Simply put: I find him completely, utterly, and infinitely fascinating.
But his looks were hardly appealing to me, when I first became enamored with the legendary David Bowie, and they continue to take a backseat to what I truly find incredible about him.
I’m far from attracted to the earlier, more feminine personas, though the songs were largely top notch. In fact, I don’t think I really had any physical attraction to the guy, until the late 1990s/early 2000s. And of course there will always be a special place in my heart for Jareth the Goblin King. He definitely etched his way into the role of “my strangest crush ever,” seeing as he’s just barely too young to be my grandfather. Can we say YIKES?
The most dominant attribute that drew me to David Bowie was his ever-changing personas. How could anyone so dramatically and completely reinvent everything about themselves, down to their entire sound, and find so much success each time? I’ve never investigated that aspect of my infatuation until now, but I suppose that’s very much in tune with my own fantasies. I’d love the opportunity to stop being “me” and snuggle into a completely different variant, Lisa Reinvented, where I leave very few remnants of the Old. And once I tire of that, on to the new Me I go, finding love and acceptance each time. It’s a fond idea.
But beyond the ever-changing aliases, I started to realize something else about the Thin White Duke: he was outstandingly brilliant. Behind the makeup and wild hair was an individual whose entire life was spent elaborately morphing into the man he was meant to be all along, and the transition was intriguing to watch. In a famed interview from the 1970s, you see a blubbering David Bowie, fidgeting and quite obviously high as a kite, a result of his very public cocaine habit. As the years passed, the interviews grew substance. He spoke of his time away from music, when he wanted to become a Buddhist monk, a hilariously ironic diatribe to his prior rock star lifestyle. But through this quest, while ultimately opting the brotherhood wasn’t for him, he overcame his drug addiction. To be fair, replacing it with booze wasn’t the best thing he could have done, especially given his ultimate demise was due to liver cancer, but stay with me on this.
When you look at his varied personas, you see a life progressing, a man growing into himself, someone exchanging wild orgies and risky drug deals for a calmer life focused on family. He eventually gave up drinking, until finally, he faced what he described as a vice far more addictive to any other drug he’s ever tried: after nearly 50 years of chain smoking, he completely gave up nicotine. He had just brought his second child into the world, a daughter he didn’t want around the toxicities of second hand smoking. And just like that, legendary rock star David Bowie had completely dissipated into regular guy David Jones.
He was always a pioneer, a trailblazer, but many don’t understand his gifts went far beyond music. A 1999 interview saw him mocked by host Jeremy Paxman, when he said of the internet, “I don’t think we’ve even seen the tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we’re actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.”
Without hiding his cynicism, Paxman responded, “It’s just a tool, though, isn’t it?”
Bowie laughed. “The actual context and state of content is going to be so different to anything we envisage at the moment…Where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in simpatico, it’s going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about…It’s happening in every form. That grey space in the middle is what the 21st century is going to be about.”
I wonder if Mr Paxman ever thinks about that moment, embarassed and wishing it could forever be erased from the same world wide web he judged Bowie for believing in. In fact, he would go on to be the first artist, ever, to release a song exclusively online. He was always a few steps ahead of the rest of the world, in all that he did.
Few artists deny that David Bowie was a “genius” song writer, but his life’s mantras, I feel, are just as brilliant. The more sober he became, and the more he was able to reflect on his past, the more he seemed to embrace Life as a whole and take more chances with his career. He was incredibly witty, described often by those who knew him as “hilarious”. But he was also fearless–except when it came to air travel–and truly didn’t care what anyone thought of him. He didn’t fear whether the album he just dropped was good or bad, or if it would be the one to finally tank his career. He wasn’t afraid to look like an idiot. He never feared Death. He simply didn’t care, opting only to satisfy himself in the moment, by doing what he wanted to do, while surrounded by the love of the family he created. In one of his final interviews, he stated, “I really had a hunger to experience everything that life had to offer, from the opium den to whatever. And I think I have done just about everything that it’s possible to do.”
David Bowie was a hilarious, fearless, wise old soul, apathetic to the judgment of others, and who could change everything about himself on a whim, only to be embraced and loved each time. What’s more, he lived life to the absolute fullest, never allowing fear or ego to keep him from achieving each ambitious goal he set to conquer. Honestly, what’s not to love about that? Don’t we all, in some way, want to achieve that level of true living?
But I suppose my own answer doesn’t even seem to satisfy me. You would have to look more into the details of his life, beyond the stage or studio, to truly understand. He’s just a captivating figure to me, a person who truly did squeeze everything out of life, good and bad, he possibly could, representing–in the details–all of the things in Life I want to be. He just manifested those things in the form of a highly entertaining, badass rock star who certainly aged very well. 🙂
Categories: Uncategorized
Leave a Reply