The crushing sadness of four generations is contained in the passing of David Bowie. To reiterate his legacy here, it seems, is a task both difficult and unnecessary. It will do just to say his musical and cultural influence is the type natural, lasting, and rare.
Many of us will continue to struggle with the impact of his life and death.
It gladdens me to know he spent the last months of his life producing what some consider his best album in decades. Blackstar takes on obvious new meaning in light of David Bowie’s death -- an album already laden with a potent darkness and shadows of melancholy. Mortality, love, fame, poetry, language, and loneliness all are themes addressed between tracks one and seven. The record’s aesthetics, perhaps cathartically so, come through at times deeply unsettling and unimaginably beautiful, with altogether different readings now assigned to lines like “Look up here, I’m in heaven” since its release only three days ago.
And at the same time, it does not seem like Bowie says goodbye. I think it’s more true to Blackstar and the duration of his career to think of the album as a very real reflection on a life’s work well beyond summary, and as an enduring piece of art itself. It is a magnificent album, from beginning to end.
I have little else to say about a man who changed the world by being part of it.
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