The Day Bowie Died
It’s a learning thing - how to mourn.
when a public figure dies, we don’t usually take it to heart.
But when a pop-star (for he was) dies, sometimes a cultural icon dies with him.
This is one of those deaths and millions of words next to these are being penned. But something about the clarity and the extreme singular, cohesive sight in Bowie’s work did bring a tear to my eye. Here’s a man who sat in my record collection for 35 years. I don’t need to go to You Tube. i am on a bus with no Wi Fi or I would, but instead, i start humming the much-sampled-Morse-bleep of ‘Starman’ - and I know it. It’s stayed there all these years - every word, the whole arrangement is in my head. He wrote songs I have loved and he did it for millions. So one of our true ‘Heroes’ is dead.
The tear is real. He has touched something in many of us. He set himself up as a Demi-God - and got away with it.
Now, my thoughts turn to the financial value of Bowie’s death. The train I am on is taking me to Cambridge University. To the Judge Business School and, specifically, it’s opening 3 days of ‘drilling down’ candidates business ideas to their core. These are social businesses. The course I am seeking access to is called ‘Social Incubator East’. it’s ground-breaking. I am enthusiastic - with hard seams of cynicism to temper my blue sky thoughts.
Bowie’s death (and it’s undoubted resultant spike in sales and revenue for an host of unknown licensors, media agents and producers, CMO’s - who knows? - etc… ) is relevant in more ways than one and I turn to wondering about how a fellow like him in his dotage, with such an idil-syncratic portfolio and estate of great work and cultural value has chosen to organise his finances.
I replied to a friends Facebook post (so many to come) that I had just heard and know that, like only John Peel and John Lennon, I will remember exactly when and where I heard the news. David Bowie mattered to me - even more than some of my real friends and acquaintances who have died - if Im honest.
So, with this in mind, i turn to the purpose of my trip and as I said to my Facebook friend: I intend to dedicate the last few years of my life to ensuring that some of the proceeds of the vast sums of money that these iconic songs and their like ( I could only think of Ray Davies as a UK ‘act’ of comparison) go back into what I called ‘work of merit’…
Which brings us away from a eulogy and into the swirly waters of the old high art/low art debates, objective and subjective notions of cultural worth and all the years and tonnes of wordage that still goes in to - dare I say it - public funding for the arts.
Still, the public funded Bowie because they loved him and his music. Now to find out where the money goes and to wonder how many of Simon Cowell’s ‘productions’ will provide us with a death in years to come which cause so many of us to simply know where we were when we heard, to shed a wee tear and to never forget…?
Work to do. Cambridge here i come - and I mean business - we can be heroes at least for one day!
