JUST LIKE THAT BLUEBIRD
Written by James Ward
I took this walk, to ease my mind.
To find out what’s gnawing at me.
I couldn’t stay at home. I had to go, although I knew it would make me feel worse. I just had to go.
I need to contextualise. This is a blog post about the death of David Bowie. But it isn’t about that. It’s more selfish than that. It’s embarrassingly self-indulgent. It’s about the death of David Bowie and the way that I reacted to that horrible fact. I’ve never experienced grief like this about a public figure before. But I have experienced grief. And I recognise that this is grief. And it hurts. It hurts so much. Millions of people around the world are all experiencing the same unique and personal pain. And there are two options. There is the option of respectful observance or there is total absorption. And I realise which option I will choose. I will choose the one that includes me. Of course I choose that one. Me. Because this is about me. Because he is part of me. Because he is part of everyone. Because he is part of everything.
The majority of this post will consist of things that I posted on Twitter or Facebook as I learned of the news and attempted to accept it. The rest will be thoughts and fragments and shards of memories: moments when he splintered into my life. He was always there, acting as a filter to everything I saw and everything I thought. And that is how he will continue. He added a layer to my life. A layer of fascination.
I do not apologise if what follows is disjointed, confused, upsetting, offensive, awkward, contradictory, falsifiable, subjective, inaccurate, ungrammatical, emotional, naive, sad, selfish, mawkish, helpful, cathartic or comforting. It is what I thought and felt and right now I don’t care about anything else.
How to begin?
My first memory of pop music is seeing the video for Dancing In The Street.
I am four years old and think that they are wearing pyjamas, perhaps because the video was filmed at night. Bowie’s trench coat I mistake for a dressing gown. Two grown men jumping around in their pyjamas in the middle of the night. All they need is music, sweet music. The idea excites me.
Monday morning. I check Facebook before leaving for work. I see a post by Alexis Petridis:
Jesus, he must have known all along. Fucking hell. Fucking hell.
In the comments below, I see someone mention the name Duncan, and suddenly I know. I open the BBC News app and there it is. Cancer. Eighteen months. The words “it has been confirmed”.
When I was fourteen, I borrowed two tapes from my brother. One had Ziggy Stardust on one side and Diamond Dogs on the other. The second one was Heroes and Scary Monsters. I listen to them over and over and over again. A couple of years later, I get my first job. Working Sundays at Kingston Library. I am paid £25 for each shift. Each week this money is spent in Virgin Megastore buying Bowie albums on CD, with some saved over to spend in KFC after work. There is no logic to the order in which I buy the albums. My collection is haphazard and disjointed. It jumps through time. One memory springs to mind – stepping off the bus to go to KFC, it is cold and I am blasted by the wind.
I walk past a deserted building site while Sense Of Doubt plays in my ears and I stand and look at the concrete, at the half-demolished buildings, at the destruction and I am scared. Here I am, a sixteen year old boy, listening to a Walkman in a small, lower-middle class suburban town, on his way to KFC, having just finished a shift in Kingston Library, but I am transported into a different world. What a twat.
Back to that horrible day. I get on the bus to go to work. The news is still buzzing in my head. No, not buzzing. That’s not right. My head is numb. Just stillness and silence after the explosion. I listen to Blackstar. It is a completely different album compared to the one I’d listened to the night before.
Lazarus deals with it most directly of course. “Look up here, I’m in Heaven. I’ve got scars that can’t be seen.” But it’s the last line that makes me stop and actually smile, something I didn’t think would be possible at that moment.
I have to stop listening to the album because I realise I am crying.
I only really caught up with Bowie in real time around the release of Hours… It’s certainly not his greatest album by any means, but I fall in love with Thursday’s Child.
I discover yet another Bowie. One who only rarely makes an appearance, but when he does, he is beautiful. The sincere Bowie, the honest Bowie, the human man with the human heart behind this superhuman music.
As long as you’re still smiling, there’s nothing more I need.
And your big fat dog.
And he jokes about his broken English, tries to be a friend to me.
I care for no-one else but you, I tear my soul to ease the pain.
