Bowie Fever

Jan 19, 2016 11:49

I'm gonna post this here, since no one seems to be around anymore and I don't want to offend. But I just gotta vent about this whole Bowie situation ( Read more... )

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Comments 16

ayun January 19 2016, 20:06:46 UTC
Man, David Bowie is my Star Wars. There's a lot of emotional investment and adolescent memories wrapped up in how I respond to his work that just blows away the possibility of real objectivity, and there's no other thing/person I feel that way about. But even so, I would never have guessed how much the news of his death affected me. I spent a couple of days holding back poorly-timed tears and if I'd been at home I probably would have called in sick to work the day I found out, just so I could be alone with stacks of CDs and DVDs and coffee table books.

Just feeling my feels.

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thefreak January 19 2016, 23:11:00 UTC
So, basically, even the rabid, sobbing masses are just as confused as I am? I'll take that.

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brigid January 19 2016, 23:55:49 UTC
feelings are confusing sometimes

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ayun January 19 2016, 20:09:49 UTC
Oh, but you know what? That Warren Zevon song, cheeseball and straightforward as it is, makes me cry every time, and it has to do with my dad and his brother who died when I was a kid and Warren Zevon all in a blender.

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thefreak January 19 2016, 23:12:42 UTC
That makes sense, of course. It's a song about his death designed to elicit such a response, couple with personal memories attached to it. Bowie's death was an event. The songs that blew you away in your youth haven't changed in 30 years. Only his new album would really have an added weight to it.

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ayun January 20 2016, 15:36:09 UTC
Eh, even listening to songs from The Next Day (which he released a couple years ago, and was somewhat preoccupied with history and mortality) does feel different now. The same way "Changes," which he recorded SO EARLY in his career, became sort of a touchstone because it turned out to be really prophetic despite being a total young man's naive lament about feeling old.

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yrcomplacency January 19 2016, 20:46:19 UTC
Yep. Right there with you. I don't like his music, and find his voice grating. But I recognize that he was influential. I don't understand the faffery about it either. My friend here actually cried for a week straight. I had to talk her off the roof. I just don't get it.

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thefreak January 19 2016, 23:14:43 UTC
COuld you please ask them why? I have trouble with irrationality (ask my kids), so it is driving me crazy watching people snap like this over something so banal as the death of an elderly man who smoked like a chimney. I agree that he was very influential and don't criticize their worship of him. I just criticize the way everyone is responding. Just...why??

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thefreak January 19 2016, 23:15:31 UTC
You will not bait me into asking why that was so important. DO not taunt me!

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brigid January 19 2016, 23:53:21 UTC
i think a lot of people got into bowie as little kids via labyrinth (i mean there are scores of articles on how many kids discovered either their own sexuality or even just the first twinklings of through jareth, even aside from just liking the movie) or got into his music when they were young either on their own or through their parents...and up until he vanished from the public eye, the guy seemed fucking ageless...and his influence is on everything, something that is pretty undeniable for our generation...so i think all those things combined just hit people really hard, we didn't -see- him get older, we never saw some ill fated and embarrassing "last" tour, he released a really amazing album on friday, and then he was dead on sunday, so it seemed like a shock, and i'm willing to bet for a lot of people, also a really big fucking reminder that we're all gonna die, even david bowie, and it made people feel old ( ... )

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