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The curse of being a singer called David Jones strikes again.
David Bowie dies and takes the secret of how to pronounce his name to the grave. I guess we’ll never know now. Or how he pronounced scone.
Though I did spot a clue as to how he might have pronounced his name in this bizarre video (if anything by Bowie can not be called bizarre) with Bing Crosby for Little Drummer Boy. When he pronounces his name. Bowie. Just like you’d think. But we'll never know about scone. Or if he said skellington or skeleton.
Of course, like the whole world, I was shocked to learn the news this morning. Even though I am not a huge music fan, like everyone else, I liked Bowie, but he didn’t impact on my life in the way he seemed to for so many people. Because comedy was my rock n roll (it isn’t anything like rock n roll and never has been, but as a teenager I liked it in a way that other people liked bands). But having said that Space Oddity and the Laughing Gnome are two of the earliest pop songs I remember and I loved both of them as a tiny child. But that’s also true of “Two Little Boys” by Rolf Harris, so it’s not a ringing endorsement. But yes, Bowie was there throughout my entire life.
But even I understand the power of the man and why it’s such a big deal and what he represented (and still represents) to the normal people for whom music is the main form of entertainment in their lives. I understand the visceral thrill of his early albums and was just as weirded out, afraid, fascinated and titillated by his experiments with music and gender stereotypes. And though Twitter was literally filled with tributes (apart from Richard Dawkins who amusingly, obliviously, carried on hammering home his atheist philosophy to a load of people who agree with him), for once I didn’t mind everyone being the Prime Minister of their own country (though perhaps by the end of the day, the eulogies were getting a little bit out of proportion - but mainly it was just weird to see news programmes talking in the same hallowed tones as fans). This was up there with John Lennon and Lady Diana for its impact on the national psyche. People needed to vent and come to terms with it through tears, through the music, through laughter sometimes (and humour seemed appropriate with this man - I only got one negative tweet in response to the comments I made - as above, because everyone knew Bowie would have laughed too). I couldn’t quite join in and I wasn’t in tears, but I was shocked and sad and I trawled the internet looking at clips and checking out his new album and admiring the way that he dealt with death.
And I think he made the right choice to keep his cancer a secret. He knew he was loved, but to be alive to deal with the sorrow and the tributes and everyone adding extra reverence to everything you did. It would have been unbearable. It might have helped temper the shock for his fans, perhaps, but they would have been shocked anyway and though his death was inevitably going to be a public event, I admire him for making the lead up to it private. But turning it into his final work of art too.
We always pay tribute to those who dared to be different and creative and grind against social norms, as is right, but let’s also pay tribute to all those billions of people who don’t do anything of the sort and stay firmly fixed in whatever society expects of them and don’t cause a fuss. If they didn’t do that then people like Bowie would have had nothing. If we all did what he did then he wouldn’t have been what he was, so in a sense it’s us who are responsible for his artistic triumph and we all deserve a share of the accolades.
