Life Highlight: David Bowie Is Part 2 Review

So Round 2 of "David Bowie Is" was even more emotional than the first time.  But let me first talk about more curation/technical things I noticed this time around, as I got the official "David Bowie Is [ blank ]" room titles and the flow of the themes.  They are (in order of how you experience them):

David Bowie Is: "[theme]" (what was in the room)

First Room:

• "A Face in the Crowd" (his early years in Bromley)
• "Thinking About a World to Come" (his early years at Decca and 1960s career)
• "Floating in a Most Peculiar Way" ("Space Oddity" corner highlight)

Second Room:

• "Using Machine Age Knife Magic" (Ziggy Stardust costumes/lyrics, Diamond Dogs storyboards, first "SNL" highlight - "The Man Who Sold the World" performance)
• "Never at a Loss for Words or Poses" (his process for writing lyrics/a variety of his lyrics)
• "Taking Advantage of What the Moment Offers" (his album cover design process/highlights of different collaborators/Earthling era costume)

Third Room:

• "Surprising Himself" (his studio process highlight)
• "Making Himself Up" (first costume highlight, "Love You Til Tuesday" performance highlight in "The Mask", minor "Hunky Dory" highlight)

Fourth Room:

• "In the Best Selling Show" ("Life on Mars?" highlight)

Fifth Room:

• "Moving Like a Tiger on Vaselline" ("1980 Floor Show" highlight, 1978 music videos/documentary/fan highlight, additional "SNL" highlight - "Boys Keep Swinging" performance highlight, some Tin Machine highlights)

Sixth Room:

• "A Picture of the Future" (music video highlight)

Seventh Room:

• "Quite Aware of What He's Going Through" ("the Black & White Years" highlight - mainly Berlin Era, brief Sound + Vision era highlight)
• "Moving in This Direction" (ISOLAR I & II highlight)

Eighth Room:

• "A Success in New York" ("Elephant Man"/"Basquiat" highlight, additional "SNL" highlight - "TVC-15" performance highlight)
• Note: Technically this room and the Eleventh Room should be seen as a pairing

Ninth Room:

• "Wearing a mask of his own face" (concert performance/second costume highlight)
• "Watching You" (Diamond Dogs tour highlight)
• "Saying You're Wonderful Give Me Your Hands" (Touring-specific highlight, mainly from "Glass Spider"[?])

Tenth Room:

• "Famous" ("Fame" highlight, "Young Americans" era highlight)

Eleventh Room:

• "Wearing Many Masks" (film performance highlight)
• Note: Technically this room and the Eighth Room should be seen as a pairing

Twelfth Room:

• "Himself" (portrait highlight)
• "Where We Are Now" (final costume highlight)
• "Responsible for a Whole New School of Pretensions" (legacy highlight of artists influenced by Bowie)

Thirteenth Room:

• "Teaching You That Things Always Change" ("★" highlight)

I noted this time around that many of the costumes didn't have shoes (if they even had the right pairing of shoes to begin with), and that having the names of the themes/rooms doesn't detract from my earlier critique about the arrangement of the costumes and themes still stands.

Additionally, I realised that the film room neglects to include what could perhaps be Bowie's greatest acting performance highlight - LRH (Lord Royal Highness) in "SpongeBob's Atlantis Squarepantis").  After all, chronologically it ends on The Prestige, but that was a full year before SpongeBob, and, as any dedicated Bowie fan knows, Christopher Nolan had to personally visit Bowie to try and convince (read: beg) him to play the part of Tesla in The Prestige, whereas Bowie wrote about his role in Spongebob Squarepants: Atlantis Squarepantis as, "At last I’ve hit the Holy Grail of animation gigs. Yesterday I got to be a character on…tan-tara…Spongebob Squarepants. Oh Yeah!! We, the family, are thrilled. Nothing else need happen this year, well, this week anyway."  And the thought of Bowie being absolutely chuffed about being in Spongebob, whereas he had to be convinced to take part in The Prestige is a great insight into Bowie's character and great sense of humour.