Tuesday night. A lot of the world have moved on. Julie Burchill writes what I can only assume is meant to be some kind of ironic Bowie-inspired meta-textual tribute in the Spectator, telling people to stop “sob-signalling” and which contains a head-swirling, Ouroboros of a complaint about feeling:
a revulsion with a sub-section of my fellow hacks who – for a fee – will say something even if they have nothing worth saying.
Meanwhile, Camilla longs for some of the attention herself.
And I know it must look weird from the outside. Like this all just performative, social media driven, pretend sadness. Last week it was Lemmy, this week it’s Bowie, next week it will be whoever. But for us it’s not that. This is real grief. And obviously, it’s nothing compared to what his family and friends are going through. We know that. We don’t need to be told that. We are not stupid. But still, it is real pain that people are feeling. And it’s unlike anything I’ve felt before. I’ve lost people close to me, very close to me. And I saw people laying flowers for Diana and I thought they were mad. But if what they felt is what I feel now, then I get it completely.
I buy the Guardian, with its beautiful cover and twelve-page tribute.
I buy it but I have no intention of reading it, although it does seem fitting that the same person who broke the news to me on Facebook has his name on this front page. I don’t read it because right now I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I don’t watch any of the tributes on TV. I don’t listen to anything on the radio. I barely even read the posts my friends write on Facebook. I simply don’t care about what anyone else has to say right now because this feels so weirdly and intensely personal that reading what anyone else thinks just seems irrelevant, and yet here I am writing this.
I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do,
So I’ll just write some love to you.
October 2014. I move into a flat in Brixton. The night after I move in, my flatmate comes home to find me sitting in the front room reading a book by David Icke. The following night, she comes home to find me sitting in the front room reading my own book. I am unable to find the words to explain that the David Icke book is preparation for a piece I am writing for the New Humanist and I was reading my own book in preparation for a talk I was giving. Instead, I decide that she thinks I am a lunatic and hide in my room for the rest of my life. The book I had written was about the history of stationery. The talk I wrote about that book begins with the song Rubber Band.
Tuesday night. I have the realisation that it was a magic trick. That last album. He performed a magic trick. He gave us this album, and then just a few days later, he silently transformed it into something entirely different. What was confusing and obscure and frustrating and invincible suddenly becomes direct and honest and open and vulnerable. The Pledge, the Turn, the Prestige. It’s all there. It is the greatest concept album of all time. He won. He beat us all.
Part of me hates him for being so David Bowie about it that we had no time to prepare. But then that goes away and I am filled with love for him for being so David Bowie about it that he did give us time to prepare, except none of us realised that because none of us are David Bowie enough to be David Bowie.
And we should have known because the bastard had done it before. Making us think he’d gone quiet and spent a decade daydreaming about Potsdamer Platz and pining after Hermione, when really he’d been stomping around, yelling about women dressed as men for the pleasure of a priest. But even those of us who knew he could do anything didn’t know he could do this. First he gives us everything that we want, then he takes back everything that we have.
Monday night. I walk up to the Ritzy.
There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people everywhere. No-one knows what is happening. Some people have speakers and are playing music. There are people with guitars. There are pockets of people standing around singing different songs. Strangers hug each other. There are people in tears. I am in tears. I leave after five minutes. I just can’t take it. Not right now. Maybe not ever.
I go to the Prince Of Wales, it is packed. I stand in the corner with a pint of Amstel. I am shaking. It is overwhelming. I need somewhere quieter. Every pub in Brixton is filled with people singing this glorious man’s glorious music. Eventually, I reach the Crown & Anchor. It’s a bit further out and not so crowded. Of course they’re playing Bowie, but not quite as loud. I go to the bar and the barman can see it in my face. “How are you holding up?” he asks. We talk briefly about how sad it is, about how the only source of comfort in this is the sense that he seems to have made peace with what was happening. I’m reminded of seeing my dad’s face when he was told he only had two weeks to live and I remember knowing that the doctor was lying because she’d told me he only had one week and I remember him living for four weeks. I cry. I apologise. He seems to ask me out on a date of some sort. I politely decline but accept the can of Strongbow he gives me as a parting gift, and it all seems appropriate somehow.
