Remembering David Bowie

Where to begin?

Seriously, where to begin to describe a man with 50+ years of work, who ebbed and flowed out of sci-fi/fantasy and was a shining example of art-rock nerdiness for every lonely geek alive, myself included?

David Bowie left behind an immense body of work when he passed away last week after a battle with cancer. Let’s talk about three projects: Outside, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Labyrinth. One album of 27; two acting credits out of 40. These small pieces of his career encapsulate what David Bowie meant to me.

Outside

I was sixteen in 1995, when Bowie dropped his dystopian concept album Outside. Kurt Cobain had killed himself the year before, and I was your average black-clad, mad-at-the-world disgruntled teenager, reading Rolling Stone, listening to Nine Inch Nails and discovering 1984 for the first time. While the 90s were a tough decade for Bowie as he struggled to regain relevancy after his time in Tin Machine, the concepts he worked with during this time and the doom and gloom he sang about reflected my own personal angst. Bowie’s 90s albums weren’t the most popular of his career, but they spoke to me, and the terror I felt of the unknown as a teenager. Ever the one to march to the beat of my own drummer, the post-punk tale of Nathan Adler and Baby Grace Blue was my own personal gateway into David Bowie’s weirdness. “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson,” “I’m Deranged” (later used to great effect in Lost Highway), and “I Have Not Been to Oxford Town” intrigued me in ways “Space Oddity” didn’t—at least, not until later in my life, when I absorbed Bowie’s entire discography. Much as I favor Bob Dylan’s Eighties work, there’s a special place in my heart for Outside and its successors Earthling and ‘Hours…’. Bowie’s vision of a dystopian future was something to emulate. Whenever I sit down to work on one of my unfinished dystopian opuses (and I have several), I keep Outside in mind; it provides the perfect soundtrack to my own dystopian aspirations.

Related Viewing: “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” from Outside

The Man Who Fell to Earth

A science-fiction film mostly set on Earth, The Man Who Fell to Earth is proof they don’t make movies like they did in the Seventies. I discovered this movie during a low period in my life, and instantly identified with the main character, Bowie’s Thomas Jerome Newton. Bowie’s alien was someone who had started out with a mission and the best of intentions, only to get caught up in the trappings of human existence. It’s a universal feeling, ennui, and one I felt in 2002 when I saw The Man Who Fell to Earth. Its a bleak movie, and probably one that shouldn’t be watched during a personal down period. Newton isn’t someone to aspire to be; quite the opposite. He gives the audience an example of what not to do. Getting caught up in trappings of life will only cause pain for those around us. It’s a powerful message and one that resonates.

Labyrinth

As someone growing up in the Eighties, you would think I’d have seen Labyrinth more than I actually have. However, I don’t remember watching it all the way through as a kid. My first memory of a complete watch is from 2006, when I saw a screening at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Oregon. On the big screen, the joke about the movie starring David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, and David Bowie’s package makes total sense; his codpiece is large enough to terrify small children.

But while I never fully watched this movie until I was an adult, its legacy was all around me. High school friends quoted Labyrinth during lunch and in their senior yearbook quotes. A college friend was an amateur magician, and did a ball-twirling trick in the style of Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King. It was this magician’s trick that inspired his nickname, accompanied by a hand-waving gesture, which I gleefully stole for a character in my first novel. That big-screen viewing in 2006 made me glad I never really watched Labyrinth as a child: that movie is terrifying. It’s dark in the way of late Seventies/early Eighties children’s movies (and in a way children’s movies won’t be again). Once again, Bowie takes a character and breaths life into it, fully embodying Jareth as one of the scariest people alive. It’s a performance for the ages, and in Bowie’s long career one that will have made the biggest impression on a certain generation.

I could go on and on about the highs and lows of Bowie’s career and what each album meant to me. But I’ll stop here. Bowie was a singular influence on my way of seeing the world, and his like will not be seen again. RIP.