This morning my iPod shuffle and the relative solitude of the drive to work provided me with the memory of a distinct moment of my youth. The song was "Time In a Bottle" by Jim Croce.
Jim Croce died in a plane crash in September, 1973. I was nine years old. I knew little at the time about popular music, and cared about it even less. I remember hearing of his death, and knew it was he who had recorded "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," a song played often on the radio, and which I had enjoyed. That was about it.
About seven years later I was discovering the vinyl record albums my brother, nearly six years older than I, had been collecting and storing in the upstairs bedroom we shared. His stuff was generally off-limits to me, so, while he wasn't home, I made sure to be extra careful when handling his record albums.
The distinct moment to which my iPod brought me this morning was when I laid the needle on the first track of one of the two Jim Croce albums in my brother's collection. I lay on the floor with his headphones on so I could play it as loudly as I wanted. Even then I knew only that Jim Croce had recorded a couple of hit songs, plus one or two other popular pieces, and had died tragically while his star was still rising. With his songs piping directly into my ears, I was struck by the poetry in his words, by the emotion in his voice, and the weight of his music. And there, on my back on the hard floor of my shared bedroom nearly a decade after Jim Croce died, the full depth of the loss the music world experienced on the day of his death hit me. And I wept.
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Wednesday, March 09, 2016
Monday, January 11, 2016
A Bit of a Ramble, Mostly About Death
I was never a huge fan of David Bowie. I've been more appreciative of his music in my middle age than I was in my youth and young adulthood, and I understand the impact his recent death has had on the music industry and on his fandom.
What turns out to be the most disarming aspect of his death is that Mr. Bowie turned it into his final artistic expression. One can't know — at least at this point, one day after his death — if he intentionally timed the release of his new album to be around the date of his death (it was released two days before he died), or if it just turned out to be an ironic coincidence (someone involved with the production of the album has said that Bowie intended it as a "parting gift" to his fans). But what can be known — or at least perceived — is that, during the writing and creation of his final music album, he was fully aware of, and prepared for, his impending death. Aware, and inspired.
One need only absorb the disturbing themes, recurring imagery, and haunting words of two songs from the recent release, Blackstar:
Lazarus
Blackstar
Nobody outside those in his closest circles knew he was dying until word came late Sunday night, January 10, 2016, that he had passed.
Constructive Contemplation
People rarely think of a terminal cancer diagnosis — or terminal anything diagnosis — as a positive thing, but one can imagine that it certainly gives one perspective. Clearly, in David Bowie's circumstance, it gave him the sound and vision for his final curtain (see what I did there...?)
But what about the rest of us? Is there anything we should be thinking about for the rest of our time manufacturing carbon dioxide? Of course, there are life insurance and succession plans and wills and trusts, but those are things that take effect after we die. We tend to put off a lot of living in an effort to secure a comfortable life in our future. But isn't life today worth as much as life tomorrow? Why suffer through the now when tomorrow isn't promised to us? Life ultimately sucks when you look at it from the end of the run: if you had a great life that's ending, that sucks because it's ending; if you had a crappy life, well, that sucks, and now it's ending. Total suckness.
I used to feel that my biggest fear was to die alone. I think that's the top of the list for a lot of people. But I don't fear that any more, because, after all, everyone dies alone. Sure, you may be surrounded by family. You may even go flying off a bridge in a bus with a hundred other people, all fated to cease in the same instant. But even then, you'd be alone. Death is a solitary thing. No one goes with you.
No, my biggest fear is to be the last of my family and friends — but family, especially — to go. Not that I wish it upon any of them, either, but, being the youngest of seven children, I've known all of my siblings for my entire life! With my parents and one sister gone already, I don't think I can take that five more times as I stagger through old age.
What is your biggest fear? Don't you think that you — we — should go about the rest of our days seeing to alleviate that fear? Or at least face it, embrace it to assuage the stress it causes us while we think death is far away?
Does it take death facing us and our stocking feet at the end of a long, polished hardwood-floor, tilted hallway to give us the inspiration to do something interesting with our lives?
David Bowie lived an interesting life. May we all endeavor to express our lives as profoundly and as openly as he expressed his dying.
And my uplifting parting shot for this downer post, a guest-starring appearance by David Bowie on the Ricky Gervais HBO comedy, Extras. I hope you'll have a laugh:
°
What turns out to be the most disarming aspect of his death is that Mr. Bowie turned it into his final artistic expression. One can't know — at least at this point, one day after his death — if he intentionally timed the release of his new album to be around the date of his death (it was released two days before he died), or if it just turned out to be an ironic coincidence (someone involved with the production of the album has said that Bowie intended it as a "parting gift" to his fans). But what can be known — or at least perceived — is that, during the writing and creation of his final music album, he was fully aware of, and prepared for, his impending death. Aware, and inspired.
One need only absorb the disturbing themes, recurring imagery, and haunting words of two songs from the recent release, Blackstar:
Lazarus
Blackstar
Nobody outside those in his closest circles knew he was dying until word came late Sunday night, January 10, 2016, that he had passed.
Constructive Contemplation
People rarely think of a terminal cancer diagnosis — or terminal anything diagnosis — as a positive thing, but one can imagine that it certainly gives one perspective. Clearly, in David Bowie's circumstance, it gave him the sound and vision for his final curtain (see what I did there...?)
But what about the rest of us? Is there anything we should be thinking about for the rest of our time manufacturing carbon dioxide? Of course, there are life insurance and succession plans and wills and trusts, but those are things that take effect after we die. We tend to put off a lot of living in an effort to secure a comfortable life in our future. But isn't life today worth as much as life tomorrow? Why suffer through the now when tomorrow isn't promised to us? Life ultimately sucks when you look at it from the end of the run: if you had a great life that's ending, that sucks because it's ending; if you had a crappy life, well, that sucks, and now it's ending. Total suckness.
I used to feel that my biggest fear was to die alone. I think that's the top of the list for a lot of people. But I don't fear that any more, because, after all, everyone dies alone. Sure, you may be surrounded by family. You may even go flying off a bridge in a bus with a hundred other people, all fated to cease in the same instant. But even then, you'd be alone. Death is a solitary thing. No one goes with you.
No, my biggest fear is to be the last of my family and friends — but family, especially — to go. Not that I wish it upon any of them, either, but, being the youngest of seven children, I've known all of my siblings for my entire life! With my parents and one sister gone already, I don't think I can take that five more times as I stagger through old age.
What is your biggest fear? Don't you think that you — we — should go about the rest of our days seeing to alleviate that fear? Or at least face it, embrace it to assuage the stress it causes us while we think death is far away?
Does it take death facing us and our stocking feet at the end of a long, polished hardwood-floor, tilted hallway to give us the inspiration to do something interesting with our lives?
David Bowie lived an interesting life. May we all endeavor to express our lives as profoundly and as openly as he expressed his dying.
And my uplifting parting shot for this downer post, a guest-starring appearance by David Bowie on the Ricky Gervais HBO comedy, Extras. I hope you'll have a laugh:
°
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