Look Up Here, I'm in Heaven

Like everyone else I know — quite honestly, almost everyone on all of my social media streams — waking up to the news that David Bowie had died made this an unexpectedly raw, painful day. And I don't know that I have any words about it that anyone else hasn't already said. But I am throwing a few more words onto that magnificent funeral pyre, because god damn it, he deserves it.

David Bowie was our youth. He was my youth. He was discovering the symmetry between music and magic and film and video and fashion and life. He was listening non-stop to the totally new take on pop that was Let's Dance before you dug deeper into his work and listened to everything else he ever recorded and finally settled for playing Young Americans over and over and over again until it was burned into your soul. He was going to see Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence on an especially significant night. He was looking at the same things in very different ways. That doesn't make me any different than anyone else who is grieving today for the place he held in their own lives, but it's what he meant to me.

And because my youth is ever farther away, I have not listened to much Bowie lately. I haven't listened to much at all lately, honestly. I don't know why as I have aged that I've moved farther away from what seemed so natural as I was so much younger.

So tonight I mourn the loss of a great man, and what having him in this world meant to me. I smile a bit at someone who said it better than me — "If you're ever sad, just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie."

And tomorrow, I'm going to make a conscious effort to listen to more music again. (starting with Blackstar, which I may not be able to make it through without tears).




Comments

Anonymous said…
My first knowledge of David Bowie was not as a singer, but an actor. I saw The Man Who Fell to Earth and was mesmerized, still remember his superb performance..

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