A few months after he launched his album Reality, in 2003, David Bowie published in Esquire magazine list of the important things I learned in life. One of those items was speaking openly of the writing process: “When I’m locked to end a letter out my last resort: overwhelming lack of logic.”
It seems that many thought that Bowie had used that resource to the maximum when they heard for the first time Blackstar (which have delayed their date of publication a week, it would have ended up being a posthumous document). A critic of The Guardian newspaper was stunned by the mentions of “skull designs in my shoes” and phrases like “The spirit raised a meter and stepped aside.” He tried to examine its meaning and eventually threw in the towel: “I wish them luck with that,” he wrote to his readers
Two days later, David Bowie left this world.. And then everything seemed to come to a strange sense. Family releases and ad disc’s producer confirmed the answer. Bowie had been battling cancer for 18 months. At that time he managed to compose songs, recording the album and even design a couple of videos with a very consistent aesthetic mortuary. He wanted to say goodbye to their fans in encrypted messages. He wanted his death was, like his life, a work of art.
Listen now Blackstar that light becomes a chilling experience. There are certain density electronic passages, sudden changes of harmony and inspired several saxophone solos (the instrument that was more present in their latest albums) by the avant-garde musician Donny McCaslin. About this sound fabric, some suggest that goes beyond the boundaries of rock, David Bowie sings lines like: “Look up here, I’m in heaven.” It seems amused by the idea of being heard postmortem.
The interpretations are not waiting. The “black star” speaking the title may correspond to the astronomical definition of a gravitational field that it absorbs all the energy, or it can be a metaphor for the terminally ill. The artwork is not limited to a single meaning. In any case, we like to find a reason to these things. To me it occurs to me that the astronaut killed in the video Blackstar is the starring Tom himself Space Oddity, his 1969 song is about the loneliness of outer space. And I like to think that because to say that life, as the work of Bowie, has a clear beginning and a perfect ending. And, therefore, it makes sense.
From now on, Blackstar enters a mythical musical works gallery looking into the eyes of death itself. As Mozart’s Requiem. But it is perhaps more comparable to the last book of another great and sarcastic English: Mortality Christopher Hitchens. The writer was diagnosed with cancer in 2010 and decided to keep a diary of their emotions and thoughts during the time that separated him from the grave. Halfway through the book explains what his will: “when faced extinction I want to be fully conscious and awake, to ‘do’ death on active rather than passive voice.”
It seems the same intention of Bowie. Only Bowie did not need words. Their tools were always powerful music and poetry of the enigma.
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