There is no conclusion to this because there is no conclusion to grief. It stays with you but it gets better. In fact, you learn to love the grief because the grief is love. None of this makes sense and there was no point writing any of it because you all already know it, and if you don’t already know it and understand it and feel it, then there is no point in me trying to explain it. There are those who get it and those who don’t, and as long as we’re together, the rest can go to hell.
For, in truth, it’s the beginning of an end.
And nothing has changed.
Everything has changed.
JAMES WARD: I LIKE BORING THINGS 
Fantastic piece. More watery eyes at this end reading that. But cathartic. And for being introduced to Thursday’s Child – Thank you.
p.s. “Bowie’s trench coat I mistake for a trench coat.”?
Thank you for reading it. (I meant I mistook it for a dressing gown – since corrected)
Thought so :-)
Thank you for this. And the remark about your dad has chimed with me – since Monday I have been unable to stop thinking of Bowie and my own father’s death as separate events. A decade apart, and the relationships so different, but entwined.
Yes, it’s impossible to separate feelings into little compartments. Pain is pain and it bleeds everywhere.
On a lighter note, I was also convinced about the pyjamas for many years.
Haha! Amazing!
I am sitting here in floods reading your words, what a beautiful piece and sums up exactly how I feel too. I grew up on a council estate in west London and I fell in love first with the Aladdin Sane image, in a bookshop window when I was 11 in the early 80’s, I didn’t consciously understand it on one level, but thought it was the greatest thing I had ever seen, and soon discovered the music, the music I must have known forever but only truly discovered after that moment and my life path completely changed and I got into the arts and music in a big way and eventually went to drama school and trained as an actor, precisely because of Bowie’s influence, not only was it a joy to listen to him but a cultural education too and I learnt so much from all his intellectual and pop culture references, no one in my family was arty let alone had got a degree, but David Bowie seemed to say, you could be more than what is currently around you, you can be whoever you like, just don’t be scared!
Like you, I didn’t love it all, (let’s gloss over the late 80’s/early 90’s!) but I always appreciated that he was around and was creating something new and now he has gone. I have listen to his music pretty music every day for years, because it was incredible, rich, diverse, frightening, challenging, unique and ground-breaking. Now it just makes my heart ache. I am beyond sad they’ll be no new Bowie albums to discover, that is too hard to contemplate right now. I feel so much for his family and close friends at this awful time, the people who were close to him in his life, having to face the days without him, I send them all my love and I hope they are being well looked after. A hypergiant of our culture has gone, not only did he inspire generations of musicians, but actors, directors, writers, architects, fashion designers, he helped so many men and women to be brave and come out of the closet and be themselves, or whatever they wanted to be because the coolest guy in the world was gay! it is seemingly endless the creativity he inspired in others and will continue to, like the ripples in a vast ocean.. Thank you for this it helps to read about others who feel the same way, I can almost hear Ziggy’s impassioned battle-cry ringing in my ears, “You’re not alone…” David Jones has died, but David Bowie will live in my broken heart always because…I absolutely love you. x x x x
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
What can I say…thank you!!! You’re more eloquent un stating how hard it is. Imust admite I don’t even own a Bowie CD, I was too far away (Colombiano, South América) to have listened to Ziggy por Space Oddity but I knew him from Red shoes and I knew about the influence he has had on my favorite musicians, I could say ALL musicians! I was sad for them and I suddenly found out I was sad for me. Thank you again for making me aware of this.
He touched us all even if we didn’t realise.
A really lovely piece, thank you for sharing James. This line, I think, is the one I’ve been groping for to explain my different responses to Darkstar, pre and post death: “He gave us this album, and then just a few days later, he silently transformed it into something entirely different. What was confusing and obscure and frustrating and physical suddenly becomes direct and honest and open and vulnerable. It is the greatest concept album of all time. He won. He beat us all.” That is just perfect.
Thanks John.
my father and Bowie were my 2 heroes. After losing my father to cancer, now this …
Your post helped, thank you
Thank you x
Yeah, I feel this. Black hole at the bottom of the ribcage. The weird sense he’s sitting in the room with you.
