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Tribute
David Bowie has left us.
It's shocking. Social Media is all about Bowie today. Stupid Cancer killing people indiscriminately. Nature has no remorse and no vendetta.
Friday at work I was listening to the Current's morning show. It's not as annoying as most morning shows, but I hate all the talking. But, for some reason I took a shot and listened. It was David Bowie's 69th birthday and he released his new album “Blackstar”. They played a song from it. I had seen the video for that song awhile back. A pretty messed up video.
Then on Saturday or Sunday I heard another song from the album. I remember thinking it was unusually lovely.
Then on Monday (today) I heard he was dead.
Weird. Seems like he was holding on for one last birthday. One last album.
Being a little kid in the mid-80s, my first impression of Bowie was from the movie Labyrinth. I wasn't really aware of music, at least not in the way teenagers and adults are aware of music.
As I got older, I realized he was an influence to many of the musicians I admired. Who can forget Nirvana's rendition of “The Man Who Sold The World”?
Age progresses, and my concept of Bowie changes. My husband found a lot of old Bowie tapes at the Salvation Army. Really old. Things some people don't know about. “Pin Ups” and “Lodger”.
In the 90's he toured with NIN.
“I'm already 5 years older/ I'm already in my grave” --Bowie/ The Heart's Filthy Lesson
That song came out in 1995. The year I graduated high school. They played that video all the time on MTV. It's there in the periphery of my memories a lot. Not his best song, but one of the ones that was beaten into my essence by the joyless reality of forced continuous playback.
A few years ago on Bowie's birthday they played Bowie all day long on the radio. Yes, that's right. Nothing but David Bowie all day! I was at work then too, and I got to hear Bowie all day and it was awesome. At the end of the day I had to work with someone, and when I turned on the radio and all they played was Bowie, she got really confused. Backwoods inbred skanky hick girl being forced to listen to Bowie for an hour. Ha! It blew her mind and made her terrified of me.
We were going to buy the new album anyway, but today we ordered it on vinyl. Because it's David Bowie's last album and it should be heard properly.
Recently we ordered a new electric bass. A Sterling by Music Man. It arrived today. Seems like a great bass. I am really looking forward to getting to use it. I have been writing some songs. I have been thinking of songs for even longer.
But I've been too fucked up to do anything about it. I used to play music a little bit every day. I haven't picked up an instrument in far too long.
I haven't done anything. Nothing real. It's pathetic and sad. And to be corrected.
I think the best way to honor the legend that is Bowie is to make some new music that the world has never heard before.
And to be unashamedly myself. He was a master at that too. He did what he wanted when he wanted.
People tried to label him, but it didn't concern him. That was THEIR issue, not his. I think the world could really use some of that right now. Too many things are this or that now. You do A so you have to be B. Straight line thinking gets you nowhere except to the end of the line.
I remember hearing once that Bowie claimed he had no memory of making “Station to Station”. All the drugs. I have never been one to be able to do drugs and be creative. It may be too bad, because drugs are great and art is great, but that's just how I am put together. I can't do drugs (including booze) and make art at the same time.
I must choose, and drugs are getting really boring. But art is always exciting and new.
So, David Bowie has left us.
But he left us with so much music and inspiration to last a thousand lifetimes. That's one of the greatest things about recorded music and about art. It's always there for someone, somewhere, to hear or see and be inspired and start the cycle all over again. The person that invented the ability to record sound and play it back did all of humanity an amazing service. And I don't even know who that person was...
But almost everyone in modern society knows who David Bowie is.
Cheers to Bowie. Cheers to Life.
“So come on, come on, we've really got a good thing going
Well come on, well come on, if you think we're gonna make it
You better hang on to yourself...” --Bowie/ Hang on to Yourself
6:57 PM - Monday, Jan. 11, 2016
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