[MUSIC] David Bowie, "Blackstar"
Jan. 21st, 2016 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe music video for David Bowie's "Blackstar", first single off of his last album, is exactly ten minutes long. I watched it with Glenn, taken by the song. The music evoked some of Bowie's more experimental 1970s tracks, perhaps some of the ambient tracks of the Berlin trilogy. The imagery was intensely vivid, only starting with what might well have been the bejewelled skeleton of Major Tom on a desolate lunar landscape.
The lyrics? They were obscure. It's tempting to read into them Bowie's sense of his own mortality, as the people over at Genius are. What I got from them, and still get from them, is a sense of uncertainty.
Is this the last candle? Will it light others? Is it doomed? What does this all mean? Nothing here is clear.
I am tempted to see hope. Bowie, I would suggest in the verse below, sees hope, sees the possibility of some sort of continuity even if it is only indirect.
May we all be so brave.
The lyrics? They were obscure. It's tempting to read into them Bowie's sense of his own mortality, as the people over at Genius are. What I got from them, and still get from them, is a sense of uncertainty.
In the villa of Ormen, in the villa of Ormen
Stands a solitary candle, ah-ah, ah-ah
At the centre of it all, at the centre of it all
Your eyes
Ah-ah-ah
Is this the last candle? Will it light others? Is it doomed? What does this all mean? Nothing here is clear.
I am tempted to see hope. Bowie, I would suggest in the verse below, sees hope, sees the possibility of some sort of continuity even if it is only indirect.
Something happened on the day he died
Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar)
May we all be so brave.
