I woke up to some really bad news yesterday.
My brother came into my room around ten o'clock and told me that David Bowie had died. At first, I didn't understand. I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep that night, and Bowie had only just released his excellent EP, ★ (Blackstar), two days before. I thought maybe it was a hoax. Who wakes someone up just to start their day by telling them someone as influential in the musical world as David Bowie died? That's incredibly inconsiderate.
But alas, we couldn't be so lucky.
There were at least twenty different posts on my news feed about Bowie before I saw anything else. Most were heartfelt posts about how his music touched their lives individually. Others were jokes about Bowie not being dead, just going home. Others still shared their favorite Bowie song for others to enjoy. Nearly everyone I knew was someone touched by David Bowie and his music.
I think that's why David Bowie can't, or won't, die.
When you're someone like David Bowie, who started playing in 1973 and never stopped, popular culture shifts around you. That man has done more for our culture and style than I think anyone can dream of. He was truly a chameleon His artistic flare and sound shifted throughout the decades into so many different shapes and genres, and yet it was all classic Bowie.
Ask any musician today who has influenced them, and Bowie will probably be somewhere on their list. Lady Gaga wakes up every morning thinking, "What would Bowie do?" The Arctic Monkeys say they were listening to Bowie while they were recording Suck It and See, their forth studio album. Even Jay-Z listens to Bowie. He samples Bowie's single "Fame" for his track "Takeover", off of 2001's Blueprint.
He didn't stop at music, either. Bowie also had a fantastic career in film, starring in The Man Who Fell To Earth, as Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ, in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, his most famous turn as the Goblin King in Labyrinth, and even a SpongeBob Squarepants special. My personal favorite role of his was his turn as Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan's, The Prestige. He was also an avid art collector. "Art was, seriously, the only thing I'd ever wanted to own," he told the New York Times in 1998. "It can change the way that I feel in the mornings."
When someone has that much influence in not just music, but all of pop culture, they can never be ignored. And when someone is so passionate about their craft that they never stop performing and perfecting it, they live on forever. According to his producer, the music video for his Blackstar single, "Lazarus," was a carefully-planned final message for his fans. Tony Visconti, Bowie's longtime producer and friend, released a statement on his Facebook page:
"He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was no different from his life - a work of Art. He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn't, however, prepared for it. He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life. He will always be with us. For now, it is appropriate to cry."
So, I say that David Bowie isn't dead. His body? Yes, that succumbed to cancer. But the idea of him, and his influence on everything he touched, that will never rot. His Stardust has spread throughout the world over the past half-century, and it has settled into everything we know. The least we can do is play his music loud and say thank you to Ziggy, to Aladdin, to the Thin White Duke, to the Blackstar.
David Bowie's life, like all art, was put on display, but it will never go out of style.
