It sat on the front porch, propped against the jam of the door to stay away from the gusts of snow. I had ordered it weeks ago, and while it was meant to arrive on Friday, Amazon emailed to say it had been delayed due to unforeseen circumstances. So here it was, finally, on a cold Monday evening in January. I had ordered Blackstar by David Bowie when he was alive, and instead of arriving on his 69th birthday as planned, it appeared less than a day after he died of cancer, a final epitaph rather than a new release.
People came up to me at work today to shake my hand and tell me that they were sorry for my loss. My wife was kind enough to call me on my way to work, breaking the news to me before the clock struck 7am. A musician and actor and dancer and producer and so much more, dead of cancer like so many others, but so unlike any other. As I went through today's motions of preparation and conversation, I was drawn to a lyric from Blackstar that was so prescient as to be archly funny:
"Where the fuck did Monday go?"
There are no objective truths to David Bowie, except one: he meant something slightly different to nearly everyone, and I'm no exception. By dint of sheer volume and monomaniacal repetition, Bowie's music has scored my life more than any other artist, so it's hard to think of a moment in time that isn't shaded with the patina of his art, the sweep of his talents. There's so much inside me that it's hard to resist just spitting out fragments and chunks of a life, narrative and linearity be damned, but yoking that life to a structure of meaning is the only way to make sense of it all.
First, the bragging.
I was lucky enough to see Bowie in the '90s and '00s multiple times, promoting different albums at different times to different critical and commercial responses. I saw him at the Palace of Auburn Hills on 3 October 1995, promoting Outside with Nine Inch Nails opening. I saw two shows back-to-back at the State Theatre in Detroit on 21 & 22 September 1997, promoting Earthling -- the first show with my then-girlfriend, the second show by myself (30 songs long, easily one of the five best shows I've seen in my life). I saw the Bowienet show at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City on 19 June 2000, and I came back to the Roseland Ballroom two years later on 11 June 2002 to see Heathen and Low played back-to-back in full. Two months later, on 6 August 2002, I saw Bowie on the Area2 Festival at the DTE Energy Music Theater in Clarkson, opening up for Moby. I drove with my then-girlfriend across Canada to Poughkeepsie, New York, where I saw Bowie promoting Reality in a small club called The Chance. And finally, I saw the Reality tour at the Palace of Auburn Hills, the site of my first Bowie show, on 9 January 2004.
Along the way, I won a promotional vinyl copy of Tonight in 1984 by calling into a radio station. I bought every Rykodisc reissue in the Sound + Vision reissue series of the late '80s and early '90s, including the two middling '70s live albums. I turned down a chance to see Tin Machine at the end of 1991. I proudly wore my promotional Black Tie White Noise t-shirt at Wherehouse Records during most of 1993. I reviewed promotional copies of Earthling and 'Hours...' for a '90s Bowie fan website called Teenage Wildlife. (The reviews were, politely, not my best work.) And backstage at the Area2 festival on a hot August night, I stood in the meet-and-greet line backstage to have my twenty-three seconds of handshake and light conversation with Bowie himself. (He was shorter than I imagined.) I listened to The Next Day as I drove to Detroit to see my friend recovering from cancer, and I streamed Blackstar through Amazon while I waited for my physical copy to arrive.
I watched the movies and the chat shows. I thought of jabbing my eye with a pencil to have one fixed and dilated pupil. I listened to the albums, singing songs off-key and at the top of my lungs, by myself and with other people, as a child gazing at the glamour of Changesonebowie on vinyl, as an adolescent looking at the cover of Tonight on cassette, as a young adult playing The Man Who Sold The World on CD for fans of the late Kurt Cobain, and as a middle adult cueing up the FLAC files of Blackstar on a Blu-ray player. Like so many others, I lived my life with the art of David Bowie, and am a richer person for it. I hope, at some point in your life, you can say the same.
People came up to me at work today to shake my hand and tell me that they were sorry for my loss. My wife was kind enough to call me on my way to work, breaking the news to me before the clock struck 7am. A musician and actor and dancer and producer and so much more, dead of cancer like so many others, but so unlike any other. As I went through today's motions of preparation and conversation, I was drawn to a lyric from Blackstar that was so prescient as to be archly funny:
"Where the fuck did Monday go?"
There are no objective truths to David Bowie, except one: he meant something slightly different to nearly everyone, and I'm no exception. By dint of sheer volume and monomaniacal repetition, Bowie's music has scored my life more than any other artist, so it's hard to think of a moment in time that isn't shaded with the patina of his art, the sweep of his talents. There's so much inside me that it's hard to resist just spitting out fragments and chunks of a life, narrative and linearity be damned, but yoking that life to a structure of meaning is the only way to make sense of it all.
First, the bragging.
I was lucky enough to see Bowie in the '90s and '00s multiple times, promoting different albums at different times to different critical and commercial responses. I saw him at the Palace of Auburn Hills on 3 October 1995, promoting Outside with Nine Inch Nails opening. I saw two shows back-to-back at the State Theatre in Detroit on 21 & 22 September 1997, promoting Earthling -- the first show with my then-girlfriend, the second show by myself (30 songs long, easily one of the five best shows I've seen in my life). I saw the Bowienet show at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City on 19 June 2000, and I came back to the Roseland Ballroom two years later on 11 June 2002 to see Heathen and Low played back-to-back in full. Two months later, on 6 August 2002, I saw Bowie on the Area2 Festival at the DTE Energy Music Theater in Clarkson, opening up for Moby. I drove with my then-girlfriend across Canada to Poughkeepsie, New York, where I saw Bowie promoting Reality in a small club called The Chance. And finally, I saw the Reality tour at the Palace of Auburn Hills, the site of my first Bowie show, on 9 January 2004.
Along the way, I won a promotional vinyl copy of Tonight in 1984 by calling into a radio station. I bought every Rykodisc reissue in the Sound + Vision reissue series of the late '80s and early '90s, including the two middling '70s live albums. I turned down a chance to see Tin Machine at the end of 1991. I proudly wore my promotional Black Tie White Noise t-shirt at Wherehouse Records during most of 1993. I reviewed promotional copies of Earthling and 'Hours...' for a '90s Bowie fan website called Teenage Wildlife. (The reviews were, politely, not my best work.) And backstage at the Area2 festival on a hot August night, I stood in the meet-and-greet line backstage to have my twenty-three seconds of handshake and light conversation with Bowie himself. (He was shorter than I imagined.) I listened to The Next Day as I drove to Detroit to see my friend recovering from cancer, and I streamed Blackstar through Amazon while I waited for my physical copy to arrive.
I watched the movies and the chat shows. I thought of jabbing my eye with a pencil to have one fixed and dilated pupil. I listened to the albums, singing songs off-key and at the top of my lungs, by myself and with other people, as a child gazing at the glamour of Changesonebowie on vinyl, as an adolescent looking at the cover of Tonight on cassette, as a young adult playing The Man Who Sold The World on CD for fans of the late Kurt Cobain, and as a middle adult cueing up the FLAC files of Blackstar on a Blu-ray player. Like so many others, I lived my life with the art of David Bowie, and am a richer person for it. I hope, at some point in your life, you can say the same.
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