A Celebration Of David Bowie

David Bowie has died of cancer, surrounded by loved ones, mere days after his 69th birthday.

Which is a really hard sentence to write, as it simply cannot sum up how monumental this loss is. One of the biggest pitfalls you’ll encounter when grieving someone you never met (most recently, I’m thinking Robin Williams) who touched you with their work is people pointing out that you never actually met them. So how badly can their death affect you?

Well, this is David Bowie. And it’s affecting us all a great deal. Because we all grew up with Bowie. My parents are just as upset about this as I am.

Bowie was a goddamned human kaleidoscope, glorious and incandescent and infinitely complex. He achieved near mythical status repeatedly, building up entire genres of music around himself, before transcending them and moving on. And because he changed forms so often, and did it with a huge grin on his face, he effectively helped shape and influence the lives of many millions of people.

He wove a message of effortless acceptance towards those who were different, bringing everyone – gay, straight, bi, trans, black, white, old and young – under his wing. He shook the status quo up aggressively, then warmly embraced it. He partied with us, night after night. And he’ll keep on doing that, because we’ll never stop playing his music.

And depending on when you encountered him, you’ll likely have ‘your’ Bowie. For my partner, her Bowie is Jareth, the Goblin King from Labyrinth. Perhaps your Bowie is the Bowie who judged the Walk-Off between Zoolander and Hansel. Maybe it’s the Bowie who danced in the street with Jagger, or sang in tandem with Freddy Mercury. Maybe your Bowie was playing in your car when you had your first kiss, or drifting across a tearful crowd of your loved ones as you walked down the aisle.

His art has spent decades reaching out to us as a billion tiny tendrils, and now, they’re like those vines that have engulfed that gorgeous, abandoned house down the road. They’re a part of it now, and I suspect there’ve been times they were all that was holding the damned thing up.

My Bowie? Mine was Bowie from his Berlin phase. I’d barely encountered him until my first year at university. I’d been through some stuff, and reached a weird zenith at which point I had a minor emotional/chemical breakdown. A friend of mine (with impeccable taste) noticed which way the wind was blowing and, correctly inferring my musical tastes, bought me copies of Heroes, Low and Lodger. I jammed Heroes into my discman, and put it on one night while heading back to the Northern Beaches on the Manly ferry.

And there was this moment where I fell asleep out on the deck, facing the inky black ocean, and woke up just as ‘Neuköln’ transitioned into ‘The Secret Life of Arabia’. I felt as if Bowie had seen deep into me and deftly plucked away any grotty little fears I had, before flinging them into that very ocean. I swiftly became besotted with his work, and haven’t stopped enjoying it since.

I find it incredibly edifying, potently touching and indescribably brave that, faced with not long to live, Bowie came out his unofficial retirement and recorded two albums for us, and for himself. Bloody good ones, at that. His latest album, Blackstar, is (in my opinion) one of the finest things he’s ever recorded, and it came out days ago. Think about that. A handful of days ago, he flung out another hunk of glorious cosmic debris in our direction.

So before I leave you to celebrate the life of this alarming, brilliant, brutally formative and decidedly wonderful human being, I shall leave you with two things. First, this photo of him gazing at his wife, Iman, during a shoot. Look at that face. That’s the face of a man who has forgotten anyone else is in the room.

And secondly, this.

Thanks for everything, Ziggy. You nailed it.

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Paul Verhoeven is a Jim Henson’s Creature Workshop creation. He hosts Save Point, writes for TheVine, and is a presenter on Triple J.