Absolutely x
Thanks James, you are not alone mate.
Thanks.
Yes, thank you James. You triggered the tears again. Each tear helps the healing process doesn’t it?
I hope so.
No more words to add how I feel… Beautiful!
Thanks.
You have just summed up how many people are feeling. Shocked & emotional. My husband is a massive Bowie fan having seen him many times & knowing all his albums from cover to cover, I have never seen him so subdued and affected by a person he doesn’t know personally. Bowie was such a genius, an icon and will live on in everyone like us. Thank you for words that alot of people are feeling.
Thank you.
Thank you for this James. It is a beautiful piece and I relate so strongly to everything you say. We have lost our soulmate. A musical genius and extraordinary talent, who only ever had a positive effect on my life, someone we shared special and honest moments with and above all, for me, the person who helped shape my emotional literacy and love of music. Will miss him terribly . This was a joy to read. Thank you x
Thank you for reading it.
Thank you James for writing such a beautiful piece. I am grieving and it is hard. We shared the same birthday and I loved the that the last two albums were released on my birthday, they were great gifts for me. I have watched some of the TV coverage, seeing the concerts last night bought home the magic. For me it is the knowing that there is always a Bowie song to match my mood, and to lift my mood. I welcomed the differentiation between David Bowie and David Jones, and now know I am in love with Bowie as I never knew Jones. I hope Lazarus comes to London, and we can enjoy the final gift to us. Thank you for your reflections xx
Thank you.
Thank you. I can;t think of anything else to say to you right now, but, you know…
I know. Thank you.
Insightful and thought provoking stuff. You’re right, right, you’re bloody well right. Thank you !
Thanks.
Thank you.
Well said, far more eloquent than I could ever be. Thank you. x
Thanks x
I was living in Memphis Tennessee when Elvis Presley died. I was 15 years old and saw the outpouring of grief as misplaced and excessive. An amusement.
About the same year, I went to my first concert: David Bowie. He imprinted my lifelong musical taste during those years, and wrapped it all in emotional layers. I understand now what I observed in others when Elvis died.
Monday was a very difficult day. I cried in the grocery store parking lot listening to his music. (I didn’t see that coming, or I would have stayed home.) Tuesday was a bit better. But today was difficult again. I pretty much only thought of him, his family, and his music.
Today my 15 year old son listened to Life on Mars repeatedly, almost all day. He said he really loved it, and wanted to hear other Bowie songs. That’s when I started to feel a little bit better.
That’s lovely. Thank you x
Thank you for this piece. I still can’t quite express how I am processing this myself, but what you’ve written helps. I spent most of last week anticipating Blackstar, wondering if we might be treated to a new birthday album release every few years. Then I awoke to the announcement on the radio Monday morning. Since the horrible, horrible reckoning with the fact that I was indeed awake, not dreaming, I have been flailing through my feelings. The greatest is the deep sense of loss and grief. I discovered David Bowie during the years he was largely absent from the public eye, but I always found it comforting to think that he was still out there, being David Bowie. As I mourn by revisiting him in audio and video, there is a deep disconnect between my enjoyment of the vibrant, weird, wonderful performer and the knowledge that he is no longer sharing the planet with us. In the moments when I can temporarily place these thoughts aside, there is an awe that he managed to turn his death into an artistic statement. It shouldn’t be surprising, as you say: he is David Bowie (I still cannot fully give him to the past). The most comforting feeling I can find is that of gratitude. Gratitude for all that he already given to us and all that he already meant to us. Gratitude that he knew what was coming, and still made time to give us this final, parting gift.
Thank you x
Cried so much on Monday I had a two day headache. Strummer and Bowie; my shaman and my starman. Both making the ether so much cooler than earth now.
Favorite thing I’ve read so far…
“Tuesday night. I have the realisation that it was a magic trick. That last album. He performed a magic trick. He gave us this album, and then just a few days later, he silently transformed it into something entirely different. What was confusing and obscure and frustrating and invincible suddenly becomes direct and honest and open and vulnerable. The Pledge, the Turn, the Prestige. It’s all there. It is the greatest concept album of all time. He won. He beat us all.
