The news hit about an hour before I saw it, while I was teaching English at my home to the son of a friend. My husband came home early, overlapping with the departure of the kid, and I turned on the computer.
And then some small part of my world fell apart.
Perhaps it's childish to still have this reaction to death, especially the death of someone I never knew nor met, but I face and voice I was familiar enough with as a child to consider a strange fictitious friend.
I am seriously surprised that my aunt's VHS copy of The Labyrinth didn't warp and fall into pieces at any point in our childhood for how many times it was viewed in the summers we spent at her house.
But it was burned into our memories.
The dent, nay gaping hole, left by David Bowie's departure is evident to fans, even distant fans, even people who haven't listened to him in years and years. I cannot imagine what his family is going through and my thoughts and prayers are with them.
This is the second major pop-culture icon from my childhood to leave this world in the last few years, reminding my that time is passing and everyone dies of something.
Where Robin Williams taught was how to be a father, a dad, a parent, a man and how to stay remotely sane in the insane world, David Bowie taught that masculine and feminine roles are not definite or un-bendable, nay unbreakable. He lead us freaks and geeks to something better, even if only in our own heads. That's who he was to me. He was proof that my dad had the potential to be cool and that being yourself is significantly more important than pretending to be whatever might look better to others.
I have spent the last day or so looking through many of the articles written as biographies of the recently deceased icon, and I am struck not only by how many very different and evolving styles he pulled into being but also by the failures. He was in a large number of bands that never had great hits or any at all. That didn't make him a failure. That made him try harder. He wrote thousands of songs. Some were big hits and some were flops. Did the flops stop him? No. The man kept going. He didn't succeed by doing only the same thing over and over but by incorporating his evolution as an artist in his work. And he was successful.
A man who spend the last 18 months of his life fighting cancer while creating his own farewell album and music videos for his fans is nothing if not determined as all hell.
And I needed that reminder. I spent half of last year considering forfeiting my artistic pursuits, the only job I've really wanted since I was seven-years-old, because I was only getting negative feedback. How privileged am I that my brain has never had to wrap its head around more than six months of trying something with no fruitful gains.
So I am back to it. I'll do my best to submit a little work here and there this month and next month. In March, I will edit my first novel. Fully. From start to finish, I will turn the thing into one working copy and stop worrying about the little crap. Will people get it? Will they know what I mean? Is this too weird? Too brutal? Why isn't this just one genre like fantasy or scifi? What is this urban fantasy thing? Why would anyone want to read this messed up story from the brain of a crazy lady?
Because the public life of David Bowie proves that being your own weird extra-ordinary self is significant and important.
His work affects me in a similar way to reading my first Neil Gaiman books a few years ago, when I had finished my first NaNoWriMo novel and thought it was too weird for anyone to want or like or read or publish. Suddenly I was made aware that the weirdness of my novel was not a detriment-- that weirdness can be fantastic, successful and marketable even, provided it is done well.
So now I am off to perform my weirdness to the best of my ability, in whatever way I can between now and my own end, whenever that may be.
Epilogue:
(To a blog post? Can you have one of those?)
(I don't care! I'm doing it!)
One of the most significant positive factors I've found in those recent biographies is family. The man seems to have been a great father and a great partner.
The thing that makes this suck so much less than Robin Williams death (not that my opinion of either means a damned thing) is that we know he had a chance to say goodbye. He had 18 months of fighting this thing and still made his final album. It is said that he perished quietly, surrounded by family, at peace. For someone who brought so much joy and comfort to us freaks out here in the world, he deserved nothing less.
I am so happy that he had a chance to be happy.
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