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Siobhan Patricia Lynch’s heartfelt remembrance of her “Time Lord of Music”, David Bowie.
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It’s a little after 7 hours since I heard the news. David Bowie passed after a a year and a half battle with cancer. His death came right after he gave us his parting gifts, Black Star and Lazarus, which will count among his best works. The first gift Bowie gave me that I remember clearly was China Girl. I was young, very young, but it caught my attention. By high school, I was listening to progressive rock, and many of my favorite artists played on Bowie’s first few albums. Space Oddity caught my imagination (and Peter Schilling’s too, as around that time, “Major Tom” came out, and a friend introduced me to synthpop), and from there, it was history. For the next 20+ years, Bowie would be a major part to the soundtrack of my life.
For 20+ years, Bowie was a major part in the soundtrack of my life.
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I was going to try and write about Bowie’s musical accomplishments, his acting, his performance art, as well as what David Bowie meant to me as a queer artist. While reports of his bisexuality may have been greatly exaggerated, Bowie was a man who didn’t compromise his artistic integrity, he took tours through so many different types of music, progressive/art rock, soul and funk, pop, electronica, and in his final days, he took us back to art rock. As a composer and musician, Bowie was, as I termed him a few years ago, “The Time Lord of Music” – he had so many musical personas, as well as performance art ones. There was Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, The beloved musical uncle who asked me to dance, this he band leader of a bunch of incredible musicians like Reeves Gabrels and the Sales brothers in Tin Machine (to this day, one of my favorite “Bowies”, because we can talk about David Bowie like he was The Doctor, different companions, different styles, but all essentially Bowie.)
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So now, I’ve lost my favorite musical Uncle. Some people think we lost a star, but we lost the morning star. His soul was infused in nearly everyone born after 1960…. his contributions to our human culture, his collaborations with other giants, like Queen and John Lennon. Magic Dance from Labyrinth, became a common callback between my friends and I (“You remind me of the babe.”, “What babe?”, “The Babe with the Power”, “What Power?”, “The power of voodoo.”, “Who do?”, “You do”, “What?, “Remind me of the babe”.)
A few years ago, some of my closest friends and I attended the Bowie Ball in NYC, which took place around his birthday every year for a while. The celebration of his life, the energy, the history was all present (even though he was not in person, he was in spirit within every one of us who dressed up like Ziggy Stardust, or in my case, white-suit Bowie.) People loved his music, his spirit, what he stood for during every decade of his life. Bowie was art incarnated, and fed our souls. He became part of us, in his music, his vision, his experiences. Music can be one of the most powerful carriers of that, and it sits in the deepest areas of our psyche, and he was one of the best at finding the way there.
My last time on stage, for my best friend’s wedding, I got to play “Modern Love”, and how fitting that my first time back in 20 years was playing something from one of my favorite artists of all time.
All my friends feel bereft, a giant light in our world just left us to rejoin the Universe, and I can’t imagine how Iman and Bowie’s family are feeling right now, because if he touched all of us that way, there are no words for how they must feel. My heart and soul are crying, and all I can do is offer empty condolences, and these words to how much he meant to me, and the world.
art credit~wikipedia