Friday 15 January 2016

MUSIC@TWO_SENSER: BLACKSTAR - DAVID BOWIE (R.I.P.)

I must admit that when I first listened to David Bowie's Blackstar, the title track of his final album, it confused me. I couldn't quite get it.

A strange, hybrid techno beat overlaid with near-religious, repetitive lamentation. Nevertheless at its heart there was something quite beautiful, which grew by the third or fourth listen.

Today I watched the music video for the first time since David Bowie's passing. And with that knowledge, the entire context of both song and visuals has changed completely. It is now known that Bowie had been battling with cancer very privately for months, and knew full well that Blackstar would be his final production; his swan song.

The video for Blackstar is not easy viewing. It's full of symbolism and I'm not clever enough to figure it all out. But here is a dead man singing about his own death. About the blindness of dying and what is to follow. About religious fervour and our acceptance and expectations of it. And as Major Tom, long dead and decayed, sprawls in his spacesuit on some faraway alien landscape, it seems that for David Bowie at least, the circle is complete...

The song, as it shifts in pace and mood is quite jarring. I doubt it was meant to be easy listening. And I'm sure as the years go by it will come to be seen as an enigmatic epitaph to David Bowie's spectacular, indeed stellar career.

Some might say that to know when you are going to die is a horrible curse. But others might consider that it actually gives perspective; provides a chance to put things straight, to make preparation...

I would like to think that in writing Blackstar, Bowie was preparing...

And if so, what a way to say goodbye.
What a way to leave orbit...