Sadly, David Bowie, the famed pop music singer and song-writer, died today after an 18 month battle with liver cancer.
Although I typically am not a fan of pop music, I became deeply infatuated with his music from a relatively young age. I, like many other people, were first drawn in with his popular hits, such as Let's Dance and Space Oddity, but I soon became acquainted with his more cerebral songs that touched upon the nature of human existence.
In the song Cygnet Committee touched upon his relationship with the hippy movement and, from his perspective, how they began to use the very methods that they were originally fighting against. It serves as a powerful reminder of how any movement can be corrupted if it turns against the empathy of its original humanistic ideals. His video for his final song, Lazarus, was posted by Vevo just four days ago. In this final song, which was clearly meant as a final farewell to his fans, I was able to see this man's ability to convey ideas through the medium of music and videography one last time. In the video we see one character (played by Bowie) on his deathbed, with the specter of death (a dark character) rising from under the bed to take him. Then in his second character we see a man desperately writing things down as his frail body begins to fail, a final attempt to write down those unwritten ideas which death will soon obscure forever. And then finally the character in black, after finally finishing what he was writing, slowly backs into the closet (representing a coffin) with a look of grim determination on his face, and closes the door. It stands as a final remarkable message to his fans that he had completed his final song and that he was content. Thus, for me, his final work stays with me as one of the most poignant reflections upon the human experience from this man, and as a remarkable final gift to his fans.
May he rest in peace.