Part of me hates him for being so David Bowie about it that we had no time to prepare. But then that goes away and I am filled with love for him for being so David Bowie about it that he did give us time to prepare, except none of us realised that because none of us are David Bowie enough to be David Bowie.”
Thank you for this.
I always come back to Cusak’s tribute to Strummer, and I’ll always come back to this.
Thank you. That means a lot.
I’m going through the exact same thing right now. It’s such a conflicted feeling, because I feel shameful about my grief (because there is something ‘immature’ about crying about a man you never knew personally) and on the other hand, I’m struck by the beauty of me (of us) being able to grief another human being, not for who he was in ‘real life’, but for his contribution to the world, the unique significance of his madcap genius. Grieving him is a celebration of everything that’s transgressive, subversive, creative and beautiful in the world.
Absolutely x
Here it is 4 days after the news broke, and I am still grieving and devastated. I discovered Bowie in 1972, when I was 15 years old. I can’t tell you what an influence he has been in my life since first bringing home the Ziggy Statdust album.
Very early Monday morning, my old high school acting teacher posted to FB, “The Thin White Duke is gone.” I was speechless and in a fog and didn’t know what to do. This feeling I’m experiencing is so strange. This feels like losing a parent to death.
I still cannot find the words. But, you understand and have been able to express in words what we are feeling. Thank you.
Thank you x
Only just caught up with this. Great heartfelt piece. Well said. Cheers. Mark
Thanks.
“In fact, you learn to love the grief because the grief is love. ”
This one line slayed me. Brought on the tears that have been flowing and stopping, flowing and stopping since Monday. You are spot on.
Perfection.
Thanks x
Yes, yes, yes. All of it. Thank you. I’ve never felt like this about the death of a public figure (though he was more than a public figure). I can’t imagine that I ever will again. It is actually painful, I never expected that. I want to be back before he died and stop it happening. I want it to be last Friday, listening to the newly-released Blackstar, and never to be Monday morning waking up to the news. Forty-two years listening to this man I barely imagined that he would leave, let alone that it would be like this. If it’s the price we pay for having had him then it must be worth it, but I didn’t know how hard it would be.
Re-reading what I typed, it sounds so melodramatic, so jump-on-the grief-stricken-bandwagon, so not me. And yet here I am, and you, and all the others. Thank you for expressing what I’ve barely been able to articulate.
Thank you for reading it.
Perfect. Exactly this. What I wrote on a private FB page yesterday was this:
So I guess this is how it is now. You wake up one day to have the whole world come crashing down at your feet. You reel in disbelief, and then it begins to sink in and you feel like your heart is breaking into a thousand tiny shards. And you try to reconcile it, this strange new kind of grief over someone who cared about you in the abstract, but didn’t know the minutiae of your life: doesn’t know your mom’s name or ask how your dog’s feeling on those new meds or send you a text when you had a tough day. What a strange and terrible thing this grief is. You read things like, “… his latest, and as it turns out, final album,” and you feel like someone’s just punched you in the gut. You cry and you talk to your friends and you get incredible support and understanding from people, even people who surprise you. And you survive it. You put one foot in front of the other. And you carry on. And the next day, and the next, and another day. Here I am, not quite dying.
Love on ya, all of you, near and far. We won’t ever forget him.
xxx
I say hi.
x
The first David Bowie song i heard was Changes,and i was hooked after that.When i heard the awful sad news on Monday i felt numb and i just had to play Changes as this was the song that introduced me to the most talented singer songwriter that was David Bowie.
Incredibly talented.
Alot of what you say resonates with me, I lost my Father in July last year after a horrendous 6 months watching him deteriorate and because it was such a stressful time, I’d still not really grieved for him.
After hearing the news on Monday morning, the first thing I did after bursting into tears and sobbing my heart out, was to text my partner and tell him the news as well as say that it felt like Dad dying all over again or rather the scab over that pain had just been ripped off!
I was already having a bad time with Lemmy going even though I wasn’t the biggest Motörhead fan.
I was born in 1970, in 1982 he came in like a glowing angel into my somewhat drab coastal suburban life when the Let’s Dance video hit Top of the Pops. I loved that song much to the derision of my parents, who thought he was old hat and belonged in the 70’s.
