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.
What you say in the last sentence rings so true for me. Over the last few years, many icons have passed and it's often a little surprising to me how deeply it touches me. For instance, I never listened much to Sinead O'Connor and yet her departure really shook me.
I remember desperately wanting to engage people in conversation about this video at the time, and it was just crickets all around. I wanted to take everyone by the shoulders and shake them "listen to what he is trying to tell us"
And by the way, Jen, if you had the opportunity to teach this artist and this song to a class, what would you want to discuss? How would you want to talk about it?
Oh, what a question! I love thinking about this. I think I'd want to find out what my students knew about David Bowie (always fascinating to find out what younger generations know about earlier icons) and I'd come prepared with some clips to help contextualize him as a figure. And then I'd want to have them watch it and write down what they noticed, what they thought was interesting, what meaning they made of it. (It's so tricky though to ask students to make meaning, isn't it? I think they often suspect it's a trick and they have to guess at what answers we're hoping for.) Then I'd want to layer in the context around Bowie's cancer, the timing of this video and its release... then look up 'Lazarus' as a reference point, and then try to put all the pieces together. I think it would be a collective interpretation exercise—one that I'd find really interesting!
I love this so much. As we get older, I'm always wondering what we might have really loved teaching if we'd had the chance. As I was watching Lazarus again, I noted too that wardrobe Bowie disappears into at the end...on one level, it reminds me of a coffin (made of wood, confined and narrow), but it also evokes images of Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, where the wardrobe is more of a threshold into another world. Maybe Bowie was hoping we'd get that association. But if you were teaching this class, Jen, I'd be sitting in the front row! :)
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.
What you say in the last sentence rings so true for me. Over the last few years, many icons have passed and it's often a little surprising to me how deeply it touches me. For instance, I never listened much to Sinead O'Connor and yet her departure really shook me.
Wow: just Wow.......It gets to me, deeply.
I remember desperately wanting to engage people in conversation about this video at the time, and it was just crickets all around. I wanted to take everyone by the shoulders and shake them "listen to what he is trying to tell us"
Yes, there was so much talk about Bowie himself, but I kept waiting for the collective awe at this work.
And by the way, Jen, if you had the opportunity to teach this artist and this song to a class, what would you want to discuss? How would you want to talk about it?
Oh, what a question! I love thinking about this. I think I'd want to find out what my students knew about David Bowie (always fascinating to find out what younger generations know about earlier icons) and I'd come prepared with some clips to help contextualize him as a figure. And then I'd want to have them watch it and write down what they noticed, what they thought was interesting, what meaning they made of it. (It's so tricky though to ask students to make meaning, isn't it? I think they often suspect it's a trick and they have to guess at what answers we're hoping for.) Then I'd want to layer in the context around Bowie's cancer, the timing of this video and its release... then look up 'Lazarus' as a reference point, and then try to put all the pieces together. I think it would be a collective interpretation exercise—one that I'd find really interesting!
I love this so much. As we get older, I'm always wondering what we might have really loved teaching if we'd had the chance. As I was watching Lazarus again, I noted too that wardrobe Bowie disappears into at the end...on one level, it reminds me of a coffin (made of wood, confined and narrow), but it also evokes images of Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, where the wardrobe is more of a threshold into another world. Maybe Bowie was hoping we'd get that association. But if you were teaching this class, Jen, I'd be sitting in the front row! :)