RIP: David Bowie

[fabrisse]

I was never a huge fan. I didn't even really hear about him until the late 1970s (what? I lived in DC. I listened to The Osmonds on records and Funk and/or Soul on the radio. BTW, Osmonds was being a preteen white girl; it's the Funk and/or Soul which was the DC signifier.). I saw the "Jazzing with Blue Jean" video in the movie theater when I went to see Company of Wolves (my first X rated film - British X, I don't know what it was rated in the US). I've still never seen Labyrinth, but I grinned to see him as Tesla in The Prestige. I'd recognize him if we passed on the street.

And yet, I feel terribly sad to hear of his death. Whether or not I liked him, he was a force in the arts, not just music, and his passing leaves a ripple over all their surfaces.

The In Memoriam article at Esquire sums it up:
The Beatles are classics now, like Handel or the Louie Armstrong Hot Fives. The Stones are a touring museum piece. But look around. In the major cities of the western world, we live in a world that David Bowie made. It is a better world for his making. Stephen Marche

Comments

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

This is one of those posts that make me think we must be sisters from another father or something (well, except for the Osmonds).* Yes, exactly so: I don't even own any Bowie (my collection is mostly classical), but in many ways I never needed to. His music has been the soundtrack of my adult life. He permeated the culture in ways that few individuals have ever managed.

My SO and I went to see the V&A's exhibition on him when it moved to Paris; it was housed at the new Philharmonie concert hall, and just across the way, at the Cité de la Musique, an exhibition to make Pierre Boulez's 90th birthday was about to open. Then to lose them both, within less than a week ... I was saddened by Boulez's death, but profoundly shocked by Bowie's. He seemed immortal.

*Still never seen Labyrinth, check. Loved his Tesla, check.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I would have loved to have seen that exhibit.

Ditto on Boulez as well, it saddened me without shocking me.

And we'll have to see if there's a family resemblance...