Bowie and the Legendary Stardust Cowboy #DS106 #Western106
Two things happened today: one momentous, one not so.
First, David Bowie died, unexpectedly for us but not for him and his family. Like many other people stunned by his loss, I started to root around the Internet and found lots of gems, some that sparked memories and others that were new. The less momentous event was my decision to join in with the latest DS106, the digital storytelling course, in its current form #western106.
So imagine my surprise when I discovered a link between Ziggy Stardust and cowboys. Bowie acknowledged that the term stardust was taken from the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, a star of the psychobilly genre, apparently.
The music and other artistic performances of David Bowie have brought me so much pleasure but also taught me so much through music and other performance arts about ambiguity of identity and sexuality before the Internet. He brought us out of the 60s and 70s and all the hangups from previous eras.
So let’s enjoy Ziggy Stardust.
And now Bowie is dead the Internet is helping me find out more about him and what he did, so I am still learning from him.
How about this way of writing songs or sparking ideas from your own words? I am already thinking of ways I can use this in working on my own and with other people.
All in all, thank you and good night David Bowie.
catherinecronin January 11, 2016 - 10:20 pm
Lovely post, Frances – thank you. I’ve tumbled through a lot of thoughts and emotions today after David Bowie’s death. I thought of his family, friends and fans. I sent a message to Bonnie Stewart 🙂 I enjoyed some of the music so many people have shared. And this evening, when things slowed down a bit, I felt the loss in a different way — not just to one of the soundtracks of my life (though Bowie was that) — but, as you say, his wit and creativity and don’t-give-a-damn way of being just who he was. As for his creativity, I love the video you shared — but there’s also a later one, which you might enjoy too 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Sgq0XoxPw
francesbell January 13, 2016 - 9:52 am
Thanks Catherine for your thoughts and for that gem of a video. It made me think of the mesostomatic that Jenny Mackness shows us at the end of this post https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/the-messiness-of-rhizomatic-learning-words-steal-my-intent/
The playfulness is important and might inspire us in our (yours, Laura’s and my) current collaboration:)
Laura Gogia January 12, 2016 - 12:20 am
Hello Frances,
I have to admit that I am unfamiliar with much of David Bowie’s greatest work. I hate to pin it on my age (and I think you’ll see why in a minute), but I am only familiar with his later work from the late 80s on. However, I can see from the outpouring of emotion on the Internet and blog posts like your’s that he was a special for a lot of people. It reminds me of the way I experienced Katharine Hepburn’s death – her movies got me through so much of my young adulthood that her loss a decade later not only made me sad, but it also brought my teen years rushing right back at me. It’s a double dose of something really complicated, isn’t it? There’s something about the loss of an artist we lean on or depended on to help us understand the world, compared to the loss of an artist we merely respect. So I wish you, all the Bowie fans, as well as his friends and family all the best.
francesbell January 13, 2016 - 10:04 am
Hi Laura,
I would never have considered myself a massive Bowie fan in the mould of those who are grief-stricken by his death. I am a little sad and it has taken his death and the subsequent outpouring to appreciate more of what I was dimly aware – that Bowie was an enduring but changing (ch-ch-changes) part of the musical landscape of my life. He had something to offer each new generation and many genres of music and other arts.
When I was a young mother, I had a strange experience at a local agricultural show in North Yorkshire in 1982 (I think). There was a stall where a performer offered to guess your age for a charge and you won a prize if he got it wrong. I won in two ways – he guessed my age as 2 years younger (when I was feeling 10 years older) and my prize was an obscure Bowie album. Listening to it later, I was aware that Bowie’s outputs were many and varied.
dogtrax January 18, 2016 - 12:32 am
I think I vaguely remembered that connections. Hmmm. Cool.
Kevin