What David Bowie Taught Me About Death
When David Bowie died it was a bolt out of the blue for everyone bar his closest associates, his illness a secret and the events around his death a surreal performance. Bowie was my idol and it shook me to my core.
His parting gift to the world was the album Blackstar, released just two days before his soul parted from this world, on his 69th Birthday. This spectacular timing was no co-incidence, he knew he was dying and created an album on with that knowledge. Lyrics on the track ‘Lazarus’ talk of heaven and being free, clearly show a man coming to terms with his finality.
As I considered this last album, I realised something incredible. Here’s a man who has consciously orchestrated his own, natural, death. He’s taken the knowledge of his mortality and it’s impending closure, then created a performance and put on a show. An addendum to his already astoundingly prodigious career, after which, he leaves the stage and disappears. Not only in his soul departing, but also his body, which was privately cremated with no family or friends present, in accordance with his wishes.
Finally, his show was over.
But David Bowie gave me a lot more than music, art and theatre. He taught me something about life which is unique to me, and my life.
When I was young, death was something that happened to other people. That may sound obvious, as I’ve here to write this, but bear with me.
Firstly, I mean death in the literal, physical sense, because I, Gavin, have never died, therefore, it is something that has only happened to other people. But death also affects those who don’t die, because it hurts those around the deceased, it’s sad and it’s painful. This second way also only happened to other people, not me.
Before I go any further, I should qualify the above paragraph. I am not a hideous, snarling, raging monster of a human being. Quite the opposite, I’m a largely calm, peaceful person. The best way to convey this, is to paint a picture of someone detached from their emotions, who is able to seperate their feelings from the physical presence of the situation they’re in.
When faced with a disaster I would be cool as a cucumber. Someone dies? It’s sad, sure. I might even cry at the funeral, if I went (more on that later), but inside me, everything was utterly detached. Those feelings of grief, mourning and sadness were extracted from the situation and quickly stuffed into a mental jar, hermetically sealed, labelled “DANGEROUS” and then put away in a deep, dark hidden store cupboard of my subconscious.
Bottling up feelings and emotions is a fantastic way to create emotional problems, as they’ll always find a way out, often creeping out unbeknown, in another form, like anger, addiction, or depression.
For much of my life, I had either been shielded, or had shielded myself from experiencing death.
People have died during my life, in fact, plenty have. In my family, all of my grandparents plus an aunt and uncle by the time I was thirty. On one awful day at the tender age of 18 I learned of an old school friend’s sudden death and that very same day I was told a colleague had died the previous evening.
A good mate from school dropped dead from congenital heart failure and another one died in a swimming pool after taking too many drugs. I actively avoided the funerals of these people. They died and were mentally brushed under the carpet as quickly as the ashes were cool enough not to scorch the dustpan. I didn’t grieve or mourn, I just moved on and had another beer.
Then a time of change came into my life. I had extricated many of my bad habits and unhealthy ways of life and in doing so, I desired change. I found myself working in a job I didn’t like, a career that I felt was purged of creativity and left me destined to be a robotic producer of other people’s imagination for all eternity.
I started seeking my artistic soul, trying to tease a trace of creative spirit from my blackened heart. I was going through a difficult time, trying to part company from a job that I was financially and legally entrenched in.
It was at this time that I buried my head in music and began to see David Bowie in a different light. Before then, I heard the hits, blasted the music to put on my red shoes and dance the blues, but now I saw the artist, the creative clarity and the virtuousity with which he executed his craft. I saw someone who was so alive with creative intent that his every move seemed so utterly gracious and evocatively stylised. I realised he was the sheer artistic embodiment of what I wanted to achieve in my life.
I fell in love with this artistic spirit of his, the idea that you can be whoever you want to be, whenever you want. He helped to inspire me through the dark times when I felt any effort at being my own person was wasted on a dullard like myself. And I began to watch his live performance of La Mort by Jacques Brel, translated as My Death, lots. Yes, lots and lots.
I became infatuated with this song. It feels like a contemporary requiem, a gentle lulling call to remind us of the inevitability of death, that death is welcoming and ever waiting. It is not morbid, nor is it depressing, it’s heartfelt, it’s honest and it’s true.
Something peculiar was happening deep inside me, something strange. I started reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead and visiting graveyards. I realise that makes me sound odd, however, Heidegger said that spending time in graveyards was one way to recover your authenticity. It helps you to begin living for yourself rather than others, and to face up your impending death, the awareness of which is the road to living a full life.
I found out the dates that all my relatives who had died in my lifetime had left us. I had started to become fully aware of death as more than simply a physical phenomenon whereby someone stops breathing. I realised that there are feelings surrounding it which I can allow to be public, which must be let out, in the open, to be healthy, rather than bottled up inside.
And then he died, Bowie died.
Monday morning, first thing. I heard the news and immediately did something I’d never done before. I cried, straight away. I got upset. I was sad, I mourned, I grieved and I felt pain, hurt and loss.
Then I did another thing that I hadn’t done before. I recognised his death. Unlike those funerals I had ignored or been kept away from, unlike those deaths whose dates I had never even bothered to recall or mark their exact chronology within my life, I wanted to stand up and recognise this death, because for once I had actually felt it. And it really hurt.
I cut out a picture of the man and wrote a dedication to his now eternal life. I went to the florists, dressed largely in black, with my little black dog, where I bought two white roses. I went down to Haddon Street, the place where the Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars cover shot was originally taken, a place which had become one of the makeshift shrines to David Bowie on that day.
The world’s press was assembled along with a group of people mourning. I laid the flowers, I felt the sadness and tears as I made my gesture of remembrance. I turned, to be confronted by a German TV crew, with their news cameras pointed at me, asking me for a few words. I’m now someone who has cried on TV, in Germany at least.
You see, David Bowie taught me that I have to face death when it happens and try to befriend it, rather than ignore it and brush it under the carpet as if it doesn’t matter, as if we can forget about it without suffering the consequences. Love and death are the two of the greatest subjects one can consider in our world, the world of art without these concepts presents a void, they should not be maligned.
My death waits there in a double bed
Sails of oblivion at my head
So pull up the sheets against the passing time
He taught me to face death bravely, because it is entirely natural. Death is the one thing that every single human soul on our planet has in common, we will all share that experience one day. That may seem an incredibly morbid fact, however denial, as opposed to welcoming or accepting it, leads to unhappiness. We shouldn’t ignore or avoid conversations about death, because it’s as much a part of everyone’s life as eating, drinking, talking and laughing.
And that, my friends, is what David Bowie taught me about death.
Addendum; 9th January 2018. It’s two years since I wrote this piece and I’ve read a lot about life in that period. If you’d like to know more, the most profound book I’ve read to help understand death is ‘Who Dies’ by Stephen Levine. The wisest book on how to live life from the perspective of the dying is ‘Life Lessons’ by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler. Take care x
