It's been a weird few weeks since David Bowie died. Everyone knows how much of a fan I am, how much I'd admired this man. You'd think I'd have loads to say about him, about his music, about how much it meant to me.
But I'm still struggling to find the right words. Failing to find the right words.
Oddly, I feel like I ought to write something. Though I know it's only adding to the mountains of words people across the globe have written. But I can't quite figure out what to say. What would David Bowie have done? He'd probably have cherry picked the best bits of stuff he'd already done, mashed it all together and created something bigger than the sum of its parts.
So some of the following is lifted from an email of a couple of weeks ago that I sent to a good friend.
I heard the news about David Bowie at 7am, only minutes after the story broke. I somehow went to work, but very little work was done. Utter shock, and tears for a man who I'd never met - apart from a dozen or so brilliant concerts - but I knew him somehow. And he knew me somehow. This guy has been with me every day since I was 13. Every. Single. Day.
In a weird way he was almost like an extra relative, a very cool, subversive relative. Bowie introduced me to all sorts of stuff - not just his music but art, culture, films, and loads of other music too. His music spoke to me, made me feel important and free, made me feel less alone, less of an outsider. I was never much of a slave to fashion, but at university I dyed my hair to look like him... Ok, in recent years this blatant hero worship has died off a bit, but I truly admired the dignified way he conducted his life and his work, and still looked up to this guy enormously.
Much of the music I like (Iggy, Lou Reed, Scott Walker, Fripp, King Crimson, Eno, Roxy, Krautrock, New Wave, Talking Heads and so many many more) - it nearly all stems from strong connections with Bowie. Other music I like - bands like Suede or Interpol or Bauhaus for example - clearly own all the same records as me, including a huge chunk of Bowie music. Tim Bowness posted a lovely entry on his blog the day after the news where he reflected on Bowie and listed his favourite DB songs - his list is almost exactly my list, even down to the inclusion of the brilliant but hardly ever mentioned "Subterraneans". https://timbowness.wordpress.com/influences/david-bowie/
No wonder I love Tim's music so much, he loves exactly the same music as I do!
I can't believe quite how this has upset me. It's actually made me question what I'm doing with my life. I used to have so many dreams when I was young, few of which I've really achieved. And with just over a year to go till I'm 50, I've been thinking that now I've just got to do something about that. I've always gone for the safe option. Got a regular job because it was sensible and paid the bills. Not because it was what I really wanted. Perhaps I should always have said to myself, what would David Bowie do? Because he never played safe, always took a chance, and crucially, followed his dreams. And so must I.
Today I played Blackstar all the way through, for the first time since he died. I've played odd tracks since then, but not the whole thing in one go. I haven't been able to do that until now, as it's simply been too difficult for me to hear. Today I was struck by how obvious it all seemed - in all the excellent reviews of the album, in my first few listens before the news broke - how did no-one realise that this album was the final word? It's perfectly clear that with every song David Bowie is saying "Goodbye".
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