David Bowie and 'Into the West'

The news of the death of David Bowie hit the entire world like a meteor, sending ripples through the entire atmosphere and reminding us all of the cruelty of time.  He stood like a Colossus between the 20th and 21st Century, equally at home in both...  To me and to so many, he represented the era of our youth.

I cried... and realised suddenly that it was not only for Bowie but for so many of my friends who have died.  I remember Mark Wilden who died of cancer last year and who, one summer when I returned from England, had embraced entirely the persona of Ziggy Stardust.   Where Bowie was able to grasp his extraordinary unbridled creativity to reinvent himself again and again, to move freely between tragedy, drama and comedy in his work, Mark I think never felt quite at home in his own skin or his world.   I did not know Bowie personally, more's the pity.  Mark, though, for being such a strange guy, was impossibly rigid and I do not think it was ever a happy combination for him.

So I wept for Mark as well as Bowie, and then for my dear friend John Gross, my wonderful friend Chris Strawson, for Fleming Lee, for Richard Elam, for the beautiful Palestinian poet who was my fiance long ago and who was murdered in the summer of a foreign invasion...   so many dead and the world sometimes turns very grey from their absence because they all shone with their own singular brilliance whether intellectually or otherwise.

There are reasons to keep living but I see with increasing clarity that Death becomes far less frightening when more of our friends are on the other side than on this.  I also understand why so many Kings and Leaders in the past took their entire households with them when they went to greet the Grim Reaper...  would the moment of death be any different?  You think of jets crashing with over two hundred souls aboard, spinning together downwards into the void and one wonders if that is any different than dying alone.  I shouldn't wish to die with a lot of strangers though.  I feel that, unless one were to die with a loved one or a group of loved ones, it would be very annoying to be accompanied by a crowd of strangers.   Porssibly worse than annoying if it somehow determined the nature of the next life.  How awful to be bound to a random group of strange sould forever simply because one happened to die in the same place at the same time.

One then wonders what it would be like to die with an enemy, grappling with some one determined to end your life albeit a stranger as well in battle.  Would you be linked to both comrades and enemies forever?

A couple of days after the death of Bowie is the news of the death of Alan Rickman, a great actor.  I saw him in a play in New York and the charisma that I sensed in his films was even more potent on the stage.    It is another great loss...

I do not know what lies ahead.  No one does, not even those who claim to have looked across the river to the other side briefly or seen the white light or tunnel only to return.  What I do know is that the most comforting vision of all belongs to Tolkien and Peter Jackson's LoTR.

Despite the fact that I consider myself Roman Catholic, well a very Pagan Roman Catholic, it is Tolkien's vision that to me holds most true where Death is concerned.  No angels playing harps but a vision that never was fiction, nor myth but rather embedded very deeply in the ancient Anglo-Saxon and Celtic psyche.  The lands of the West are the Celtic vision of the otherworld, the place where heroes go.  For the Germans and Norse, there were nine worlds and some of them were given over to the Dead and the Dead did not rest upon their laurels but had to fight the forces of Darkness again.

It has been said that the primary theme of Lord of the Rings is Death and secondary to that are Friendship and Loyalty.  I would agree with that, but add the theme of Hope to that of Death.  It is Death with Hope... whether mortal or immortal, Death holds the promise of great beauty and the possibility that the end of a person will guarantee that he or she will live forever in the memories of others, that great deeds indeed are stronger than Death.

The Death of Boromir is an example of this.  For all his failings, his end was glorious and unforgettable.  He was human and mortal but his deeds make him more than mortal.

'Into the West'

Gandalf speaks of Death

Remembering Bowie, one remembers so many different characters and personae.  It was the film 'Labyrinth', however, that made an indelible impression in terms of his appeal.
Labyrinth and Crystal Ball

Within You from Labyrinth

Magic Dance from Labyrinth

On the other end of the spectrum was a role in Ricky Gervais' 'Extras' which always makes me laugh.
David Bowie in 'Extras'

My first glimpse of Bowie in film actually was 'The Man who Fell to Earth'.  I have to admit I was not as enamoured of the film initially as the friend who took me to see it.  I liked it better when I saw it some years later.