I also observed the people who went to go see the exhibit more this time around.  It was just as heart-warming as the first visit to see that age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, ability - there was literally no discernible pattern to dub someone a "typical Bowie fan".  He transcended all boundaries.  I saw new born babies, children, teenagers, young adults, middle aged adults, and the elderly - all of them bobbing their heads in time to Bowie crooning his timeless music.  It moved me to tears to think about how even fifty years later his music is still just as fresh, relevant, and catchy as it ever was.  After all, it's held up to me listening to absolutely nothing else for over two years, and I haven't gotten bored of him yet.

However, something struck me as particularly telling about how this leg of the tour was curated, the rise of social media, and Bowie himself - almost everyone was more transfixed by the video screens than his artefacts.  Large grounds of people huddled around the projectors displaying his image rather than his hand-written lyrics just behind the video screen, where they just shuffled along after glancing at it and/or reading the accompanying description.  This struck me particularly curious as the exhibit itself didn't have any remarkably rare video footage (indeed, you could watch every minute projected on YouTube, like I have).  But Bowie's sheer level of charismatic performance just draws people in.  I too found myself at times hard pressed to look away from videos I had seen dozens of times before to look at rare artefacts I'd only get a few chances to see in person.  Nevertheless, I certainly looked made sure to take my time reading all of his cramped, handwritten notes and every detail sewn into his costumes as this was such a rare opportunity.

Which, that being said, let me just take this opportunity to once again highlight how fucking smart David Bowie is [he's so smart, only swearing can fully convey just how smart he is].  He had the wherewithal and foresight and sheer determination to catalogue and save all his memorabilia and props and notes because he knew they'd be worth something one day.  And indeed, as this excellent exhibit shows, he was certainly right.  Millions of people have queued up and paid to go see this worldwide show, and if the figures for my tickets are anything to go by (for the low end), he and the curation gang have made at least $50 million in revenue (on the very low end).  Not to mention that he mastered the game of self-promotion and persona performance decades before the rise of social media.

The overall tone of the New York leg definitely views Bowie as the Consummate Performer and the Brit who loved-and-turned New Yorker (and the City that loved him in return).  And the exhibit itself attempts to fuse the pop culture perception, remastered, restored Bowie with the original preserved, authentic work from Bowie's past.  It's an exhibit that reinvents the pop cultural perception of an artist who continually reinvented his image (it's rather meta, and therefore I think a fitting hodgepodge tribute to the man himself).

And finally, my personal reaction this time around was definitely more emotional.  I didn't feel a burning need to crowd my way to the forefront of every artefact since I had already (thankfully) seen it before, so I could just revisit my favourites and immerse myself properly.  I also didn't find myself analysing every single little thing like the first time around as a result of my more laid back approach (not that this blog post makes it particularly telling that I wasn't analysing every detail).

Not to mention that I didn't stay as long because unbelievably (and yet not at the same time), it was more crowded on Sunday than it was opening day, and I was beginning to feel a little claustrophobic.  And I was getting hungry.

But just being there again a second time, being able to take it all in, I was moved to tears looking at all the people Bowie brought together, his profound impact on my own life, and just being in the presence of all his history and legacy.  And I was also able to get my official David Bowie Is tote bag and collector's book! It was so weird and melancholy and amazing to get a book published five years ago when the exhibit first premiered in London, when there was still more Bowie to look forward to and the Great Himself still walked the Earth.  Truly, there was and will never be another like Bowie.

David Bowie Is My Hero.

Some Favourite Quotes:

"Think of all the crazy things we'll never do." - Bowie

"It was a crisp sunny morning and the first breath of the 70s.  I'd taken the subway as close as I could to the Village, and, the streets being deserted, followed my nose for that icon for Brit bohos, Bleecker Street.
And with one foot in front of the other I retraced each and every strep of Dylan's work, pictured on his Freewheeling album.  All at once the long ghosts of my [entil visiasms ? writing unclear here] crowded in front of me.  Duchamp, Dean, Mingus, Davis, a crocodile line on which I became a mere flick of the tail.  But I was home." - Bowie