our lack of self outside of Love (as in Christ), while the groaning at the end of the song symbolizes the angst of this spiritual growth.

The predecessor may not be as "hopeful" as "Heroes", but it certainly offers one of the most striking images of deeply felt personal failure and professional doubt.  It was made in the middle of one man struggling to get out of a terrible drug habit, a failed marriage, and attempting to retain custody of (as well as be a better father to) his son in the midst of a bitter and messy divorce.  This can be seen in "Speed of Life" and "Breaking Glass" (which the first track bleeds into).  At once a fast-paced track that immediately sets the tone of the work, "Speed of Life" is a fantastic instrumental piece that coveys a sense of bewilderment at the passing of time.  It offers the sensation of life moving on (whether he likes it or not) and Bowie trying to make cobble together a sense of self in the midst of wondering how life has passed him by.  This then beautifully leads into the steelier sense of perseverance in the midst of it all in "Breaking Glass", which offers a response to the bewilderment of the first piece.  The harsh lines "You're such a wonderful person/But you got problems oh-oh-oh-oh/I'll never touch you" offer a vitality of life that is simultaneously disillusioned from past relationships and about a broken heart in search of healing.  This line is particularly relatable to the Biblical imagery of a hardened heart and protecting oneself against the world.

Moreover, Bowie offers in Low a raw depiction of the extreme lack of confidence and despondence he felt over his past work.  He doubted at the time that he had made anything worthwhile, and felt like a failure as an artist (keep in mind the albums he's doubting were all made in the entirety of 1969-1977: David Bowie (1969), The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, and Station to Station).  This can most clearly be seen in "Art Decade", which offers an eerie instrumental piece that feels uneasy and doubtful.  It's as if the song itself is questioning the creation of art itself while being a work of art.

Yet it is precisely because of this keen sense of failure and doubt that as an audience we are more than ever able to relate with Bowie on a spiritual level.  We all fall short of honouring God the way we ought.  We are spiritual failures at not giving Him the proper Glory and obedience that He's due, and hence Christ came so that we could be free from condemnation under the Law and saved through Grace via His Sacrifice for us.  Moreover, we understand Bowie's sense of doubt because we all doubt our purpose - if we have one, but more specifically, we wonder what form our purpose will manifest itself in.

Therefore, if we hold our spiritual failure and doubt to be true, we yearn to find solace in something to get out of our self-destructive cycle and start anew.  This cycle can most clearly be evidenced in the superb "Always Crashing in the Same Car" - a truly remarkable song about frustration and the resulting despondence in feeling like you're just going "round and round" to a destination you'll never arrive at that's purposeless and meaningless.  However, "A New Career in a New Town" is the perfect answer to this self-defeating cycle.  Purely instrumental, the meaning of the song is revealed nearly four decades later with Bowie's "I Can't Give Everything Away" on ★.  The song, which speaks of prodigal songs, heavily samples from the Low track.  Clearly, the idea of renewal, which is strong in both pieces, has its foundational roots in coming "back" to Christ (or home).  Indeed, on even a practical level the "Berlin Era" of Bowie was viewed by the man himself as a long-awaited homecoming back to Europe (to get away from his toxic life in America).  Thus, on Low the song symbolizes the concept of renewal through homecoming and ★ furthers this idea by connecting homecoming to the parable of the prodigal son (turning back to God).

Therefore, if taken as a whole*, Low is one of Bowie's most encouraging albums (if not the most encouraging) during times of intense isolation, self-doubt, spiritual failure.  Despite the fact Low is all about isolation, it offers one of Bowie's most communal works as the audience is able to bond with him over the sensation of loneliness.  It may be an album that yearns for connection with another, but the work itself, in fact, provides said connection for both audience to artist and audience to audience.  Additionally, the themes of doubt and failure (both on a grand and humble scale) would later be transformed into the ultimate triumph.  Low is considered by critics and fans alike to be one of the best works Bowie ever made and it would go on to change the face of music forever.  Thus, the extremely spiritually-relatable work made during Bowie's "low"est period can be seen as the ultimate encouragement as it is in itself a testimony to the positive spiritual growth and transformative power faith has when paired with isolation, self-doubt, and spiritual failure have on the soul.