Monday, January 25, 2016

Reflections on a Lad Insane: David Bowie (1947-2016)

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

Bishop Barron on René Girard



I must tell the truth. I'd never heard of Rene Girard before seeing this video, though I am somewhat familiar with the basic concept he was famous for. The first half of Bishop Barron's presentation is a bit technical, but, if you have patience, it pays off with a very accessible application and conclusion.

In popular culture the likes of the late comedian George Carlin and the very alive directer George Lucas have worked from the premise that religion and the sacred texts they are based on, particularly in the case of Christianity, were concocted by the civil and social authorities to maintain control over the unwashed masses. Lucas is a disciple of Joseph Campbell, and popularized his mentor's theories after they were used to shape the story and "mythology" of Star Wars.

To reiterate what Bishop Barron is saying, what Carlin and Lucas get wrong in their analysis of Christianity is that the Bible is constantly inverting the traditional notions of power - not reinforcing them as they contend. It is often the younger son who is chosen before his elders (Jacob, Joseph and David are examples that jump to my mind immediately). When Israel clamors for a king the prophet Samuel warns of all the wickedness a king will cause, before finally giving in to their request, at God's behest. Most of the kings are portrayed as weak and closed to the will of God. Even David and Solomon are deeply flawed men, and the Scripture is not afraid to show it. In the New Testament the Apostles are a bunch of bickering, ambitious and thick headed men, slow to understand.  In the Acts of the Apostles, where they do come off looking pretty good, the early disciples come and go off the stage without much fan fare. We do not  hear how their lives end. All that is important is that they were obedient to the will of Christ and the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

Far from propping up the institutional authority, the Bible tells us that the institution is at the service of God, who is the only one who deserves our adoration. The institutional authority is necessary, but isn't the essential nature of religion or worship. Jesus is constantly butting heads with the Temple authorities, but in a more nuanced way than is usually presented. He tells his listeners to respect the legitimate religious authorities of Jerusalem, because they "sit on the Chair of Moses." Don't follow their example, though, because they really don't practice what they preach.

I could go on, but you get the point. Those looking at the Bible narratives as nothing more than examples archetypal myths being propagated through the ages is getting it completely wrong. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a God of surprises who upends and subverts the old myths to replace them with the Truth, who is Jesus Christ.