wow not woe

I didn’t accept that David Bowie had died until Alan Rickman did, Rickman was the same age but somehow much, much younger. I loved Alan Rickman, but only assuming he was not in competition with David Bowie for my attention. Bowie meant much more to me then he probably should have, much more than I was aware. I am at a loss at his loss. I first saw his image when I was twelve, the classic poster with Twiggy for Pin Ups and had never seen his like before, I had no idea what he was but became determined to find out. Saving up for that album was one of the most concerted efforts of a childhood that was not punctuated by pocket money. It didn’t bother me that Pin Ups wasn’t representative, I didn’t really know what Bowie sounded like, but it started something that was difficult to name.

I rarely thought of him as a person, to me Bowie was an idea, a concept, his very existence was a work of art. I was not a typical fan, I always refused to see him in concert, as I was never good with crowds and carried the studio version of his music in my head and didn’t want a live variant competing with it. I can’t pretend this makes sense except that I can now draw a kind of comfort from it. I have never seen a live Tasmanian tiger, I only know they once lived because I have seen pictures of them, those pictures are definitive, real yet otherworldly, magical almost, existing as little more than folklore. This for me is Bowie, and once I get over the surprise of his mortality I will quickly return to thinking about him as a notion, as an enduring myth.

It is fitting then that no one really knows how to pronounce his surname, it is like some kind of shibboleth, a test of faction, splitting fans into three distinct tribes, the wows the woes and the either depending on company. The delightful truth is they are all equally right and wrong as Bowie frequently confessed to not knowing how to pronounce his name either. How cool is that? Call me what you like, I’m not fussed. Bowie the artist may have been elevated but Bowie the man was a good bloke. It is why I know he would be chuffed that the children at my son’s school are all learning Life on Mars? To sing at a special assembly. It has little to do with the kids of course, they don’t yet know who David Bowie is, it is their forty something broken hearted teachers howling through the only instrument they can play.

In time I have no doubt I will hear Bowie blaring from my boys’ bedroom, and though my Father would always yell at me to turn that very same noise down, I will have no such compulsion. There is no doubt that I will miss Alan Rickman more than I’ll miss David Bowie. Alan Rickman is dead but David Bowie is not, he remains unchanged, without time, without body, the David Bowie I have always known will live forever.