I was away on vacation earlier in the month, and then when I
got back last week there was a mountain of mail and assorted other work I
needed to catch up on, so I haven’t had much time to comment on things in the
news. I’m still working on my Trump piece, but for now I want to respond to a friend of mine who asked me what I thought
about the “inane” public response to the recent death of David Bowie.
I really don’t think that the public response has been out
of place. Bowie was a major figure in popular culture for the past 45 years,
and even though he wasn’t the hit maker he once was, he had settled in as a
respected elder statesman of sorts for his crafty blending of pop sensibilities
with avant-garde flair. So that his passing landed him on the cover of
traditional “old media” periodicals like Time
and continues to trend on social media two weeks after his death doesn’t
surprise or particularly distress me.
That he was unreservedly praised by elements within the Vatican
communications office, does. I do agree with likes of Cardinal Gianfranco
Ravasi, the curial cardinal who tweeted his condolences on the day of Bowie’s
death, that a dialogue between the Church and the wider culture is a healthy
thing. In this case, praying for David Bowie’s soul is charity, acknowledging
his talent is justice, but ignoring the difficulties, from a Christian standpoint,
associated with his act is spiritual blindness.
Dialogue seeks understanding and avoids condemning particular trends or styles out of hand. It
points out convergences, but it doesn’t bow down in unquestioning adulation either. Maybe the day of his death
wasn’t the moment to get into thorny issues (charity again), in which case
offer your condolences and move on.
But now that we are a fortnight out of Bowie’s passing we
can make a better, more honest assessment of his work in the light of faith.
I am an unabashed fan of rock music, as anyone who follows
this blog knows, but I always had an uneasy relationship with Bowie. I have a
great deal of respect for his work, but there was something off putting that
kept me at arm’s length. I respected him to the extent that, like Dylan, he
pretty much did what he wanted when he wanted, popular tastes be damned. The
big exception was his “Lets’ Dance”
period of the mid-‘80’s, which, by his own admission, was all about chart
placement and getting out of debt.
Bowie took great chances with his gender bending, man from Andromeda, personae-shifting act. But I think that’s what made him
inaccessible to me. I could never figure out if he was legit, or if this was an
elaborate exhibition of the Emperor’s New Cloths. I may have liked a song of
his or not so much, but it was always interesting. He came off like he was
trying to “say something,” but I wasn't always sure what it was, or if he knew what it
was either. I have nothing against flat out surrealism, but not if the artist is laughing
at his or her audience through it. Since I never knew if a joke was being
played at my expense, I admired Bowie’s work, but from afar.
Claiming to be alternately gay and bisexual at a time when both
could have alienated him from the mainstream record buying public is another example
of his couldn’t care less attitude, though it could have been calculated shock.
In interviews even as early as the ‘70’s he appeared visibly tired of having to
answer questions about his sexuality, and almost seemed to regret ever bringing
the topic up (a gimmick he had grown tired of?). Eventually he labeled himself a “closeted heterosexual,” admitting
that it was an itch for something different, not any deep seeded sexual orientation, that led him to add men to his sexual repertoire. And even if there is no proof
that he had boys, there’s plenty of testimony as to underage girls, something
shocking then, but somehow still easily glossed over back the hedonistic ‘70’s.
Normally I would agree with those who say that an artist’s
personal life should be separated from an assessment of his or her art. Many
entertainers over the years, even ones we might think of as squeaky clean or
were from a more “innocent time,” often lived rather promiscuous private lives.
But usually these peccadilloes don't enter into a discussion of their music. This is
because their art was, in a way, bigger than they were. Sinatra, who had quite
a reputation for womanizing, was singing other people’s songs, applying his own
emotional experience to a performance, true, yet he was tapping something
apart from the purely subjective. We may be fascinated by his affairs and loves
lost, but we don’t judge his art by these things. The Beatles, along with
Dylan, were the first widely popular artists to make the songwriter and the
performer one. Now the performer wasn’t channeling or filtering an experience,
but was revealing their own quite directly.
