Today, as we mark the 9th anniversary of David Bowie’s departure for the Western Lands, I’ve been thinking about how he managed his final act.
He’d arranged well in advance for Blackstar to be released on his 69th birthday (no snickering), January 8, 2016. Although none of us knew it, he was desperately ill at the time. But somehow he managed to stick around till two days after that.
I wonder if, in those two days, he somehow managed to enjoy what he had wrought while in the process of dying? I’d certainly like to think so. The notices were glowing, even without the cheat of people knowing he was sick.
I’ve never been a great partisan of Blackstar (I still think The Next Day is the better album) but I’m listening to it right now and it sounds great. And I love knowing that David controlled his own narrative right up to the end.
Against my better judgment I clicked just now on link to a People article about Mr. B. Among many another things, it mentions that he regularly Skyped (this being pre-Zoom) with Gary Oldman, and on their last call they had technical difficulties. So Starman’s last message to Oldman was “Fuck off!”
His last song, if you think about it, said a polite version of the same thing. “I can’t give everything away,” he told us. I won’t be telling you how I did my tricks; thanks for coming, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Maybe he’ll tell us all about it on the next Bardo. Until then we’ll just have to do the best we can.
I usually try to write something to mark this day, the birthday of David Bowie (and Elvis, and Bill Graham, etc.) But lately I have been drifting in the Arena of the Unwell, and though I am doing better and better, the motivation is not really there.
But just now I found myself thinking of that singular day in 2013 when the sneaky old bastard shocked the world, which had long ago consigned him to the “Whatever happened to?” pile, by returning from the dead with a new song.
12 more years of the time that flies has passed since then, and it’s always a question worth asking. There is no real answer but we’ll keep asking it. As long as there’s me. As long as there’s you. Amen.
Why do people want Big Brother? It’s a complex question but the simple answer is: Freedom is hard. It’s a question that has to be answered every hour of every day. Many of us would rather have someone else decide.
I get it. And if that’s your choice, you have a right to it, I guess. The problem comes when a certain group tries to give freedom away for the rest of us. (Of course we can’t even agree, anymore, on what freedom is exactly; that’s a whole other conversation for another time.) Lately the fascist-adjacent rhetoric emanating from the campaign of the Convicted Felon Who Shall Not Be Named — and being embraced by what seems like a flabbergasting percentage of the populace — has been giving me the heebie-jeebies.
America: Please don’t. I’m begging here.
But why am I telling you this? Every reader of this blog is a smart, sensible, good-looking person. Here’s some Bowie for you.
Today, I am informed, is the 50th anniversary of the release of Diamond Dogs. A great album — or more accurately, an album with some great stuff on it.
I always thought some dubious choices were made in terms of track listing and sequencing, so a few years ago I made my own version. I sent it to a couple people but I don’t think they paid attention, not that there’s any reason they should have.
This seems like the right moment to dig it out. You’ll notice that it starts and ends (almost) the same as the original album, because those were absolutely 100% the right choices. In between things are added, subtracted, and rearranged. (Don’t hold your breath waiting for “Rebel Rebel” — the single version was OK, but it never belonged on the album. I will die on this hill.)
Here’s Side 1. We’ll get to Side 2 in a little bit.
“Blackstar” is huge: longer than “Cygnet Committee,” longer than the “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing” suite from Diamond Dogs, longer even than “Station to Station” if you edit out the fades at beginning and end. It contains multitudes. It’s elegiac, ominous, angry, funky, spooky, funny, then all of those things again in a different order.
There is a lot to say about it — O’Leary devotes the last 15 pages of Ashes to Ashes to it. But today my time is limited, as yours probably is too. So if all you have is ten minutes, spend them watching this.
If perchance you want something to read: After David died on this day back in 2016, I (eventually) wrote a hopeful thing called “Let the Thousand Bowies Bloom.” I liked it then and I like it now. This is a day to think about death… but life goes on.
There will now be a period of silence from this quarter. After posting something most days for several months, I find that I am tired of my own voice. Perhaps I am not alone in this. 2024 promises to be a weird and interesting year, and there will be things to discuss; but for now, adieu.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. —Henry David Thoreau
Here I am killing time between the 8th and 10th, the two significant dates on the Bowie calendar. As luck would have it today’s song is “Killing a Little Time,” another Lazarus number that David released his version of on the No Plan EP.
It’s a minor song, I suppose. Also a noisy one, sort of jazz-metal, apparently based in part on a song by Maria Schneider (David’s collaborator on “Sue”):
