The Man Who Fell to Earth Finally Returns Home a Starman

As an insider looking out, it's hard for me to comprehend anyone asking "Who was David Bowie?" Then again, I come from an age of younger music consumers who, following the Kanye West/Paul McCartney collaboration had the gall to say things like "We don't know who you are old man, but Kanye has just made your career!" not realizing that McCartney was one fourth of the legendary Beatles, who arguably began the first major shift in what the music world is today.

For the alternative crowd (encompassing every form of societal misfit, from art students to goths to punks to the freedom fighters without label), David Bowie was everything. It may feel a little facetious for a 26 year old to claim Bowie was everything. His touring days ended before I had really traversed high school, and certainly a little before I had first discovered his music. But, at the root of it all, David Bowie came to be everything I believed in, in some sense of the term.

A friend wrote on Facebook about Bowie saying that yes, David Jones, the man, the singer, he has died. But, David Bowie? Bowie is an idea, a way of contemplating life. Bowie will never die. I greatly enjoy this idea. It feels weird to write about Bowie in the past tense. Though Ziggy Stardust "died" in the early 70s, we still refer back to that persona and still often identify with it - this alien being brought to earth for some mission that we as human can't quite fully understand, but we'll help him as best we can.

I first heard the name David Bowie somewhere around the age of 16. It seems that if you're going to discover Bowie, you do it around the age of 14 to about 18. If you didn't find him then, you may never find him. You listen to his songs, and even the ones he did back in the 60s somehow sound fresh and like they were made for you and you alone. My first song, "The Man Who Sold the World," has remained with me ever since, solidly my favorite from him even if it's now about 46 years old. This song is almost twice as old as I am, yet somehow it remains timeless.

Outside the music, there was always something mythical about Bowie. Was he even real or did we all collectively make him up? Bowie was a star in every sense of the word, yet as time wore on, so much of the drama associated with that sort of status was missing. And only Bowie could turn his own death into a work of art. I hadn't watched the "Lazarus" video before he died, but felt the song was some sort of throwback to a period of jazz bandstand in the New York way back. Now, it's seen as a song for us to contemplate over - "Look up here, I'm in heaven / I've got scars that can't be seen." Maybe we're reading too heavily into it, but it feels like Bowie's way of saying "Hey, my suffering is over and now I'm in heaven, flying like the blue bird, free."

I remember being in an online forum where some people were talking about Bowie's death. Some, myself included, reported that we had been crying for hours, with more hours of distraught tears to come. Others said that we were going overboard, excessive in our grief. Why are you so upset over some musician dying? Who cares?

I think back to being younger and seeing the news still report on the anniversaries of the deaths of Elvis and John Lennon. They would always show people grieving, crying, shattered, broken. Having not been alive for either of those events, I wondered how and even why they felt as they did. And after submerging myself in Bowie's expansive catalog ten years ago, I knew I would have a hard time saying goodbye when the day did come. Now that that day has arrived, I know exactly what those faithful fans of Elvis and Lennon felt.

You see, for the alternative crowd, Bowie is our Elvis, our Lennon. He was never afraid to call things as he saw them, having early on called out MTV for not showcasing talent from non-white artists, among other things. Bowie was unapologetically unique. We talk often about bands reinventing themselves, which usually just means after five albums of the same formula, they changed it up a tiny bit, slowing or speeding up the tempo, more or fewer ballads, maybe throwing in a synthesizer for good measure. Bowie's knack for reinvention was universal - from persona, to dress, to hair style, to manner of speech, and certainly to the music.

Much like the preceding icons, Bowie was perhaps one of the only musicians who could completely disappear for ten years - absolutely silent - then reemerge to a frenzied fan base, ready with open arms to accept the gift of a new album, The Next Day. And so, too, does Blackstar truly become an album for the fans. An album full of experimentation, vastly different from anything he's done before, and deep in there, so incredibly personal. I remember listening to it for the first time and by the end, I knew it and felt it so deeply in my heart - this was it. This would be the final album. He is saying goodbye. I just didn't imagine he would ascend into the heavens only two days later.

It's hard to imagine a world without Bowie. But more so, it's harder to imagine a world where Bowie never existed in the first place. So many people cite Bowie as a major inspiration. Arguably, the entirety of post punk may never have occurred as so much of the aesthetic and style drew heavy influence from glam rock in general and David Bowie specifically. It feels laughable almost to even call Bowie a legend. As I've said, Bowie truly was everything for us.

A full thirty-six hours have elapsed since I first learned of Bowie's passing. The tears have finally dried up, at least until I see like-minded friends and we shine each other that fated smile that inevitably leads immediately to tears and that all too familiar heartache. I am finally able to listen to some of his music again, but the void still remains, the knowledge that this is it. This is all there will ever be of the genius that was Bowie. The man who fell to earth has finally returned home...a starman.