After the Beatles and Dylan, pop and rock became
confessional; an outlet for the performer to explore the changes, trials and
tribulations of life. We can see a common progression in Rock and Roll song
writing from silly love songs and odes to adolescent angst, to life on the road
songs, to numbers that question, and or glorify fame, to railing about the music
industry, to asking about the meaning of life, sometimes peppered liberally
with goofy Eastern mysticism and questionable spiritualties, with plenty of
ditties about random sex thrown into the mix. Let’s not forget the “breakup
song,” which men certainly write, but many women like Alanis Morissette and Taylor
Swift seem to have perfected. Many a mansion has been bought from the profit made off a pop star's heartbreaks. Whatever
the topic, it’s all about them, what they’re thinking, feeling or emoting at a
particular moment, and the more rich and successful the artist the more out of
touch and self-indulgent they can get.
I’m not saying this is all bad, or that I don’t enjoy songs
that fit into any one of the above categories. But when the composer and
performer become one there is a smaller pool of experiences to draw on for
inspiration. A working song writer may still live a rather ordinary middle
class existence not so very different from the average person, just they write
songs for a living instead of preparing someone’s tax returns or hauling
garbage. Because of their relatively ordinary lives their songs are still going
to be connected somehow to the experiences of the average listener. They got to
the bank, do the food shopping, worry about car payments and fly coach. Being
an artist does make someone different, but it doesn’t make them completely alien to common
everyday experiences. Celebrity privilege often does.
Performer-songwriters only sing about what they know
because they, generally speaking, only sing their own material. The higher up they go on the celebrity food
chain the more out of touch they can become with the common experiences of the
masses. Many celebrities, musicians or otherwise, live in a world of limos and
personal assistants, first class flights, if not private jets, and preferential
treatment at clubs and hotels. Since their songs are reflections of their lives, their work can
become self referential to the point of narcissism. We listen, I guess, because
the beat is punchy and the hook infectious, and the words allow us to live the glamorous
life vicariously, but it all has nothing to do with us, really. Or worse yet,
they may promote a questionable morality, aimed at telling us that we are OK
just the way we are, while assuring them selves of the same thing.
Which brings me back to David Bowie. It seems like he was
wrapped up in that self-indulgent ball before he even sold a unit. He wasn’t simply
questioning the world around him and his place in it, he was questioning his
very identity. But this questioning did have an edge to it. By his own
admission he was haunted by the possibility of a God, with the fleshly and
spiritual sides fighting with each other in his songs. Even if the flesh was
the clear winner, in some ways it wasn’t a total victory. The song Ashes to Ashes gives the perfect example
of someone who’s been through the ringer, experienced all that the sensual life
has to offer, and has survived. He doesn't exactly express regret, but his conscience still
stings him, in spite of himself.
In the final analysis I respect Bowie as a daring pop artist, and give him the
benefit of the doubt in so far as his artistic honesty is concerned.
Nonetheless he bears the burden of having influenced countless, less worthy
followers, from Boy George to Madonna to Stefani Germanotta who have the
self-indulgence down pat, but none of the tinges of self-doubt or God
hauntedness that made Bowie interesting.
So in Bowie, we have self-indulgence and soul searching
being doled out in pretty much equal measure. His life of sexual and chemical
excess (which I haven’t touched upon)is fare game because it was the locus of
his artistic expression. They cannot be separated, because he was the very
embodiment of the McLuhan dictum that the medium is the message. Bowie was the
canvas, he was the paint and the brush. He was the painter and the portrait.
Self-portraits are common, but they were Bowie’s exclusive genre. In Marshall
McLuhan’s media theory the television set, radio, stereo system, movie screen
or concert stage each alters our perceptions of a given piece of entertainment
or none fiction presentation in unique ways. Each emotionally and
psychologically “massages” the consumer of the particular medium differently. While watching a video or listening to one of his songs without the accompanying
visual image may change how we experience his work, Bowie himself was the
message in a way that was quite unique in popular entertainment.
And what was the message? One might say he made the world
safe for metro-sexuality, gender neutrality and transgenderism. On a deeper
level his work suggested that the body has no meaning beyond what we give it. We are not
biologically or anatomically determined, nor need we be culturally conditioned.
But neither are we divinely ordered and imprinted. We are whatever the impulses
of a particular moment lead us to. All these trends were bigger than he was,
and it's probably true that he was reflecting the times more than actually
shaping them. He is certainly not responsible for the dictatorship of
relativism we live in, he’s just its poster boy.
So, in charity, I pray for the soul David Robert Jones. In
justice I acknowledge his unique and considerable talents, which included
acting. But in truth I express more than a touch of ambivalence where his
legacy is concerned.
Eternal rest grant unto him, oh Lord, and let perpetual light shine
upon him. May his soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the
mercy of God, rest in peace. AMEN
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