Bowie and Transcendence

Bowie and Transcendence

By: Erreh Svaia

“I'm always trying to reach a transcendent point, a romantic point, but reach it in a really unconventional way, a really profane way. To get to that romantic, touching, heartbreaking place, but through a lot of acts of profanity.”

Chuck Palahniuk

Not pretending to jump into the bandwagon of thousands of people writing about David Bowie and his death, but with so many ideas about the man, especially when it comes the way he managed his death, Bowie was revolutionary, and the way he lived up to his last days, issuing a record a couple of days before dying, was revolutionary, he simply managed to use the time he had left, to create something larger than life, something immortal, a great record.

A lot of the recording artists I listen to these days are dead, Lou Reed, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin are gone for good, some of them a long time ago, nevertheless, their music lives on, is not like they are dead and forgotten, I think about them in a regular way, I listen a lot to Janis, she died before I was even born, but in a way I met her, the artist thru her records, and because of the quality of her music, because of the quality of Lou Reed's, John Lennon's or Albert Ayler's music, it is almost as if they were still alive, I still remember than when I bought my first Screamin Jay Hawkins Cd, the man died exactly that year, How´s that for immortality?

My mother died of cancer more than a decade ago, to me, her dead is still more like a long trip, and I'm still waiting for her to come back, we learned that she was about to die 30 days before it happened, it was too fast, I wonder what people do when such a thing happen, you simply try to live a good life as long as you can, or you try to defeat death by becoming immortal, not in a metaphysical way, but true your creations, Bowie knew he had 18 months left, and although he knew that his music will make him immortal, he didn't wanted to rest on his past, but use that time in order to create a new work of art that encapsulated his dying process and that way transcending this life, making a record when you are Bowie is no easy thing, Black Sabbath made their debut record like in a day, by today standards you can make two or three records a year, but for Bowie , it was a more complex process, it was done old fashioned, and he just had one chance, is understandable why he choose Tony Visconti, obviously his must trusted collaborator.

Up to this day I question myself, if technology was as advanced then, as it is now, what should we have done? I hope I have more photos or my mother, more video, I would love to have captured her voice and still be able to listen to her voice this days, instead of slowly forgetting how it sounded, perhaps a message form her to the future generations, I don’t know?

Art gives you that very special chance to reach eternity, that way we can read Dostoevsky discovering existentialism, we can watch Luis Buñuel surreal movies full of rebellious ideas, we can enjoy Picasso's cubist paintings blowing our minds away or admire architect Antoni Gaudi stealing images from our wildest dreams.

Bowie lived just as he wished, and he had the golden chance to live his last days, the way he wanted, but he made a whole phenomenon out of his death, he made art, not a show out of it, he made music to transcend life and death, he went a way as a winner, he knew he was not going to die, but that he was making a long trip, he simply gave us something to think about and digest during his absence.