{"id":2521,"date":"2016-01-14T19:55:15","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T03:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=2521"},"modified":"2016-01-14T19:55:16","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T03:55:16","slug":"the-death-of-david-bowie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/the-death-of-david-bowie\/","title":{"rendered":"The Death of David Bowie"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Declan Hertel\r\nEntertainment Editor<\/pre>\n
There is no one else in the world I could think of who could be so deeply abnormal as to turn their own death into a piece of art. But David Bowie certainly was and it puts an impossibly perfect cap onto an excellent and diverse career.<\/p>\n
I listened to the first half of \u201c\u2605\u201d (pronounced \u201cBlackstar\u201d) when it came out, and was very impressed by it. The spacey, dark electronic sounds of the title track were a surprise to me, but much like the other weird parts of Bowie\u2019s repertoire, it scratched an itch I didn\u2019t know I had before I heard it.<\/p>\n
The third track, \u201cLazarus,\u201d stood out as another gem, not least because of the music video that accompanied it. The song\u2019s first lyrics are \u201cLook up here, I\u2019m in heaven \/ I\u2019ve got stars that can\u2019t be seen \/ I\u2019ve got drama, can\u2019t be stolen \/ Everybody knows me now.\u201d<\/p>\n
In retrospect, it should have been painfully obvious. But there are some people who are so iconic, so ubiquitous, so seemingly immortal that we all begin to believe that they\u2019re immortal.
\nUpon hearing the news of his death, I immediately set to listening to \u201c\u2605\u201d again. It was as obvious as it should have been at first: David Bowie had, absolutely and intentionally, given us a parting gift: one last hurrah. And it was glorious in the purest form of the word.<\/p>\n
Bowie created a piece of performance art out of his death, one that I will be forever thankful I was able to experience. He released an album, gave us two days to process it, and then died, revealing its true genius and meaning. While I think the album is great purely on musical merit, it had a higher, ethereal level of greatness that only became clear after he passed, and will never be experienced again in the same way. It\u2019s a work of art that existed to those who heard the album before he died, and only to them. It lasted for a short time and now is just a memory. I\u2019m still kind of reeling from the whole thing.<\/p>\n
David Bowie, you were a great artist who inspired many, including myself, and told us all that it\u2019s totally cool to be an oddity, because he knew what it was like to be one. I\u2019ll leave you with my favorite of his lyrics:<\/p>\n
\u201cThese children that you spit on \/ As they try to change their world \/ Are immune to your consultations \/ They\u2019re quite aware what they\u2019re going through.\u201d
\nGoodbye, David Bowie. The stars look very different today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is no one else in the world I could think of who could be so deeply abnormal as to turn their own death into a piece of art. But David Bowie certainly was and it puts an impossibly perfect cap onto an excellent and diverse career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":825,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/825"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}