David Bowie RIP
Published: Tue, 01/12/16
So David Bowie has died. Sixty nine is not a great age. At least he lasted a lot longer than some of his contemporaries such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. I think I became aware of Bowie when I was a teenager in the mid-seventies and I bought his album ‘Changes One Bowie’ around 1977. I still have a digitised version of it on my Blackberry. I sometimes play it when I am working and it always cheers me up.
Bowie was a musician, artist and performer. I think he was also a little more than that, he was, in his own way Bowie was a Skald, or Bard if you prefer the Celtic term. The Skald or Bard not only performs and entertains, they also tell the story of their age. Many of Bowie’s songs reflect the mood and ambiguity of their time. Jean Genie, youthful rebellion, Young Americans, political disenchantment and Diamond Dogs, the sense of the apocalypse which was widespread in the early 70s.
Perhaps Bowie’s most iconic and best remembered song is ‘Space Oddity’, the story of Major Tom, lost in Space.
I grew up with words like ‘Sputnik’ and ‘Gemini’ entering common parlance and the progress of the Apollo project was the backdrop of my first decade on this planet. For me, ‘Space Oddity’ and the plight of Major Tom summed up the sheer strangeness of putting a man into space and the courage it would need to undertake such a mission. Only Bowie could have captured the sense of closeness to the earth and yet the sense of hopeless isolation which must go with being in a near space orbit.
Bowie never went into space himself and neither have I. Yet the gift of the true Skald is to imagine a reality even more vividly than the real event or experience.
Thank you Mr Bowie for sharing your gift with us for the past 40 years or so.
Then, as a rather lovely tribute, Chris Hadfield, the commander of the international space station recorded his own cover version of ‘Space Oddity’ while in space. You can hear it here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22506831 and it kind of brings things full circle for me.
regards
Graham