He’s living a resonant afterlife through his songs of pain and pleasure, connection and disconnection, songs dedicated to making something happen. A robust legacy is growing that it seems he had been carefully, sometimes chaotically, preparing for through his years as shape-shifting prophet, philosopher and for many the ultimate dream pop star, dazzled by the sheer joy of creation.
He found his own voice – listening to the crazy voices in his head – and then exaggerated it. He was a great scavenger, combining what existed into something that had never existed before. Life was his syllabus. He read and studied, looked and learned, and he gathered from everywhere, driven to become an utterly unique individual, one with a conscience, which constantly kept his curiosity fresh.
He was making mythologies. He was modifying consciousness with lunatic ambition in the way others had modified his consciousness, from Little Richard and Friedrich Nietzsche to Lou Reed and William Burroughs.
David Jones begat David Bowie begat Major Tom begat Ziggy Stardust begat Aladdin Sane begat the Man Who Fell to Earth begat Thin White Duke, the dark, immoral and anguished side of his personality, an insight into how dangerously easy he was finding it by the mid-70s to change his personality and indulge in his own self-deceptions, which led to a genuinely scary, life-threatening time. The Thin White Duke represented an inner conflict between light and dark as he faced up to the hidden demons always waiting to spring forth, and ultimately showcased Bowie’s love of almost gothic, delusional melodrama, whatever the risks.
He kept working and thinking to the very end, experimenting wildly with the limits of show business, seeing things coming few others did, making a masterpiece out of growing old. With his final album Blackstar he created a dramatic finale, a grand final performance, the courageous conclusion of a fantastic adventure, conquering fate through hauntingly beautiful and cunning, uncanny music – even at the end, he was still wondering what next, still reinventing himself, still thinking about life, guessing where he was heading, determined as ever to produce an enlightened masterpiece, to live on.
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