I had no idea at that point that he’d actually always been in my life from being born but I soon did as I voraciously consumed every album I was able to find in the 2nd hand record shops that were so popular in the 80’s, wishing all the time that I’d been old enough to be there that night Ziggy was retired.
Then the VHS videos came, I must have watched the Serious Moonlight tour and the Glass Spider tour atleast 100 times, I stayed up late at night to watch Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and The Hunger on Channel 4 when we finally got it! Not forgetting the one and only Jareth in Labyrinth and Vendice Partners in Absolute Beginners.
I was lucky enough to see him live twice and he was truly amazing.
I honestly feel like I’ve been hit with a shovel right between the eyes!
I’ve spent most of this week in that feeling of surreal about how the world can just keep turning when someone you love dies. I’ve shed so many tears and I don’t know if I’ve any left! I don’t think I’m ready to watch any of Bowie’s films, it’s taken a hell of alot out of me watching some of the tv programes. I think I’ve finally cried properly for my Dad as well this week. It’s been a dam burst!
We are so goddam British! Berating ourselves for feeling grief and not allowing ourselves that time to come to terms with the loss. We are allowed to grieve, it’s part of what makes us human and sharing that loss with people that understand helps as well.
We don’t even get to say our goodbyes properly, he’s denied us even that with his goddam Bowie-ness, quitely cremated with a private family memorial.
There is talk of a celebration of his life at Carnegie hall but here in the land of his birth doesn’t look like we are going that opportunity. He’d obviously decided that he didn’t want the Freddie type-tribute thing going down and I respect that but I selfishly wanted to stand in a stadium with several thousand others and sing those tunes on mass to remember him!
His music will always be a huge part of my life and I am so glad that I found it but I wasn’t expecting that he would break my heart as well
Thank you. I don’t think anyone was prepared for this apart from the man himself.
Thank you so much for writing this. I have cried every day since I heard the news on Monday. I haven’t really been able to make sense of my reaction but reading this has helped. As others have said, I’ve felt a sense of embarrassment at crying over the death of someone I’d never met, quickly wiping away the tears that ran down my cheeks as I sat at my desk on Monday morning, for fear of my colleagues laughing. Yet I’m proud of how David made me feel, not just in life, through his music and film work, but in his death too – it shows I am human and I’m capable of feeling deeply. And what’s embarrassing about that? What a special man he was to have touched so many. Thanks again.
Thank you x
Thank you, James. Four decades of listening and enrichment and eternal gratitude. Also, I didn’t know you were my brother. What a good piece you wrote.
Thank you Chris.
Thank you so much Chris. You got it. Nobody else has quite expressed so perfectly what I have been feeling. Still so painful 2 weeks later – tears come out of nowhere. I miss his not being on our particular planet, but so glad we had him. I met him in 1987. I worked for his record company; I had only been there 6 weeks – I was a temp, and the office was closing. He heard that people were losing their jobs. He insisted on coming through and greeting every soul in the building, shaking their hands and saying thank you. I hadn’t known his music before, but ever since that day I have loved him. It was like a demi-god fell to earth and took my hand. All our hands, and raised us up.
Felt a little crazy until I read this, now I know I’m not the only one. Thank you.
You’ve managed to put into words something I never could have done. Thank you.
I’m sorry it’s taken so long to reply, this is now my third time of reading. The tears….they flow…they STILL flow. You filled my life with SO much music Mr Bowie and for that….I thank you.
Thank you so much. I still can’t take it in and still can’t listen to the beautiful Blackstar. Too sad and have such a memory of July 3rd 1973 when I was 15 years old and my life changed forever when I saw him at Hammersmith Odeon. I went to the concert with my lovely friend and we have been friends ever since until she died of a brain tumour last year. How we would have cried together on that shocking Monday when we heard the news. I am grieving so much for them both and my past.
Oh thank you. I’m much younger than you and I’m from another country and English culture isn’t my native culture and Bowie’s songs were not what I grew up with — but I’m still shaken and I’m still grateful. Now we are to realize that the world has changed, and we are to live by ourselves.