Everyone’s David

I feel comfortable writing obituaries for people I know of, but do not really know, though I’ve not done it often. This is my fourth.

Each time, the impetus for writing it has been because the death of the person has stuck with me and the fact that the death of an essential stranger sticks with me surprises me a bit. I suspect writing the obituary is an attempt to understand the surprise and assuage it a bit.

When I woke up on Monday, January 11, 2016, I opened Twitter on my phone while I leaned my forehead against the kitchen cabinet, awaiting the water to heat up enough to make coffee. Scroll after scroll after scroll after scroll… all David Bowie. He died, you know.

I let the water boil. Which I never do, because that’s too hot for making coffee. I mean, c’mon! I kept refreshing the screen, watching more and more David Bowie pour into my stream. I felt … sad? I’m not sure what I felt actually. I’m not sure what I feel now.

Certainly I like David Bowie’s music. I’m not a fan per se, but many a road trip in high school commenced with loud back-up singing “HOT TRAMP I LOVE YOU SO” as we sped off on a 7-hour drive to Fairbanks because we could.

Certainly I like David Bowie’s movies. Again, I mean, c’mon! Labyrinth! And that other one. I never saw it.

In-between getting myself and my daughter ready for the day, I added a couple of David Bowie’s albums to my Google Music list. Realized I’d never listened to Heathen. Or Low. Or ★. Though there’s a good excuse for that last one since it just came out. Listened to Diamond Dogs on the way to work. Listened to Heathen and Low while at work. Still wasn’t sure what I was feeling.

I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to sit still (likely in a bean bag chair even though it would be hell on my back) and listen to David Bowie’s albums.

During the day (while I listened at my desk in a comfortable, back-friendly chair) I said some things on Twitter about David Bowie. I sat there, looking a the field where Twitter-the-company asks “What’s happening?” trying to think of a way to distill my feelings into 140 characters or less. What I said first felt right.

Multi-user shared hallucination.

That described my view of David Bowie and how I saw what people were saying about him on Twitter the day he died. We all had a shared hallucination of him. For most, the connection wasn’t real. It was a connection to a guise concocted by a person whose fluidity in and out of personas was a life-long passion. Was he really dead? Did he really exist? What if we all just dreamed him up because we needed him? Are we him?

My next attempt at figuring it out was:

Trying to figure out how best to describe Bowie. Not that it’s necessary or proper to define him.

I felt like my first attempt was correct. But this is more correct. David Bowie defines David Bowie. The rest of us are just there to take it in.

I get the feeling that David Bowie spent half his waking hours seeing himself through our eyes. Such is the life of a performer of that caliber, I suppose. How he was seen (literally, but probably not-so-much figuratively) was as important as what he was doing and what he was creating.

Understanding how he would be seen (or viewed) meant looking at himself from the outside in. Not in the judgy way so many of us feel that others look at us as we move about in public space, but as a matter of alternate perspective. He instigated the hallucination and experienced it at the same time.

Since I missed a few albums, it’s all new music to me. Future songs which I get to experience for the first time. Which feels like a likely and worthy legacy. The web site, Metro Lyrics, which has a “top 100” list (the most looked-up lyrics that is perpetually populated with whatever the radio stations are playing on repeat) was taken over by people looking up lyrics to David Bowie’s songs. He is new to many now; being born into their minds as his physical form decays.

He was everywhere. He is everywhere. He’s behind us. He is ahead of us. And that, likely, was his plan.