The way David Bowie left us last week was in keeping with his way of life; graceful, uncompromising and shrouded in mystery. Very few knew he was ill, let alone dying. So when it happened it was like having the wind knocked out of one whilst an essential organ was simultaneously removed.
I, like many others, hoped it was a hoax. Through tears and messages back and forth with friends I waited and waited for someone to reveal that they had played the cruelest joke they could have played on me.
Days before, in a dark state of mind, I put on my go to movie for said mood. For some time it’s been Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983). In many ways the portrayal of Major Jack Celliers, summed up my understanding of Bowie – defiant to his oppressors and a beacon of being there to affect as much positive change as he could. Ya know, for an alien from outer space.
David Bowie aka Major Jack Celliers up to his neck in it.
Watching David Bowie’s character go through the worst reminds me of not of how good I have it, but that there are worse things that I can go through. I will never get buried up to my neck in a Javanese lava bed in a Japanese prison camp. This gives me some perspective about my place in time and my privilege. It is a movie I go back to again and again. Some people turn to crystals or GOD for answers; I turn to David Bowie.
When the David Bowie Is exhibition came to Melbourne my first call of business was to buy a season ticket.
I arrived at ACMI for the exhibition early, squealing internally and determined to be as close to everything as possible. Obviously, someone would see the devotion in my eyes and allow me to stay behind after everyone had left so I could touch all the things. In a strange turn of events no one offered.
Walking through I gasped so many times, as not only was I stood in front of something that had touched the skin of a man whose music I loved (yeah I know, creepy, right?) and whose weirdness made me feel OK to be weird, but I was learning about him. He wasn’t the overwhelmingly tall giant I expected (pretty much I thought he was as tall as Godzilla, obviously). And he wasn’t as rail thin as I imagined; the exhibition gave shape and form to someone who I will now never meet. That’s one of my favourite lyrics from The Man Who Sold the World (1970):
I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed.
To me, that’s how I feel about my endless search for a place to belong on a planet that seems strange to me.
When I did see the Ashes to Ashes harlequin costume I actually cried. Not a big ugly cry, but the kind of cry when something means so much to you that seeing it in person is a place that you never thought you’d make it to, and you’re happy about it. Thankfully I was mostly alone and pretended that anyone looking would think it was hay fever. Some people call that denial, I call it the application of imagination.
By no means do I think Bowie was perfect. He allegedly did things that were difficult to reconcile. But he left a positive mark that will always be with me and makes me feel stronger.
There are many who feel the same way about Bowie’s contribution to our world – from members of our Indigenous community to many who worked with the man. He is said to have been incredibly generous, funny and incredibly well read.
I am still not very sure he is at all dead. Some part of me knows it, but I also know that he is part of my being and will never leave me.
At this point in time I cannot listen to certain things (looking at you, Space Oddity) without breaking into tears. It sounds silly and it is unproductive. My imagining of Bowie is that he would grieve and be inspired by the loss of something very important to him. Then he would keep going and turn it into something brilliant (like, say his final album). I don’t think I have that capacity but I shall continue to try.
There are so many people who inspire us along the way in our lives. We have no truly personal knowledge of them or their struggles. In part we just make them up. I like to think David Bowie understood that and was determined to put on a spectacular show. He did well.
