I have been strangely bereft at the death of David Bowie. I say strangely because people die, we learn of it, we’re sad for awhile and then we move on. But I have been unable to move on for some reason which I’d like to explore.

I’ve been watching the videos he made for his final album. which dropped just two days before he died. You can see that he is very ill but he’s still Bowie, still with that magical voice and even some dance moves. Blackstar is the most arresting video of them all (I admit Lazarus gave me hope for 1.5 seconds that this was all an elaborate hoax). Blackstar goes on for 10 minutes of different kinds of imagery, including from his movies, and both sides of religious imagery too. Good and evil.

In Blackstar, the first thing we see is a dead astronaut. To me, that shows he plans to pay homage to his entire career which really started for most people with Ziggy Stardust and Space Oddity. In that song (who can forget the words “Ground control to Major Tom, take your protein pill and put your helmet on …” Major Tom was lost and Bowie later killed off Ziggy Stardust, but he acknowledges that’s where he first broke into the mainstream of music.

When we first see Bowie, who is masked in a way that signifies a blindfold that would be worn before an execution, he begins to sing “on the day of execution” which I believe is his acknowledgment that he does not want to die, but knows his cancer is going to do it soon and he’s preparing for it.

When a woman with a tail (does that represent the evil influences of cocaine and years wasted because of it? I am not sure yet) strolls up to Major Tom and removes his skull from the helmet, we see the skull is elaborately decorated and treated with great respect. I believe that David Bowie, while he came to hate Ziggy, knew that without him, he might not have had a career. In a later scene, the skull is placed on someone’s back and I can’t help but wonder if that’s to show the time that Major Tom and Ziggy were no longer welcome and holding him down.

Bowie does some other-worldly hand movements that sets dancers moving in a very distressful way — it’s as if they have no control over their bodies and cannot sooth the jerky movements they make — as a cancer sufferer would have no control with a terminal diagnosis. As the camera moves throughout the set, we see scenes that remind us of The Man Who Felt To Earth, and the castle of the Goblin King from Labyrinth. Some people don’t realize David Bowie was into all the arts — music of course, acting, mime, and painting. He was a creative genius, who appeared in several movies.

When we first see him without the blindfold, he sings “Something happened on the day he died” and he gives a literal nose flick to whoever must have told him he was a “flash in the pan.” He mentions films and other things in his long career, but is hopeful that his spirit will rise and there is something beyond his pain. He also says that someone else will take his place, giving acknowledgement to the temporal and to regrowth. He calls himself the Blackstar, in my view because he saw his career in that way. He was one of rock’s bad boy, always reinventing himself and now at the end of it all, coming to terms with that. I understand completely that I may be totally off base with this reference, but that’s what it said to me.

At the centre of it all, he sings, are “your eyes.” This I think is a tip of the hat to the accidental heterochromia (different coloured eyes) that he had. It was actually a childhood injury when his lifelong friend George Underwood punched him “over a girl” and Bowie’s left eye was left permanently dilated, making it look like he had a green eye and a brown eye. According to Underwood, he said Bowie had done him a favour with that punch, making him appear even more distinctive than he already was. It played well in his ethereal roles.

I believe the book he holds up to the heavens in some scenes is meant to represent the story of his life as one of rock’s bad boys. The book is quite worn in the middle, but nearly pristine at the end. That might represent the peace and happiness he found in his family life in later years after so many decades of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. It’s an old saying for a reason and Bowie embraced it all. In his Thin White Duke period he weight just 54 kg which was skeletal on a relatively tall man. He quite literally escaped with his life.

In the end, the skull of Major Tom comes full circle and closes the video, just as it opened it. I’m sure the imagery and cryptic lyrics will be explored for years to come. I’m sure that every time I watch it I’ll see things I missed the first several times I watched it. I’m also sure that I’ve got some things right, but possible a lot of things wrong. The religious imagery is something I’m incapable of explaining; all I can do is recognize it for what it is. All I can say is this is a Bowie we both have and haven’t seen. We see traces of the rock star reinventing himself again just as he knows he’s about to die, and we see him once again giving us some great music. There are five or six other videos in Blackstar and I may write a post on them at some point, but for now, I’m just too sad at this huge loss.