On Bowie's Lazarus
a video I wish we were still talking about
Last week, as I was writing this post on Kim Deal, I started a tangent on the video below by David Bowie. I set it aside, deciding that was it’s own scrap that might want to fill its own post.
The video of Lazarus was released on January 7, 2016, one day before his final birthday, and three days before his death.
I’ll try not to say too much about it, except this: at the time of its release I was confounded that we weren’t all obsessed with it as Bowie’s final artifact, a parting gift. Why weren’t we all watching it over and over and talking about nothing else? I was and remain awestruck by the way it collaborates with death.
Bowie was a genius, and I'm really glad you resurrected this swan song of his, Jen. Ironically, I always thought Iggy would die before Bowie; he was such a wild card. When Bowie died -- and it was one of those moments when you remember where you were when you got the news, I remember thinking we were losing one of our best musicians, and the absence was palpable. This piece is haunting, it's at one and the same time gorgeous, and horrific, which makes it beautiful in its complexity. For me, this piece evokes a deep appreciation for every single experience he'd had in his life, coupled with the theme of finally breaking free of not only the cancer, but the body itself, which can feel like a castle or a prison depending on the circumstances. For Bowie, I think that was more of a prison that he wanted to jet away from. He left us with a collection of incredible songs that defined my coming of age period of life. He died at the age I'm at now, which only means that it touches a nerve in me, that realization that everything surrounding us, inside and outside of us, is hanging by a proverbial thread. It's all so fragile. And when we lose such a one as Bowie, we lose some part of ourselves as well.
Wow: just Wow.......It gets to me, deeply.